Surviving Mumbai

It is almost time for me to end my internship in Mumbai. I cant believe that the end of this week will be the 9th week and I will have just another 3 to go. Quite frankly, my first 7 weeks went by so fast. The last 2 weeks have been really heavy so they have been passing by much slowly. Now that I am into the final 3 weeks, I am getting some work that I really want to do, to prepare for next year's IIFA. Its interesting how you look at companies differently and see what they target, how they advertise, and will they be able to work with us. Finally, I am getting some good marketing job done. But on the other side, it will last just 3 weeks. I just wished it lasted a little more. But more on that in my later blogs, as it is still in the early stages. Today, I want to emphasize on something things I have learnt to survive Mumbai. For someone who is coming from outside Mumbai, and especially outside India, I have noticed certain things which I think if I knew before coming here, I would have had a better transition. So here it goes:

1. Commute: Coming from Toronto and being used to the crowded TTC subways and buses, I thought it cant get much worse. And having travelled the Toronto traffic on the Gardiner and the 401, I thought the traffic I should be able to deal with. Well, I was not completely incorrect. The traffic is indeed VERY bad. There is no sense of people driving in lanes and Mumbai traffic is supposed to one of the good ones in India. I dont know how they deduce that. People are just looking for a spot to cut the other person off. And the same with the local trains and buses. They are crowded like anything. If there is room to move, that means the bus is not full yet, there is still room to stuff people. And I am not even going to start talking about people manoeuvre their vehicles. So my tip while commuting is that when you are in an auto rickshaw, just be oblivious to how it is going on the street. If you start paying attention to how close you are to the next vehicles and how fast you are going, how they are dodging pedestrians, you will completely go insane. So, you have to be lost in something else. I recommended watching the meter, cause it might be going faster (i.e. charging you more) than it is supposed to be. For those looking to be adventurous and travel the Mumbai local, I would advice start with the first class. It will be comparatively empty, expensive but you will be able to go in much more comfort. Once you are used to that, you can try the general class. Now the trick in the general class is that you have to know how to get on and how to get down. Firstly, you have to make sure that you travel light. Any bag you carry has to be as thin as possible because if by chance you drop it anywhere, you will not get a chance to go back and pick it up. So, the trick to get on. Just position yourself in front of the door, people will start pushing you in. I used to think of this as a joke, but it is true, people will start pushing you. I dont know what is the hurry, the next train would be just 2 minutes away, but still everyone wants to get on. And the same trick must be used to get down as well. You have to get to the door well in advance and position yourself to be able to get down. But be careful not to be standing near the doorway, otherwise you will be pushed down where you dont want to get down and to get back on the same train, may God be with you. And finally those who are looking to travel in comfort, there are lots of private taxis available, but one has to book them well in advance. Unlike the Beck or Diamond taxis in Toronto, taxis over here will not show up in 10 minutes. It might be hours before they are able to provide you with a taxi (unless you are at the airport).

2. Crossing Streets: For this I have discovered that there are a few techniques that one can use to cross the streets. First off all you should know that the zebra crossings have on respect in India and the signal for pedestrians crossing is even less respected. Given the new cars coming to India, everyone wants to use the streets as a runway as if they are going to take off. So for a pedestrian, it is important to know how to cross the street safely. Here are two ways one can use. First is to dodge cars. Just imagine yourself to be in a game of dodge ball and the cars coming at you are like the balls, so you have to do EVERYTHING to avoid getting hit. However, one needs to have very good reflexes in order to execute this procedure, but you are ensured that you will cross the street.....eventually. Now the second way is to be brave and just storm into oncoming traffic. You need two things to do this, actually three. One is that you need a lot of guts, and I mean a LOT. It takes a lot to just walk into fast moving traffic. Secondly, you need to have a pissed off look on your face. This will ensure that cars coming towards you are careful of avoiding you just because you have that pissed off look. And the third ingredient is the firm use of your palm. You have to be able to put up you palm in the direction of oncoming traffic very firmly to indicate you are in charge. Now all you need is a combination of all three and you will be across the street in no time. There are two other ways you can use, but they are not guaranteed to get across. First is that you can follow someone who is crossing the street, but if you are left behind, you are alone. And lastly, you can just wait for the cars to stop and that might take till eternity.

3. Monsoon season: I have just started experiencing the Mumbai rains and frankly, it hasnt been to harsh lately. Maybe the monsoon has been delayed. One has to get in the habit of carrying an umbrella. Unlike Toronto, there arent many places that you can go to avoid the rain and when it rains in Mumbai, it rains heavy. Within minutes the roads will be flooded and the roofs will start dropping water like anything. In addition to the umbrella, one also needs to wear a jacket which is locally known as a windcheater (I used to wear this as a child, but never bothered to look up how it is spelt). You need this jacket to avoid getting wet and dirty. With all the potholes filled with water, if you are walking on the sidewalk, you are sure to be splashed with water. Even if you are in an autorichshaw, you will experience the same. So to avoid yourself getting dirty, it will be better to wear this jacket and save your precious clothings.

4. Food: I mentioned in my previous blogs that I have fallen for the roadside sandwiches. Remember the turn over rate I talked about. So carrying on from there, I would recommend that wherever you work or live, go and take the numbers of all the restaurants around. One service that I really like here is the Just Dial service here. You can just call these people, ask for literally ANYTHING and they will be able to provide you with the contact and better yet, if you are looking to book something, they will connect you to them and provide your number to a few more providers who call you to ask for what you are looking for. Now back to the restaurants. The delivery service of all these restaurants is just amazing. It is so good that a company like McDonalds also delivers in India. That was a culture shock for me, a chain like McDonalds that relies on people coming in and leaving, delivers to offices and homes in India. Thats how powerful these roadside restaurants in India are. So, as I mentioned get their numbers and you are ensured to be delivered food to your office or home within 30 minutes of ordering. The same applies to your supplies as well. If you need anything....be it a bar of soap or even a bottle of coke, all you need to do is call these neighbourhood stores, give them your building and apartment number and the stuff will be delivered in no time and at no extra charge! I felt kind of stupid carrying my own supplies home when everyone around just calls gets them delivered.

5. Mobile Phones: For those who think that the blackberry is a leash, they are to be proven wrong in India. In India if you own a mobile phone (I have picked up the Indian lingo, I will be blogging about that next) you are on the leash. You are held accountable for not answering a phone call when needed. So no matter what the time of the day is, if your phone rings, you have to answer. And to make matters worse, people in India openly pass around the numbers of others without permission. So you dont even know who is going handing around your number. So an advice from me, if you are working in India and using your cell phone as your primary mode of communication, give out your number very carefully, or better yet, have two phones, one for personal use and one professional. I have seen that a lot in India, everyone has atleast 2 phones. I personally would go nuts if I had to live like that, but people in India do it, and I respect them for that.

6. Email: The final part of this blog would be emailing. This is one technology that needs to be used more efficiently in India. What I have noticed is that email is still not the best mode to communicate in India. The best mode still remains either face to face of a phone call would be the next best thing. If you do use the email, you have to be very careful on what you say in the email. Whatever you write in an email can be used against you, it can be misinterpreted and be used as a weapon. If you are able to dodge all of this, you have to make sure that the recipient actually gets the email and reads it. And the best way to make sure the person has read the email, is to call them and tell them to read it. Even if they have read it, people do not acknowledge and just sit on it. So to make yourself be on the safe side, you have to ask for a reply to ensure that everything is in order, otherwise you are to be blamed again.

Now a lot of this would sounds very negative, but these are something that I have learnt here and I think it will be of good use for people who are in town, and hopefully I am not pissing people off with this. I have no intent to do that. These are just my observations as someone who is almost like an outsider to the Indian work and personal life. And for the next time, I will be blogging about some Indian lingo one has to know to get by. You would think that Russell Peters has told you everything, but he has not given away anything. There is so much more to it. For that...wait till next time!

IIFA Day 3 (June 5, 2010)

The last and final day at the IIFA Weekend and today is when the Micromax IIFA Awards finally happens. After the last few days of streneous hard work, today was the day I could finally relax. But the relaxation was not gonna happen till 9 pm. Before that, I still had a decent amount of work to be done. Firstly, like the other days, I still had to deliver invitations to the people arriving on the last day. There were barely 4-5 of them and it was pretty easy for me to coordinate that. I was already informed by Amulya on the arrivals for the morning, and for the first time, the hospitality team could actually relax a little. I myself got relaxed as I had just 4 invitations to give in the morning and then I could easily relax till 12 pm before I had to deliver one FINAL celebrity invitation. This was by no means the end of my day, even though it was much more relaxing the other days of the weekend. I was still in the ticketing room with Mehez, Indika and Dileepa arranging for extra tickets that were demanded by either the celebrities, sponsors or the management.

Other than this, my day, till about 3 pm, was uneventful. Then came the time when Mehez had to leave for the awards venue to help Natasha in the numbering of the seats. This is when I was solely left responsible for all the tickets. I was left in charge of so many tickets and was given the liberty to give out the tickets to the management, sponsors and celebrities as they requested, but to keep a note of the same for later referral. This was the moment when I felt very powerful, when I had people coming to me asking for tickets and I was actually in charge of giving them tickets. I was taking the responsibility of placing these people as per how I felt. Well, I wont boast too much, those people also saw the seating arrangement and demanded the best seats, but I was also told to keep a few good ones for last minute use, so I kind of had a little power.

Meanwhile I also saw some promotional material for next year's IIFA. If you guys dont already know it, the IIFA is happening in Toronto next year! The plans for the IIFA in Toronto are starting to take off now, and will start to materalize very soon. Even the people at Wizcraft are really looking forward to this, as its a big step for them. It will be first entry into the North American market. I can tell you from my perspective that the people in Toronto are also very enthusiastic about IIFA coming to Toronto next year, and to show what I am talking about, this is the promotional material.

Apart from the extra ticket distribution, I was still coordinating with a few clients for a pick up of their tickets till about 7.30 pm. And to make matters worse, our head office was being shut down and was being moved to the ticketing office so I had to move all the tickets and records to a safe place before I could head out to the awards. So I had to wrap up the whole mess that the ticketing office was in, make sure I take all the random pieces of paper with the littlest of the information and keep them safe. It was truely a mayhem with the head office people finally moving in. It used to be so peaceful in the ticketing office because barely anyone outside Wizcraft knew about it and the people in the head office rarely visited. So it was truely chaotic when the head office people moved in. Once that was finally done, I moved all the important stuff to my room and believe it or not, I took the tickets to my room and put them in the locker. I felt like I was carrying something so valuable that I had to protect it to the best of my ability. I didnt have so many tickets, but there were a lot more post party invites that I had put in the locker.

Finally, by 8 pm I was able to come to my room and start getting ready for the awards. The last bus for the awards was going to leave at 9 pm, with 5 people in it, Manali, Malvika, Amulya, Sunny (the travel arrangement guy) and myself. We had a very special limo for ourself, so special that it was a mini bus :P with enough room for us to party it up in the bus itself. Needless to say, we were always under heavy security cover at the hotel and around it as well, but our little party bus to the awards was not. There was not even a cop bike riding around us. We did see a cop car or bike pull up near our bus and we though they would be our escort, but they would just continue in their own direction. But the whole way to the awards venue was heavily guarded by cops and the military and so was the venue. I was so proud to carry my Wizcraft accredition card around, I could go literally anywhere with that. But it didnt give me the right to go backstage. Anyway, I was too late at the venue to go backstage anyway. I simply went into the venue and went and sat on the stairs by Mohd Kaif, Jayasuriya and the Sen sisters (Raima and Riya). Good for me that Kaif (not Katrina!) actually recognized me when I sat there and said hi to me (I had a little chat with him in the elevator after giving him his invites the previous day). I think I personally made some good cricketing connections (I had also had some nice talks with Kiran More for the past 2 days and was talking to him occassionally as I bumped into him). Maybe now, I can finally try out for the India cricket team ;)

Sitting at the awards was a great experience, but I could not take any pictures or record anything, as it would not be professional for me to do that. But my best moment came when Joyeeta mam (lady responsible for managing all the celebrities) called me down to her and told me that I will be escorting Zeenat Aman to the awards stage when she gets the award. Till her name was called, I was made to sit in the MIP area where all the celebrities were sitting. I was sitting right next to Zeenat Aman's son, and beside him was Zeenat Aman herself and beside her was Bipasha Basu and beside her was the Sri Lankan PM (or President, I am not sure). On the other side, there was Fardeen Khan and Suzzane Khan. I didnt turn around to see who was sitting behind me, because I was excited enough to be seated amongst these people. While sitting there I also watched Saif Ali Khan perform, and as soon as the song "Twist" came on, I could see Bipasha Basu jumping in her seat and moving to the beats, it is just fun to see how they also enjoy the same things as we do.

And then finally came the time when I had to escort Zeenat Aman down to the stage. I was truely excited about it, I checked myself if I looked presentable. But to my surprise, she got up before me and started walking and reached the staris ahead of me. Then she turned around to me and said, "the stairs are coming my dear, you will have to help me down" and I replied, "thats what I am here for". After helping her down the stairs, I just ran up and went and sat with my people. cant say how excited I was about this moment, and I can still clearly remember it. I will surely put a clipping of it if I see myself on the videos.

After that what was left was just one major performance, by Hrithik Roshan. I have to say watching this guy perform live is an awesome experience. Not on tv, which is all edited with the zooms and the effetcs, live performance is what is really crazy. This guy can really dance and his performance is perfect to the core. He dedicates himself totally and it shows in his performance. After witnessing his performance, I headed back with the hospitality team, I didnt even stay to watch the final 4 awards because it would have got very crowded to head back if I waited till the end of the ceremony. So I went back and when I arrived at the hotel, the decor was totally different. The whole hotel was transformed to a club! We reached there, we all changed back and headed to grab some food for ourselves. After the dinner, we headed to this place called Chutney within the hotel where there was a private wizcraft party happening and we partied there till 6 in the morning. Thats when the DJ started to stop the music. Although I am told that the party went on in the rooms, and I was even invited, I decided to call it a day and go get some rest. I had planned to get some touristing done next day and for that I had to get some sleep!

Overall, I think my experience at IIFA Colombo was amazing and I got a taste of the Sri Lankan hospitality! The last 3 days were the most hectic since I started my internship, but after all was done, I was really missing that tension and excitement. I had got used to this constant adrenaline pumping through me, that I missed it! And before I end this part of the blog, a glimpse of what the party at the hotel looked like.

IIFA Day 2 (June 4, 2010)

After the really stressful day before, I had decided that I will plan out things better and get them moving smoothly. My day started early in the morning at 6.30 am. Although I was up till 1 am last night delivering invitations to the celebrities inviting and then sorting the invitations for the 4th, I still had to be up for this. I could not have left the invitations with the reception as it contained all the invitations for the celebrities, that means the best seats, and that means they are of high value and very viable to be stolen. I decided that it will be safer to leave them in the ticketing room, get up early in the morning, deliver the invitations and then take an hour's nap again.

And thats exactly how I started off. Got up at 6.15, got dressed decently, ofcourse I had to look presentable (there were pictures being taken :P ) and I went off to the invitations office to collect the invites for the celebrities. Our hospitality team (Manali, Amulya and Malvika) were already present at the reception, working out a major issue. Somehow all the work they did about booking rooms for people arriving in the morning got erased and had to be re-done in the morning. I kind of felt guilty that I would not be able to help them out in any way, and they had work effortlessly burning the mid night oil to get this done. I even felt sorry for the hotel staff who had worked so hard, but had to redo the work. Such complications in such a simple situation....well not really a simple situation, these celebrities want their own stuff, pre-arranged, so its not so easy either.

Regardless, things got resolved because Manali was sitting there and getting stuff done and boy was she pushing the hotel staff to work hard. Apart from that the morning was uneventful, I returned to my room after delivering the invites, although I felt bad that the hospitality team could not do the same. They had to stay back and start preparing for the next batch of people arriving at 12 noon. Even after coming back, I barely got any sleep. I got back to my room by 8 am and I had my alarm for 8.30 in order for me to grab breakfast at 9.30 and finally start work at 10 am. Again like yesterday, the aim of the day was to prepare invitations and send those out to the people we missed out on the last night. While the distribution was going on in the background, I wintessed how the seating is done. And trust me when I say, it is a very complicated process and I must congratulate Mehez on doing a great job. Some of the management people want their people sitting in the best location, and then the celebrities want extra tickets, its a real pain. Trust me, I have seen it. There came a time when we had to strictly say no to everyone. We were at a stage when Mehez and Natasha said that even if Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan walked in, we do not have seats available for them.

Even for the rooms there is a big hassle. We had to accomodate the celebrities in the best possible rooms and we had to oblige if they need a change of the rooms. And that makes the invitation delivery difficult for us as well. We though of placing the invites in the rooms before the celebrities arrived, but decided to go against that idea just in case someone decides to change the room they are assigned, and then we could land up in a huge trouble with the wrong invites getting to people.

Given yesterday's frantic running around and delivering invitations, I decided to work better with the hospitality team and both Malvika and Amulya were nice enough to let me know whenever someone was coming in. I had to rush out with the invites and I got those delivered right when the celebrities were walking in. I was also assisted wonderfully by my volunteer Dileepa. He had talked to one of the receptionist and got a person escorting him with a master key to go and deliver the invites to the rooms. While this was working out smoothly, I also had to do my job which I was really there for, corporate hospitality. I had clients calling me and emailing me regarding the sale of tickets. Some had to either pick them up from me, some wanted to bargain a good deal out of me and some had to pick up the tickets and make the payments as well. It was very stressful under all the pressure of delivering the invites to the celebrities and the clients calling as well. Its a very hard job to be handled by one person. On one end the celebrities want their stuff taken care of and on the other the people who had paid big bucks for the tickets wanted to pick up the tickets. I was in such a position that sometimes I had to let go of a few phone calls. I would only attend to the clients I knew and the other, I am sorry, but I had to let go. I guess as they say in marketing, you cannot keep everyone happy, one should always keep their target market happy and that is much better than short term gains. And that is exactly what I chose to do, I took care of all the clients who had either paid or were coming in to make payments and/or pick up the tickets. It was a difficult discussion for me personally, because I like to keep everyone happy, but I think I took it pretty well ;)

By the middle of the second day, I had hoped to go for the charity cricket match that was happening. But like every other day, I was taken up with work and had to skip that as well. But I was glad I did, I was told that the crowd at the stadium was going absolutely wild. But I personally found the people of Sri Lanka to be very helpful. They were ready to help you out in the blink of an eye. Whenever I started to walk somewhere or lift something up, I always saw Dileepa coming over and asking if I needed help. At one stage I had to tell him to get some rest because he was getting all the work done. But I sincerely would like to thank him for all the help he provided during the weekend!

Just going through all of this, my day was over. I finally got done with everything at about 10 pm (we called it an early night) and finally thought that I will attend one after party. There were 3 after parties happening. One was a private party with all the celebrities and the others were open to public (not including the private private parties that the celebrities were hosting in their hotel rooms). I first went to grab some dinner and then hit the public after party, which was pretty much dead with a handful of people hanging around, but some good music. Then Ankit (another intern) and myself decided to hit the private party. We went in saw all the celebrities in there. I wanted to stay and enjoy, but personally, it was the first early night and no matter how much I wanted to party, I decided to take a break and catch up on my sleep, and so I left. But then I ran into my other friend, Nitin, who insisted I join him for a drink. So I stayed with him for another 30-40 minutes and then headed to my room and on my way ran into another colleague (Astrin) who was looking dead tired after all the workload. So I decided why not help her out a little, and I helped her make the media packages (which contained brochoures and info material of all the sponsors), which went on for another hour and a half. After that I decided it was too late for me stay up, as I had to wake up early the next morning and distribute more invites.

And THAT was finally the end of my day, the second day of the IIFA weekend. And before I leave today, I will give you a glimpse of what the invites look like. I have been talking about them so much that you must have got a little curious about them. So here is how it looked like!

IIFA: Day 1 (June 3rd, 2010)

The first day of events (June 3rd) comprised of a fashion show and a media briefing of a movie called Laamha. I was still trapped in the God forsaken ticketing office with loads of tickets still to be sorted through. A majority of the celebrities had started to come in on the 3rd. So the invitations that we had prepared the day before, we had our wonderful volunteers running around the delivering them personally and if the person was not there, then we had them escort a hotel staff with a master key to open the door and place the invites in their rooms. Not the best way to do it, but when you gotta get things done, you need to make use of every available options.

Things were running pretty smooth with the deliveries of invites of people who came in on the 2nd. But things went haywire as soon as people started arriving on the 3rd. I was soon assigned to take charge of the deliveries of invitations as soon as the celebrities came in. We did this because they were coming in pretty late and were scheduled to leave for the fashion show as soon as they came. It might not be a good idea to go to their rooms right after they arrive. One doesnt know how they might react. Again, I am not making judgements, but any person needs rest after taking a flight. So, as I mentioned people started flowing in. One after the other, they came in bunches. I was saved because of the one of the issues we had at the hotel. We had a shortage of transport vehicles and that problem for the operations people made my job a little easier. Because the cars came less frequently, I was running around less to deliver invites. Even then I had 3 celebrities coming together, and I was running back and forth getting invitations. I was doing this alone because either my volunteers did not recognize the celebrity or were busy delivering invites from the previous day. I myself had a difficult time recognizing people, so I had to ask the hospitality people for assistance as well.

Just when I thought that things are going smooth, I had a bunch of celebrities that came in unscheduled. They were either not scheduled to arrive that day or we had no record of them coming. I am thankful to my colleague (Mehjabeen) who answered all my calls from the front desk and prepared an invitation as soon as I informed her of it and I sent a volunteer immidiately to deliver the invites before they enter their rooms.

The night came and I thought I would get a nice break and I would have a chance to go witness the fashion show. But I was going to be proved wrong. My colleague (Natasha) who had left me incharge of the inviations for the day was still not back as she was still stuck at the fashion show, although I do appreciate her concern to know if I was still alive! Since she was not back, Mehez and myself were left responsible to create the invites for the next day. Both of us, with out wonderful volunteer Indika worked smoothly. And even though Indika left by 10, Mehez and I worked till late to finish preparing the invites for the 4th. I had also found out from the hospitality team (Amulya and Malvika) about the arrivals on the 4th and 5th so we can sort the invitations properly. I must have bothered them so many times to know and confirm who all are coming. It is really difficult when 3 different people are telling 3 different things about who is coming and who is not. Thats corporate communication for you, inter department communication. Even with this problem, I could work very well with Amulya and Malvika to get the job done for the 3rd of June.

The events of the next day, I will describe in the next blog but right now I can describe about the little break I got and I took to my usual photography. I got a little chance to explore a little around the hotel and take pictures of the magnificient decor. They had these very unusual hangings from the rooftop to an atrium where we were served our meals. At my first glace in the morning I came, I found them a little weird. They looked like long alien ships to me. But when it was the evening and those hangings lit up, they made the ambience just so peaceful and gorgeous. The atrium was also surrounded by these huge pots, which again during the day time I found them tacky, but in the evening they perfectly added to the ambiance.





Other than this, there was a very pretty water fountain at the enterance of the hotel. This, I am told, was built only after the hotel got to know that they will be hosting all the celebrities. I am not sure about it, but I saw a picture somewhere of the lobby without the fountain. I must say, the fountain made the hotel look even prettier. Other than this, my room was pretty good as well. I was teased with a premire room for one night (thanks to my hospitality person, Malvika) and was then moved to a deluxe room the next day. I am not saying that the room was so bad, but once I was used to that premire room, I was a little hesitant to move to the new room. I can't complain though, I was just so psyched to be at the IIFA event in the first place!

The IIFA begins

These are my accounts of activity on June 2nd. I will have more coming in the next few days.

Today marks 1 month that I have been working with Wizcraft. I started on the 3rd of May and today is the 2nd of June, so it's almost a month. Today also marks my 4th say in Sri Lanka. I have to say that so far Sri Lanka has been a tease. I landed on 30th May in the afternoon. I had a nice 6 hour long in flight and in transit experience. After the tiring flight, I was adviced to rest, which I happily took as I had barely had any sleep in the last few days. As it is my trip to Sri Lanka was a last minute call, so I had to rush back home to Bhopal to pick up my passport and rush back to catch my flight to Colombo. As I mentioned, last week I had lots of late nights and I barely clocked sleepy time. I easily spent 2 full days (48 hours) out of a possible 4 days (from May 23 to May 26) in the office. It gets that stressful when things have to get done! I am not complaining, but I am just saying that this change of work culture has taken a toll on me. I was told by my manager that I look thinner than what I was on the first day I came to see her. Not saying that I did not want to shed some weight, but this was not the workout that I had planned for.

The work hours are completly different as compared to Canada. Back when I was working in RBC, I used to come in the office by 8.30 in the morning and I used to find the office almost full. Here in India, I come in by 10 and I am the first soul in the office. So I have adjusted accodingly to come in by 11 or 11.30. I guess it has something to do with the traffic flow. Everyone at my office seems to skip that heavy traffic hour and prefer to come in late. That is such a contrast from Canada where everyone comes in early and prefers to leave early and their personal time in the evening. It doesnt seem to work this was in India. Or maybe it is because of the indutrsy I am in, maybe this is how the entertainment industry works. Again, I am not complaining, I am just making observations.

Moving on to my experience in Sri Lanka. As I mentioned in my previous post that I was moved to the Corporate Hospitality division to manage selling tickets and packages for the IIFA weekend. I thought I would be drowing with people asking for tickets and yes I have been busy at times, but mostly people have been so nice asking about the prices and packages and yes I am learning how to bargain as well. But mostly, people have not been rude. Some do get upset about the delay in replying to their emails and calls, but one has to understand this is THE biggest event in regards to Bollywood Awards, so there will be some delay. I am taking care of this alone, so I think I can cut myself some slack ;) I have been trying my best to answer back as soon as possible and keep the clients happy. I am trying to do the best PR I possibly can.

Describing what is around me in Sri Lanka, I cant do that much. For the past 4 days I have been sitting in one room, havent been able to go out at all. The most I got to do was head out on the street outside the hotel for a 10 minute walk. We saw the Indian Ocean nearby and started walking through an alleyway towards the oceans and we were stopped by a hotel worker. He adviced us that this alleyway will not lead to the shore and we had to take a longer route. We insisted that we just want to see the ocean and not go to the shore. Then he told us that the alleyway is used for security and they have armed guards there who can shoot on order. That was a lucky call for us, saved by one of the hotel workers.

Other than this, my classmates have been asking about the celebrities that I have been seeing. Well, one thing is for sure that none can ask me to get any autographs from any of these celebrities. We have to be professional and not ask for autographs and click pictures here. I might be able to ask for picture if they are just lounging around, but not when they are heading anywhere, having lunch/dinner or whatever. Its just unprofessional for me. But I can mention the people who I have seen so far.

This morning I saw Jacqueline Fernandes (applogies for the incorrect spelling, if I made that mistake) at the breakfast buffet. I was pleasently surprised to see her at a buffet with all the people staying at the hotel. Now I am not here for celebrity talk or anything, but I will say it felt good to see her with the public and not acting all snooby (if that's a word). Now for my fashion forward friends, I saw Vikram Phadnis at the buffet last night as well. Not making any judgements on him, seemed like a nice guy. Next I saw Vivek Oberoi walking around the hotel, pretty broad guy. I just got a glimpse of him, can't say if it was fat or well built :P

Two people I must really thank for not blasting the hell out of me are Dia Mirza and Sharman Joshi. We were supposed to deliver invites to celebrities late at night because the next day's event was early morning, so all invites had to go out. Now the first person I went to was Dia Mirza, I was so wishing she is not there because I was all ready to get a rant from her. But when she opened the door, she was so polite to accept the invitation without any tantrum and politely asked me do these deliveries earlier in the evening for the next year. I was so delighted to hear that from her when I was expecting the worst. Very sweet of her ofcourse.



Then I accidently knocked on the door of Sharman Joshi, I was told that it was Prem Chopra in that room (Sharman Joshi's father in law). When Sharman opened the door, I didnt know what to say. I didnt have his invitations, I didnt know he was related to Prem Chopra (I got to know that later), so I appologized and asked him where Mr. Chopra is. He told me the room number but asked me not to go there as its pretty late. Then I dared to ask him if I can bring his invites, it was my job to get them delivered before the beginnig of the event next morning at 10 am. I saw his fascial expression changing and I added or would you prefer it in the morning, he gave me a chuckle and said I would perfer it in the morning. I appologized to him again and he said, its no problem, not your fault and no need to appologize.



I think I met the two nicest people in the industry! My colleague however had a bad time delivering the invites to Bipasha Basu, whent he security showed up after he knocked on Bipasha's room door. He is lucky to be alive :P

Colombo Calling

The date for the IIFA Awards is coming closer and closer and the working is getting heavier and heavier. Things havent yet gone haywire, but I am afriad pretty soon, things can burst up. Its not as bad as I thought would be. Organizing something on an international is always takes a lot of effort and these guys have been doing it for the last 11 years (all different venues every year), so I guess they are pretty experienced and are calm. I, on the other hand am taking things very seriously. Its a first time experience for me, and I don't want to be responsible for anything going wrong, that makes me want to be extra careful.

Now for some news. For those who don't know, I will be heading to beautiful Colombo tomorrow early morning. I will be handling corporate hospitality, which is a very fancy way of saying, ticketing :P. I dont care that I have been moved from marketing/sales to hospitality. It has its elements of marketing. It involves a lot of PR, which obviously is a part of marketing. There is a lot of face saving one has to do. People say stuff about the company and the services provided, so I have to make sure that I keep the mazimum number of people happy. Ofcourse, lke the rule of marketing says, you cant keep everyone happy, I will try and keep just my target market happy. Its even more difficult to identify a target market in the first place. I know what the requirements are for a target market. But it is difficult to identify them when they come looking for tickets. The only means I have to identify if the person will fit my target market is emailing styles, the way a person speaks on the phone and the last and the most important, how they talk and treat me once I am in Sri Lanka physically selling tickets. Its a very difficult job to not get crushed by all the blackmailing and the bad mouthing because I would have become the face of the company and I will be the guy who would be the meany or the b****** or the b**** who did not give someone some tickets. Its a difficult job to do, but someone has to do it. As they say, its all part of the job, one has to get dirty.



I am really looking forward to this trip, not only because I will be at one of the most prestigious bollywood awards function, but also because I get to visit a beautiful place. I dont know if I will have enough time to go explore the city and take some pictures. From what I know, its a beautiful city and I would love to capture some of it through my eyes, but the best thing I will have is my phone to take pictures with. I am hoping I will have a little free time to capture this beautiful place.

I also hope that I will have enough time to update my blog on what is happening in the awards, maybe get some inside nwes on some stars ;) and then I can blog about that. All in all, I am really looking forward to this trip and I hope it will be an experience of a life time. Colombo.....here I come!

Internship in India 101

Now it has been 4 weeks since I have been doing my internship at Wizcraft International and honestly saying it has been an interesting ride. I started off pretty low, not getting much work. I used to work just 2-3 hours a day but stay at work for a good 10-12 hours. I suppose, I was being "trained" to get used to the environment, and get familiar with the company and its products.

Now that I am deemed familiar with the company, I am getting loads of work. I must say, thats a drastic change of duties for me. Just last week, I was sitting at my desk and making work for myself and today I find myself staying at work till I dont know when to make sure that the work is done. I guess its that time of the year when the awards are really near and these guys can use all the help they can get.

To describe exactly what I have been doing, for the past few weeks, can deemed "very interesting" kind of work. I have got down and dirty to get the job done. I have been doing literally everything from "office boy" kind of jobs like packing up sponsor material and transporting them personally in a tempo, to supervising people late at night (which is exactly what I am doing right now). I will give more details as I blog later.



Now, I want to describe how I have been experiencing the city. Although I have not been able to go around the city a lot, infact I have barely gone out of my office route. But from what I have seen of the city, everything is just messy. There are no traffic rules that are followed, the office doesnt really have any defined times, people are so casual, but somehow, everything works. That I must say is miraculous. In a city of about 18 million people, everything somehow falls into place and people go on with their lives.

Moving on the the food! My my the food in the city is a treat! I have become a huge fan of the roadside sandwiches. They are sooooo delicious! I wont recommend everyone trying it, but the food is pretty safe. I have been told that if the turnover of the roadside shop is good, they normally have fresh stuff. I was seriously surprised at that, turnover of a roadside sandwich shop! Now thats MBA knowledge working at the ground level!!! The restaurants, again not tried many, have good food as well, especially the Mughlai (I hope I spelled that right) dishes. And the best thing about restaurants here is that almost everyone will deliver to your home/office at no extra charge! I think the no extra charge is the best topping on the great food that they provide. Not only the restaurants, every shop on the nook and cranny will provide home delivery for even a bath soap (well thats an exaggeration). But that is product differentiation to an all new level. I guess it has attained the same level as the loyalty points in the aircraft industry, literally everyone offers it now.



So thats my experience in the city so far. I have taken a decent amount of pictures and a few videos of my fun ride, but unfortunately I dont have access to them right now, so I will edit my blog later tonight or tomorrow to upload those as well. Till next time!

Cheers!