Service Industry

“We Serve”… That sentence seemed far from truth to my friend and me who had a field day today in the Dubai International Airport… Airlines or for that matter any service industry is losing their core theme which happens to be the service to the people….

Everybody understands that the people serving us at these places undergo various stress levels because the people they encounter are diversified. But that’s no reason to be arrogant or “Do I care?” stance.

Today happened to be my weekend and as usual I was sleeping dead when suddenly at mid day I get a call from Dubai and in half sleep I hear the familiar voice of Baba... Now that jolts me to reality... He is not calling to tell a HI during a normal transit flight… He is stranded in the airport…

The reasons for his plight were

1. He thought of going home for winter vacation (Next time try to go on 9/11... ur sure to find the flights empty and bookings easier…)
2. He took a transit flight (As far as possible try take a straight one… but in case the bucks really matter then former is acceptable)
3. He took EMIRATES, which takes the transit via Middle East i.e., Dubai (Buddy taking a transit via Europe is fine… u get to see chicks... but middle east… did u think u can catch a glimpse of future osama?)
4. He carried some 100 bucks with him (Rule 314 of Air Travel: Carry sufficient cash… And if taking a transit always take an amount with which you can always book another flight and leave that goddamned place)
5. He smiles a lot and tries to be polite with all… (I guess its time u saw some American movies and all those great cowboy westerns to deal with people who are not polite with u)
6. He is still single… in spite of all the charm and the great “Baba” smile (Can’t tell much on this aspect since the whole gang expect a few are still in this status… Many people have not yet realized that u can sometimes even get a F117 jet to drop you at the South Pole if you have a good girl standing beside you…)

He boarded the EMIRATES flight yesterday from the great United States of America and landed in Dubai today morning... His connecting flight was in the night and he expected to have a good time in Airport till then… Alas it worked the other way around. To his astonishment he finds that his outbound ticket to India stands cancelled. So that meant that he was standing in an airport with no visa to enter the country and no ticket to take him to this destination. It was an alien nation and the only person I guess he knew in that country was me. So there comes the call to wake me up from my Friday slumber…

He asked whether it was possible for me to arrange for a visa or a ticket… The issue was that it was Friday and a public holiday and till Sunday it was not possible to arrange for a visa from my side. The other issue was that I was staying in Abu Dhabi, which is some 170 kms away from Dubai. Just grabbed a jean and T-shirt and called up some people at my office who were kind enough to arrange for a car to take me to Dubai because it was Friday and midday… The country kind of shuts down because of the Friday prayers…. My driver who happened to be from Oman missed his holy prayers and took me to Dubai at an incredible speed. We finally reached the airport and there starts my adventure
The only way my friend and me could speak was that he could call to my mobile from a booth inside. So when I reached there I needed to inform somehow that I have reached and he needed to call me now… For that I first went to some “Marabha” service available there. They were the guys to whom you pay and they take care of your people inside. Usually used for old, disabled, young people who are traveling. I went and contacted them stating the situation. The lady at the front desk smiling said I cannot help you maybe you can fill up that form and stand in that queue for the enquiry. I was bonkers and asked another “kind” gentleman. He was “kind” enough to direct me to the passport information counter.

There was a similar “kind” gentleman who was having a good chat with somebody in the phone and after I were standing there for some good 5 minutes showing no intention of moving out he turned to us asking “kindly” with a great “smile” in his face “what do u want?” Even before I could finish he told us that he cannot help us and asked us to contact us the customer service in the Civil Aviation counter. I asked him the directions and he seemed to have not heard us. So getting the directions from other people I finally landed up there.

Thankfully I really had one person who helped us out… He arranged to have a public announcement asking to contact the help desk. He also told that he might not be able to help us and only the airlines can arrange for a visa.

So I went to EMIRATES ticketing counter. I met the best gentleman of the whole day. Sitting there he had a grin and an expression on his face as if something was stuck up in his arse. He said no tickets available. He cannot arrange for a visa. He cannot provide accommodation. He smiling gave a look, which asked “Do I Care?”. So I went to my crescendo shouting at that ass. I made it clear to him that an airline cannot pick up a passenger and drop him in a country where he does not have a visa and also not provide him with an outbound ticket. If they were to do that they should not have boarded him in the first place. Finally somebody who seemed to be little more polite came down. He too had the same look but still he was little good mannered to say that he will look into it and see what he can do. He said if I can get a hotel booking and an airline ticket then my friend would be able to get a transit visa. This info had been already communicated to him inside. So went to the customer service made another announcement and finally he called.

So after speaking to him I went to a ticket sales counter and managed to get tickets to India through Thai Airways and Srilankan Airlines. The ticket sales counter guy said that he can give me the ticket and my friend inside can collect it or I can arrange for some delivery. So after blocking the tickets, I went back to airport information desk and they with lot of reluctance that I can contact the airport police in this regard and I did that. Having an Arabic driver helped me in this regard because that cop didn’t understand one word of English I spoke. Thanks to my driver he said that he might be able to help. He told that in such a way that it looked as if I was not standing there at all and he was just waving at the air. (But I can’t shout at him unless I wanted to take free Briyani for rest of my life). Then went to the EMIRATES counter to check up the status up there. But they still maintained the same stand and we got into another bout of loud shouts… Asking him to try again I decided to wait.

So everything arranged I just needed him to call me up now to give him the details. And the wait was quite long. So I went twice to that customer service guy who made the announcement. I doubt whether my friend actually heard any of them. After a long wait he called up and told that he made a little breakthrough with EMIRATES. He was been put up in priority for the Indian flight. I also told him about the backup booking. After 30 minutes he called up again telling me that he finally got the EMIRATES to give him a ticket and he’s flying to India at 9 pm flight… J

That settled… with a little disappointment that I won’t be spending the next two days with him here in UAE, I said I would be seeing him on next Friday (if nothing of this sort happens to me in Colombo).

Before leaving the airport went to thank the two guys who helped me in this ordeal, the customer service guy in the civil aviation counter (when he saw me approach he was just shaking his head as if he won’t make another announcement) and the other guy at the ticket sales counter.

So we finally hit the road and were stuck up in the evening traffic of Dubai and cursing everybody we hit the expressway to Abu Dhabi…

The problem with the service industry is not just here in UAE, India but everywhere. I don’t know what is the reason for this degradation of service. Is it the huge growing crowd or is it humans are just losing the touch of kindness. Are we just going to be just inhumane to other people’s sufferings? This is not the problem just in airports and train stations but everywhere in hospitals, governmental offices, police stations, shops, taxis….

What happened to the golden smile and the helping hand? Have the hearts shrinked with the world?

Enjoyin Ur Work

I have stuck this following strip in my office cabin... From then I have been receiving a look and a pat from my colleagues at work... It's a kind of a silent approval from the people but not openly admitted...


ps: "Dilbert" and the above strip is copyrighted to Scott Adams and distributed by UFS Inc. Scott Adams regularly blogs here (Dilbert.Blog)

Hitting 1 Gig....

Finally the day I turned 25, I also managed to touch another mark.... Now I have 1GB of personal data in GMail.... From May 2004 to Dec 2006.... Now was somebody talking abt privacy and Google not going to delete the data....

Open Doors....

For the unknown, I live in Abu Dhabi, UAE...
I live in a flat in the third floor in this city... There is one more colleague of mine from my office who shares the flat with me. He has gone on vacation back to his country for one month and expected back only by 2007. So I am the king of the jungle for December. I leave to office by 8-30 in the morning and usually come by 7.. But today i happened to visit another colleague of mine and had dinner with his family and came back home only by 11..

I received the shock of my life to find the door unlocked and partly open. With caution I opened the door and went inside, switched on all lights, checked all the closets, balcony, cabinets... I couldn't find anybody with a club or baseball bat or knife... With a sign of relief i closed the doors and was trying to recall what exactly happened... In my hurry to go to the office I must have forgot to latch the door and lock it. Now my door has been kept open for nearly 15 hours and now I started to wonder whether anything was missing. I explored the entire house and found that everything was intact. If somebody had tried to rob me, they did a poor job of leaving my surround system, digital camera and all my travel cash lying around the table.

When I came to this country, I was told that this was a safe place and all those stories of people finding their own purses in public parks even after two days, then I was thinking all those to be crap and hype... Now I have realized that humans living down here have foregone their natural instincts for whatsoever reason that can be imagined..
Some say it is because of the nature of punishment and according to some its a culture down here... Whatever it might be I just like it for the single reason that my stuff is still intact and I can have a peaceful sleep tonite...

Display Albums in Blogger

Thanks to Kirk, now Googles' Picasa users can display their photos in Blogger..
All you got to do is get hold of your RSS feed URL and enter it in the widget creator and other stuff you want and "oooh lah" there you get the code which you need to enter in your layout of the blog...

For more explanations and how to do it visit Kirk's article (Blogger Beta Widget for Picasa Web Albums)

For people who want to give it a try straight here is the link to the Widget Creator...
Widget Creator for Picasa Web Albums and Blogger in Beta

ps: To use all these features you need to have some pictures of your own and uploaded to your picasa album and have a blog with Blogger... :)

Redesign...

After a long silence lasting 6 months, I finally blogged...
Went in for Blogger Beta... Looks cool.. Drag and drop layouts and easy addition of elements in the blog....
Will try to keep up the bloggin

Be Careful!!!!

“Be Careful!!” - This was the advice I received one fine evening from a lady over the dinner table. I had been invited to a dinner by my colleague and in the course we were chatting about my recent trip. In the process I happened to mention about a gentleman I met in the airport who was around fifty years old and single and shared some common interests with me about traveling and books. He also happened to be from Abu Dhabi. So I was telling my friends that we had planned to meet up this weekend. I didn’t even finish that statement when everybody sitting in the table started asking me to be careful.

Now I am not that dumb to miss the obvious, but what struck me was that after twenty-five years I can imagine some young kid telling his friends that he met a 50+ single guy and his friends asking him to be careful. The reason that this worries me is because that “guy” would be me.

I really don’t know why the society as we know thinks all single guys after a certain age are going to be of that kind. It’s unfair for people to make this kind of a biased decision just because they happened to hear a few anecdotes from tabloids and gossips. I know that being single could be tough but this was unexpected. I was ready for a long lonely happy life but not seriously prepared enough for being branded like this.

Somehow I think this situation would be far better than getting stuck in quicksand.

ps: Somebody has promised me that all my expenses to Machu Picchu in Peru will be borne if I stayed single till September 11 2009.

Wasted Weekend......

Life and Time is ironical.... One time you think you don't have enough of them and want more so that u can do more and enjoy more.... Another time you feel why the hell do I have it and you wish for it to be less... The funny part is that this thought variation's duration is not years or months but days and hours....

All this week I was thinking that 24 hours is just not enough for a guy... And in the weekend I am thinking why the hell 24 hrs, why can't it be just 12 hrs or so..... I never thought time and thought were that relative....

Yesterday I was just lying in the bed staring at the ceiling and wondering what the heck I am doing in this world and why my life is so meaningless..... By afternoon I had come to the conclusion that life would be better with a 12 hour day and movies just cut short to 1 hour and average novel reading time to 3 hours.... By the end of the day I realised that I had wasted one solid day... One weekend off I get is also gone to the dump.....

I don't know how many out there get these kind of thoughts... If any please do tell me about that.....

Bad Start....

Thanks to yesterday's bravado..... I forgot that my alarm is out and slept like hell till 9-30..... Came running into office..... its just not a bad day... but a bad hair day too....

The time is still 10 and i want to go home... wat a waste of thursday.....

Bad Day ???

"Bad Day" --- Is when you can't even find the meaning to quote from an dictionary....
but I atleast got something close to that from Cambridge.....

"bad hair day" - noun [C] INFORMAL
a day when you feel that you look unattractive and everything seems to go wrong

I certainly didn't have a bad hair day today because the whole time I never had this feeling that I was looking unattractive or whatsoever that's supposed to mean.... But certainly the entire day was going wrong.... What would you call a bad day....

1. You sleep your ass till 8 in the morn when ur supposed to be picked up at 8-15.....
2. After u wake up u realise that you have broken your alarm in an guerilla war waged for the freedom of sleep
3. Or is it when you trip urself boarding ur office vehicle and become the joker for the day... (actually by unanimous decision I am the one everyday here.....)
   
4. Your Immediate boss gives u a smile.. yeah a broad smile...... (believe me guys.. I am more comfortable when my boss doesn't wish me in the morning... because it will be a normal shit day.. if he does then it means it going to be a abnormal shitty shit day)
   
5. You are "requested" to go to a site in the middle of nowhere for pre commissioning checks with client....
   
6. You find that you have ended up with a guy whose IQ is less than the chicken you had for dinner yesterday..... Somebody who has come to witness a commissioning in a 33kV Sub Station without knowing the Ohm's Law......
7. You gently touch a 230V wire thinking that your pal would have switched off the MCB as a precaution and receive the oscars instead.....
8. The guy with IQ less than a chicken advises and tells you about safety and other blah blah that now you want to go and hold on to the 33kV line........
9. The temperature is 45 plus and humidity is 65 plus.... whoa..
10. You come back to ur office and realise that the deadline for the report which you have to submit next week is preponed for tomorrow..... (there goes sleep.... )
11. Your phone battery is drained out.....
    
12. everybody gives u the "daaaaaaah" look.....
13. by 3 pm you realise that your actually a Martian trapped in earth.......
    
14. you get a idea of restarting ur blog.... and actually do it.......
15. to have a break you go to the local shop to have a burger and that guy says to u "Have a good day"..... (sorry pal... too late..... )
    

Here we go again.......

Ok here I go again.....
One more time I am trying to give some life to the blog.... that I did by killing the old one and from the ashes shall rise this one.... Hopin to continue for some more time... Till I realize that I got something better to do in this insignificant life of mine....




ps: if any of u is reading this post.... please do leave a comment... I just want to keep a track how many people take the pains to read the first post of some blog....