I think it's just plain disrespect

This is going to be a rant, so bear with me.

Have you ever been to meetings where the meeting was supposed to start a particular time, but people arrive a LOT later than they were supposed to? I know this happens predominantly in India, so my apologies to someone from outside this country who is reading this. But if you have interacted with Indians in general, you would know what I am talking about.

This all stems from an incident that happened last week which really got under my skin. I obviously cannot narrate the details of the event, but it bothered me nonetheless. I meant to post sooner, but hey, I have people wasting my time, so...

There have been times when a meeting starts a few HOURS after it was originally scheduled and all this while, one is just sitting there twiddling one's thumbs. Now I've been working for quite a few years now and should be fairly inoculated to this behaviour, but I'm NOT! I still get riled up over people not sticking to the time they commit to.

And the crux of the matter is this: Indians have no respect for anyone else's time except their own. They have this distinct feeling that only what THEY are doing is of paramount importance and everything else can wait. What they fail to understand is that EVERYONE is doing exactly that. That's why you see the traffic in chaos...everyone is in a hurry to get where they are going and inevitably cause a delay for everyone.

Earlier, I used to think that we Indians are short on patience. That this impatience drives our behaviour in traffic as well as places where you are expected to queue up. Naturally everyone wants to get their work done as quickly as possible, so has to be impatience, right?

Wrong!

It's sheer disrespect for the other person. "I don't care what you think, I think this way and I'm going for it". That's why we see Indians breaking queues (if they even exist), invade people's personal spaces without realising, talk out of turn, cut people off, etc etc etc.

And there lies my point. being late for something is DISRESPECTFUL to the other person. It is a blatant way of saying "I don't respect you and your time. Your time has no value for me!"

People think punctuality is a good character trait to have...and it is - don't get me wrong - it most definitely is, but not for the reasons you would think. Punctuality means that you are willing to make an effort to stick to a commitment you made, but more importantly, it conveys that you respect the other person and his/her time to not want to waste it by making them wait.

We all have a limited few seconds on this glorious planet. Is there any point in wasting them in some waiting room or some conference room or some phone call or a traffic jam? Instead, if we just respected the other person and their time and their right, as much as yours, to exist on this planet, then we would be a much better country.

It sure as hell won't change overnight, but it has to start somewhere. Change always starts with one, and I for one am going to make it a point to let people know how I feel when they abuse my time.

End Rant!

Language barriers

I know I make it a point not to blog about work stuff, but I just had to talk about this.

I was recently in Bangkok for a business meeting and while a lot of people there understand English, it is not the preferred language of communication. Of course, that would be Thai. There's also the extremely polite "Sawasdeekaaa" with the end sound dragged out and the joined hands welcome that everyone gets.

Now, as an outsider, it becomes a bit difficult to convey everything one has to say to be effective. Especially for me where my play on words helps me to inject some humor in the proceedings. So needless to say, communication becomes a bit of a problem. There are whole parts of the meeting where an entire conversation can happen in rapid fire and then we get a summary of what just transpired. So we end up losing a lot of information. Not to mention the possible jokes at our expense which our local counterparts are too polite to tell us (I'm guessing).

I had a similar experience when I was in Japan last year. With an added complication. We had to present using a interpreter. Now this was my first experience at that sort of thing, so we have to do a dry run of the presentations or the material with the interpreter so that she could effectively translate it during our meetings. What that also meant was that I could not speak more than two sentences for the most effective translation.

I have to admit...I have a fairly fluid presentation style and I don't plan on what I'm going to say. I just go with the flow based on the audience and the mood they are in. In Japan, I had to completely change my style and now think of the two most impactful sentences which could be translated while the interpreter was working on what I had just said. I completely changed my thinking about presenting in a place where English is not the main language.

But the most amazing thing? I was at an offsite with my team from all across APJC and we were at Bintan in Indonesia for a few days. I was getting to meet with all the great people I had met during my trips to all these regions and spend some time (over drinks, of course) with most of them. Guess what? I had the best time sitting around my Japanese colleagues!

Here I was surrounded by six Japanese gentlemen - some much older than me and some around my age or younger - and there were so many topics of conversation. Of course I had to talk about the absolutely awesome food I had there (Shabo Shabo, I love you) and I would get a question like "Malhar-san, which sauce do you prefer with the Shabo Shabo? Soy or Peanut?" and I would wonder if it was a trick question. I even said so. Cause in my time in Singapore, I had been made aware that people make judgements about your provess (you decide which one) or when you will get married simply by the way you hold your chop sticks! So I didn't want to say I like one or the other that makes me sound ridiculous. But no, all they wanted to know was my palette and choice so that they could recommend more restaurants.

The topic went from Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka and eventually how I "have to" go to Sapporo the next time I'm there. One of my colleagues even volunteered to chaperone me around and take me to the "right" places.

We were having such a great time and laughing so loud that our VP came around wondering what was going on at "the table that's having the most fun".

So there you go folks...languages can be a bit of a deterrent, but the people are just as much fun, as long as you are willing to have some :)

At least take the label off!

Now I see this a lot whenever I travel, especially to the northern part of the country and especially so during the winter months. Almost everyone there is wearing a suit or at least a jacket. And without fail, more than half of them still have the brand label either still in it's pristine condition on the sleeve of the jacket OR hanging on for dear life from that flimsy tack they put in (so that the label can be easily taken off in the first place).

I'm not sure these people realise it, but the label is there just to make it easier to identify the brand in the store. It's not there to be paraded around for the rest of the said jacket's lifetime.

And yet, there's scores of people who do that anyways!

You can see similar evidence at the bottom of formal shoes as well. During meetings, when your co-conspirators in the meeting are sitting in the famous "one leg over the other" pose and pretending to listen, they don't realise that the label for the price is still stuck on there.

Maybe they want me to know that they are into expensive shoes, maybe they just forgot, maybe it's like the label on the jacket sleeve all over again! They just won't take it off.

Do us all a favor, will you guys?

Rip it off, Puleeeeeze!

Not exactly a resolution, but...

Ho hum! New year and all that, so there's talk of any (if at all) new resolutions for the year going forward. Now I'm not in the habit of making resolutions (as I'm already at superHD resolution), so I'm not going to get into that conversation, but I noticed that I haven't been doing what I used to do a lot a few years ago.

And that is blogging!

There was a time when I would have at least a post a day, of things that I noticed that day, the weird things that happened to me, the rants against some moronic things, or simply to vent how I was feeling. And I noticed that somewhere around 2007-2008, my blogging frequency took a nose dive. There have been a few intermittent posts now and then, but my attempts to cover my North Europe trip also ended up being half baked (with only half the trip documented).

So the effort for the new year is to blog more often. At least once a week if that's even possible.

So here's to a new day. A new beginning. A fresh start.

Wish everyone a happy new year and may it be so much better than the last!