| But in Germany, 11.15 am was a little too early, as I was just 15 minutes away from Frankfurt airport. So I called Emirates' local office as well as the taxi service earlier in the morning, asking them to come an hour later. But at 11.14 am, a 5 Series BMW with a well-groomed chauffeur nattily dressed in a black suit and yellow tie lands up at the doorstep. He never got the message. It was too early for me, and my friends said they would drop me instead""so we sent him away. Surprising that in this era of hyper-communication, messages don't get passed. And that too, with an efficiently run airline in an efficiently run country. It happens. |
| Tuesday More Tuesdawn than Tuesday. Cooling my heels at Dubai airport for over four hours""at that time of the day when most people should be into their fourth dream""waiting for my connecting flight to Mumbai. Dubai airport is fascinating""it is open 24 hours and the buzz is constant here, all through the day. It's amazing the kind of energy people have for shopping, even at 3 am in the morning! The duty free shops are packed with people from various parts of the world, stuffing their baskets with goodies. Indians buying gold, Pakistanis buying large packs of orange and pineapple Tang, Africans buying P&G shampoos and soaps, Russians picking up bottles of booze, Britishers checking out consumer electronics and the Chinese... well, curiously there were a few of them dumping a few cartons of Chinese cigarette brands into their shopping trolleys. Me? Chocolates and a few CDs of Arabic and Rai music. |
| Oh, and Dubai airport is famous for its car raffle. Pick up a lottery ticket worth 500 dirhams and you get a chance to win an expensive car""this time it was a Porsche 911 Carrera and a BMW 7 Series. Clever Indians flying through Dubai usually split the cost of the lottery ticket and keep their fingers crossed. |
| Wednesday It's the day of the launch of the all-new Ford Endeavour (in the auto business jargon, all-new usually means it's a major facelift, while new means a minor revamp). Ford, which has sold 7,000 units of its truck-based SUV, has given the latest iteration of the Endeavour a more powerful and torquey common-rail diesel engine, which makes it a bit effortless to move that huge mass. A reporter from a prominent business channel wants some soundbites from an "auto expert" about the Endeavour and wants me to do the honours. No problem, but there's a small issue""it's to be done in Hindi. Now, I seriously have to dam the flow of words when I have to give my opinion on an automobile in English, but in Hindi... It's not easy and I make a brave effort in front of the camera. The result is a new spin on Hinglish, and I feverishly hoped that using large, technical English words like seatbelt pre-tensioners, dual stage airbags, common-rail turbocharged intercooled diesel engine, anti-lock braking system, etc., would mask the halting flow of the national language. |
| Also... Here's a mighty good one I heard this week: In the past, what would you call 21 white men chasing a black guy? The Ku Klux Klan. So what would you call 21 white men chasing a black guy now? Formula One! For those who don't know, 21-year old Lewis Hamilton is the world's first black F1 driver. Immensely talented, this lad drives for McLaren Mercedes and has been on the podium at the end of every single race of this season. Last Sunday, he won the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis. This, after taking top honours at the previous GP at Montreal! |
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