So I took the yellow brick road to the Oz, a couple of them actually, and as options go, especially the ones without data, I took the one based on perceptions. So much for marketing.
So why did I take the yellow brick road? In food terms, I had the option of either going off to eat kangaroo meat, or the option of going off eating grasshopper candy. In area terms, I could go to a larger than India, or I could go to a country with an area smaller than India. In terms of language, I could either go to a country which speaks 28 roman characters, or to a country that speaks 40 hangul characters. Summarily , I could have either chosen to go to Sydney or to Seoul. I chose Sydney.
And I had the choice because of the brilliant system of student exchange. When in the second year at IIMA, you get to chose if you want to stay in IIMA to welcome the exchange the students who shall be coming in, or you can be an exchange student and go to another university and see if they welcome you or not. I chose to move out, I wanted to try it out again, do I or do I not like not being home. Clearly I have an answer, the answer is not clear enough.
So an update on the background contextual facts – I am here at the Australian graduate school of management, Sydney for a 3 month exchange program form sep to dec 2011. I know that Sep to Dec is four months if you start at Sep start and end at Dec end, but that is not when I start, or when I end. So figure!
I’ll start from the beginning, and cut off the parts that are either boring for me to write, or might be boring for me to read later on; though I very strongly doubt that. I shall do either of them. The randomness in my universe still exists, and thank the word spell check for that.
I took a China southern flight from Delhi to Sydney with a place change at Guangzhou. I’ll devote some part to the Chinese ingenuity and communication skills. Delhi to Baiyun (Guangzhou airport) is a 6 hour flight. Further to Sydney is a 9 hour flight. The Delhi to Baiyun was almost like an indigo flight. [the approximation is necessary] . The plane had a sitting arrangement similar to all domestic flights. Single central aisle with three seats on either side. Two differences. One, the seats were non reclining. I was not on the emergency window row, so that does not count. Second, the earphones were ingenuine. [pic: http://www.scansound.com/]. Of course, the plane did not have a video system and my stethoscope stopped working after 2 hours is a different story. But I had never ever thought of the possibility [ of stethoscopes, of no video system, and dysfunctions stethoscopes]. But to be highly fair, the flight was the lowest fare. On the day I booked, return flight cost me Rs43K , the next closest was 25% higher at Rs54K.
So as long as there is a seat in the plane and the seat goes along with the plane from city a to city b, I think I can live with that. Is it decides not to while in transit, and the life jackets work perfectly, I might even live without that. Another item necessary for living is food, and the air hostesses might have been very good at eating the food, but they were definitely not the best ones when it came to communicating the food. All attempts to differentiate between veg and non veg were met with smiles, and quizzical looks. The paneer snacks were not good, I have never had crunchy paneer in my life, and I hope to not have it again. And there was alcohol. They were serving white wine and red wine, and after a lot of prodding, they also had beer. The division of labour was amazing. The food trolley has two attendants with it, each serving one side of the aisle. One of them served white wine when asked for wine, and the other served red wine when asked for wine. I guess colour difference was either lost on them, or lost in translation. I narrate an observation
Flight attendant: Do you want something to drink. (and I am not even going into accents)
Passeneger: white wine please
FA: there you go ( and pours him a glass of water)
Passenger: mmm..Wine. can you give me wine
FA pours him a glass of red wine .that was closest to her. She owned it.
Passenger: I want white wine
FA: this is wine, this is all we have
Passenger: This is red wine, I want white wine.
FA: this is wine, this is all we have
Passengers sighs and drinks up the red wine while longing for the white wine that the other attendant was pouring to her dismayed ‘I want red wine’ passengers.
But it worked out. I landed happily at the Baiyun airport ( the flight was boring). It is quite a simple transition between terminals. Took me just half a n hour I think, as opposed to the ‘there are huge queues’ at Baiyun that I was expecting. I also managed to scout a few duty fre shops and had a first hand experience in what reading in Chinese would be like. The packaged food manufactures do not seem to have a liking for putting anything useful in English on their covers. The Chinese wine labels were in English, but lacked details (though I do not profess to be a connoisseur, I do profess to be able to read english).Then I hopped onto the second flight i.e from Baiyun to Sydney. This was an upgrade, like a full service jet airways domestic flight. Video with 10 channels ( and five with oriental programs with chinese subtitles. The subtitles were of first class , i.e a kid who is in class 1) audio with 10 channels ( and 5 of them in oriental music), but I repeat, I reached Sydney safe and sounds, and on top of it, my baggage reached safe and sound too !
