Sleepless in Seattle

All the sleepless days and nights, night-outs, and mostly self-imposed crazy schedules in B-schools generally leave you with a half-baked biological cycle. Last week was when whatever left of my biological cycle went for a sixer.

When I accepted a week’s travel to the US, what I did not realize was the impact such a 12-hour time zone shift has on one’s rhythm, particularly in short trips when you don't quite get the luxury to get used to the shift. The time zone change ensures that you are forced to be awake at times when you normally sleep, and forced to sleep when you are normally awake. If that dazed existence wasn’t enough, I had 15 hour very-intense work schedules, an additional 3-4 of preparation work, and an additional time zone change within the US. Net-net, most of the last week seems like a distant haze, akin to a mirage. I realize I was there, but I wasn’t fully there. But trips to a different country being what they are, they are always fun.

The difference in education levels between the east and west always amazes me. We are accused of learning by rote in India, but if it’s sheer smartness that you factor in, Indians win hands-down. [I do not know about the Chinese.] It's probably because of the cut throat competition in everything we do. The simplest examples could be gathered by observing the efficiency with which guys that do routine jobs in India do their job. I mean, if you notice how fast our neighborhood ‘annachi’ grocer does the math for the items you’ve bought, how quick and efficient the iron-guy in his job, how mellifluously our ubiquitous chai-guy handles the river of aromatic chai, how sneakingly and snakingly our drivers drive the cars and autos, you’d think they are the best people to do what they do. I’ve been more than amazed at how efficient our guys are in what they do. It’s a world of difference compared to the US. Picture the examples below. Mind you, all these occurred within a week – so ‘law of averages’, if it ever exists, cannot be factored in.

Scene 1: I go to a toy-store for buying toys for a colleague

Me: Hey I’m looking for ‘Bob the builder’.
Retailer: Good morning sonny, how are you doing this morning?
Me: Fine. Thanks. I’m looking for ‘Bob the builder’.
Retailer: Lemme run a search. [He opens a computer terminal]. And types in ‘Bob the biulder’, and it doesn’t find anything, obviously.
Me: I guess you got the spelling wrong.
Retailer: Oh yeah, I see. He then types in ‘Bob the boulder’.
Me: No. [I spell it]: It is ‘B-o-b t-h-e b-u-i-l-d-e-r’.
Retailer: Alrite. I see what you are saying. And then types in ‘Bob the biulder’.
Me: [I think – dude, English is supposed to be my second language and your first!]

Scene 2: I go to Burger King in Seattle Tacoma airport.

Me: Hi, I’ll have hash browns, two of them.
Retailer [a woman with Mongoloid features]: Honey, hath broons are very small. [I figured it is hash browns she's talking about] They come in medium, grande and king sizes.
[Incidentally, how many have noticed that American ‘medium’ is Indian ‘Large’. We don’t have their equivalent of Grande and King-size anywhere. And they don't have anything that is 'Small']
Me: No, I want two of those long hash browns.
Retailer: Oh no, you don’t get ‘em here. You get them in McDonalds. Do you want French fries instead?
Me: No, I’ll go with medium hash browns.
Retailer: Sure. Medium French fries.
Me: No, Medium Hash Browns.
Retailer: Sure Medium Hash Browns. Anything else honey?
Me: Yes, Hot Chocolate Medium.
Retailer: Sure. Gotcha. And then goes on to type ‘Medium French fries”
Me: Arrgh!

And that wasn’t all of it. The guy in the ‘United Airlines’ counter was the perfect recipe of disaster. He took about 20 minutes to find an alternate flight for me since my original one got delayed, even as the Jamaican-looking guy from the same airline in the next counter was re-booking people at the rate of 5 minutes a person. What more, at the end of 20 minutes of finding different flights, he canceled all my 3 flights en route to Chennai and re-booked only the first two. That was something I realized only in Frankfurt when they said my booking was canceled by the Airlines guy. How smart. The flight was thankfully half empty, which helped me avoided getting stranded in Frankfurt for a day. Getting stranded that way when you are in the middle of a 36 hour long airports-and-flights routine is the worst thing to happen.

Come to think of it, the guys who do the routine stuff in India may not be the most polite ones, and may be frequently understaffed, but the ones who are there know what they do, and are as efficient as anyone can get in their job.