Business Standard

Siddharth Zarabi: Of foreign junkets and careless drivers

My Week

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Siddharth Zarabi New Delhi
Saturday: As weeks go, the one just gone by has been special in ways more than one. For starters, the office handed out laptops to several staffers, with me on the list of lucky ones. An IBM ThinkPad R Series device, they are fun to work with and have the latest version of Microsoft Office. The Delhi Business Standard office is possibly the only newspaper office in these parts to have its own Wi-Fi hotspot "" a fully secured wireless network that provides a blazing fast 54 megabits per second of download speed. Another goody, a Tata Indicom wireless data card that provides a stable 230 kilobits per second in most parts of Delhi, makes me genuinely mobile. Armed with all this technology, I have set myself a target: sniff around on Delhi's version of Fleet Street "" the row of newspaper offices on the notoriously congested Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg "" to detect if any of them have similar Wi-Fi networks.
 
Sunday-Monday: But that really is not the highlight of the week. What really got me, and the whole family, all puffed up was me getting to be part of the Prime Ministers' media delegation for the Asean and East Asia summits. It has taken me a decade in this profession to bag what is considered the mother of all junkets for journalists. In the six years of my previous job, not a single journo from the business reporting section got on to the PM's plane for an overseas visit (things have changed though, an old colleague from the business reporting section was on this trip). So, you can probably understand that flying off to Cebu in the Philippines was a bit heady. Not only is an Air India aircraft specially rigged for the PM and his entourage, we hacks actually got to fly executive class "" I had foolishly expected to be cramped into cattle class. Being part of the PM's delegation means flying out of the VIP area at Palam airport. Things work like clockwork. Immigration and customs is mandatory, but smooth as silk. On board, the food and wine is aplenty. Air India takes special care of everyone, and that means plenty of caviar and some fancy wines. The service is excellent and the brilliant hostesses are really good looking. The PM addressed us on board on the way back home and I must say he looked like the smartest PM I have seen in the recent past. A light blue turban on an off-white Filipino shirt, Manmohan Singh was looking really smashing. I wish more of our senior leaders wore less formal stuff. Maybe then, GenNext would relate better to the political class.
 
Tuesday-Wednesday: Meant catching up with work, finding out which stories we missed and planning new ones to do. But the real big difference is the new office timing. We now begin work at 11 am and are expected to be out of the office by 7-7.30 pm. Getting used to the new timings takes a bit of doing, but it has made a huge difference. Personally speaking, the family cannot believe its luck. I now reach home at around 9 pm.

 

Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper

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First Published: Jan 21 2007 | 12:00 AM IST

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