Monthly Archives: October 2009

Blisters and Hangovers

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I’ve just spent several days in the capital of Scotland. I went once before a few years back when I released loads of balloons from Edinburgh castle for Standard Life when they floated on the stock exchange, but never got the chance to look around.

I flew up with EasyJet, who in fairness, are better than BMIBaby when it comes to stupid hidden costs. I went up on a Thursday and came back on the Monday because it actually worked out cheaper to get a hotel room for two extra nights rather than pay the additional cost which they ramp up for Friday and Sunday flights.

It’s a little bit ridiculous flying up to Edinburgh because by the time you are 35,000 feet in the air it’s time to come back down again.

Skyline of Old Edinburgh

Anyway, I digress.

I met up with loads of friends who I knew from Chennai, it was quite a multi-cultural group with Brits, a Scot, Aussies and an Indian, but that’s the way it is when you are an expat and what I love about working abroad.

We did the whole touristy thing, looked around, but mostly we were there to get drunk in the pubs :)

(sidenote: talking about drunkeness on a public website is part of the What Not To Write On Your Blog 101 course).

Since no one wants to know what I got up to while drinking in the bars, I thought I’d talk about the cultural hotspots of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Castle

View of Edinburgh Castle

The main attraction in Edinburgh is the castle. It’s not even a boring castle either, it was attacked, bombarded and sieged more times than any other castle I know of. Most other castles were built and any local warlords were like bugger this for a game of soldiers, not attacking that thing.

I guess they were like the nuclear bombs of their day, outrageously expensive to maintain, no one liked them, but they kept the peace because it was too much aggravation to actually attack or lay siege to it.

Well, Edinburgh castle is different, it was attacked by the Brits, seiged by the Brits, bombarded by the Brits before succumbing to the Brits. The cheeky Scots then sent up just 30 men to climb over the walls and take the castle back.

The pièce de résistance is the crown jewels and they build it up by making you go through room after room of Scottish history, which basically tells you how bad the British were, so much so that you may feel the urge to shout “Freedom!” before making a beeline to Carlise or Berwick-Upon-Tweed to reek revenge on the Brits.

So your curiosity about these sacred jewels reaches a cat-like proportion and you want to find out what all the fuss is about. As it turns out the Scottish crown jewels is simply a crown, sceptre and a sword. Admittedly it is a big sword, but it hardly blows you away.

Ghost Tour

Stairway of Edinburgh ghost tour

Edinburgh is now becoming quite famous for its ghost tours after bricked up subterranean buildings were discovered about 10 years ago. You can now take your pick from a variety of ghost tours – conducted late at night for the extra scare factor.

If you were to believe the marketing spiel (and since I apparently work in marketing, I know it’s just creative lies) you will encounter ghosts, poltergeists, hair raising chills and other supernatural phenomena as you walk around.

One of my friends refused to join us after reading some PR material on the Internet (and yes, it was a girl). I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I was highly sceptical about the whole thing.

The tour started off quite well and we got a lot of history about Scotland and Edinburgh in particular. However, my bulshit meter was sounding alarms as the guide taught us the ‘real’ story behind tartan kilts and how people used to throw their sewage out the windows but it was an offence to let it touch the walls so a boy with a white stick would walk around to give people something to aim at. He also reckons that this is where the phrase ‘shitfaced’ came from but I’m almost certain these are all made up stories for naive American tourists.

When we finally got in to the underground chambers the guide proceeded to tell us how people would live in them, the kinds of things that went on such as the body snatching (the tour guide reckoned doctors used to pay more for young female bodies), baby harvesting to sell the kids in to factories or prostitution and all kinds of other dire stories that make a perfect concoction to scare people.

In each chamber we passed in to he would tell more stories about what went on, how people would die (or be murdered) along with ‘true’ accounts of things that happened to other people on previous tours such as strange cuts and bruises, encounters, cold spots on the body, whisperings in the ears etc. etc. Stuff that might frighten people of a nervous disposition.

One particularly good story was about a mother who grabbed her childs hand when the lights went off and when they came back on again she saw that her daughter was standing on the other side of the group. I have to admit, they were good ghost stories :D

The whole tour was conducted by torch and candlelight, but honestly, there wasn’t a single part that felt particularly scary. As a bit of a stunt at the end, they turned the lights out and there’s always one joker who makes some weird kind of noises, anyway, when he put the lights back on some guy jumped out in a costume and tried to scare people that way. I have to admit, my arm was grabbed by one of my friends who was startled, but it was a bit of a cheap trick by the tour company.

One of my friends in the group did slip over, but rather boringly she claims that she wasn’t even pushed by an unseen entity.

All in all, the tour was quite entertaining, but frankly they could have been showing us some cellars and called them ‘undiscovered’ for all we knew. The location of them just behind a nightclub makes me doubt just how they could have been lost for so long.

Arthur’s Seat

Edinburgh Panorama

As part of our whistle stop culture vulture tour of Edinburgh we decided to climb Arthur’s Seat which is a big rock to the East of Edinburgh. It’s actually the plug of an old volcano for all you budding geologists out there.

We climbed up at Sunday lunch time and was supposed to help us work off the hangovers from the house party we gatecrashed the night before.

You get some fantastic views of the city from up there and out across the Firth of Forth.

The most interesting thing that happened was there was an almighty explosion in the south of the city and then a huge dust cloud drifted over most of the city. At the time we were all like “holy shit!” but after a couple of minutes we still didn’t hear any sirens so came to the conclusion that it was a controlled demolition, which is was, and we had the best seat (pun intended!) in the house. There is even an article on the BBC news site about it here.

Edinburgh Tram System

I took a lot of taxi’s to and from places and the one thing they always talk about is the tram system. In true British (or is this Scottish) form, the council undertook an ambitious plan to build an eco-friendly way of getting around the city, particularly to and from the airport which is about 100 miles outside the city.

Naturally, this being the UK, the initial cost of £498m has spiralled out of control as incompetent public officials with no idea of project management squander cash and the final estimate now stands at £750m, a mere 50% increase!

Here’s a Michael McIntyre standup clip where he talks about the Edinburgh tram system, and with very few deviations, it’s word for word what the taxi drivers say about the Trams!

As one disgruntled taxi driver said to me:

Each tram has three carriages, that’s three buses, do we need three buses turning up at once? It does nea even go to the airport, if you want to get to the airport, you have to take a bus to the tram station and then you have to take another bloody bus to get to the airport!

One other interesting thing that happened was on the plane on the way back (which was delayed of course, causing me to wait over an hour at a cold railway station in Luton) was the gender role reversal on the plane. The pilot was female and the cabin crew were all male. I thought that was kinda cool :)

Edinburgh in the dusk

Oh, so in closing, if you haven’t been to Edinburgh yet, definitely get yourself up there for a weekend, it’s well worth it.

The Great British Scam

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There is a great scam in England that goes by the name of budget airlines. They tempt you in with great prices like London to Rome for a penny. Except it’s not London, it’s Luton and it’s not Rome it’s some provincial town 30 miles away.

Upon further investigation you discover that the actual flight that is a penny is at 5am. On a Wednesday morning. In November. 2012.

My ire with these non-budget airlines is relevant right now because I’ve just booked two trips, one to Amsterdam with BMIBaby and the other to Edinburgh with EasyJet.

Over the years these airlines have evolved new and innovative ways to suck as much money as possible out of the unsuspecting budget traveller. Their audacity knows no bounds as they continue their ruthless push to cut costs and increase revenue.

First off, BMIBaby is guilty of advertising prices without airport tax included, something which even fierce competitor EasyJet manages to rise above. Yes, i know BMIBaby is not responsible for the tax, but since when has any consumer driven company displayed a non-inclusive price?

So the first shock, after thinking you’ve discovered a bargain is that airport tax is added on which can add as much as a 1/3rd of the cost.

Next you are asked how many bags you want to check in, I assumed it would just be the one until it then said there would be a £36 surcharge for checked in luggage!

Whoa there! I couldn’t find the back button fast enough. I will wear my change of clothes instead of handing over extortionate amounts of money to you! I’d rather wear three layers of clothes and stew in my own sweat – although a disturbing new thought has just hit me about how to take toiletries on these trips as we can’t take liquids, gels or sprays on the plane. Crap. Bastards!

Ok, next, “do you want to check in online or at the airport?” well screw you, if you check in at the airport that’ll be £15 please. Again, this raises the question, how do you check in online and print your boarding pass when you’re returning from your destination? Sir, that’ll be £15 please.

The next step in the never ending checkout process is to pick your seats. Once again, EasyJet outshines BMIBaby in this area. You select your outbound and return seats and an ominous ‘processing’ alert flashes up. The reason soon becomes clear, you are being charged £10 for the luxury of choosing your seats. Once again, we’re like, steady on, find the back button, I’ll sit in the toilet cubicle thank you very much. But that option isn’t available. Turns out that you don’t have a choice in the matter, choosing your seats and paying £10 for the privilege is a forced luxury. This is most certainly not mentioned in any advertising!

The biggest kick in the teeth is when they say they are having a “special offer” on the seat choosing process. Well that’s nice, instead of paying £10 ON TOP OF THE COST OF THE PLANE TICKETS, you will be charged “just” £5. Which is very sporting of them.

The final options page tries to pedal a number of upsells (classic internet marketing and any other time I would look on and take notes).

Do you want extortionate travel insurance for just £8 that probably has a clause to get out of paying for any claim?

No, I’ll take my chances

Do you want the use of our departure lounge for £15?

No, I’ll sit on my carrier bag of clothes that I didn’t check in.

Do you want to be able to board the plane first, a whole 2 minutes before everyone else for a mere £5

Nope. I will arrive at the last possible minute to try and throw you off schedule instead.

Will you be checking in any ski equipment?

Err, I’m going to Holland, not normally a destination renown for it’s mountains and pistes.

Do you want a hire car?

No, I’m going to be drunk the whole time, even Holland with it’s few laws, doesn’t allow drink driving. Or at least frowns heavily upon it.

Do you want a hotel?

Yes, but not through you, you cheating thieving bastards

And so the never ending questions go on and on, you say “no” to them all and get to the next page, which simply asks you all the questions again but in a shorter format. Eventually though you manage to get to the checkout page and it asks you what payment type you will use. Nothing unusual there, Visa Debit thank you very much. Enter card details click next and it asks you to confirm the flight details and amount.

You double check everything, pull out your calculator, open a new window and check the flight prices. But there it is, one final sting in the tail. They flipping (this is a PG-13 blog) well charge you for using your credit card to pay for the tickets!

So to get this straight, first they charge you for the tickets, which apparently doesn’t include the seats because you have to pay £10 (but save £10 because there is a ‘sale’!) for them. To actually pay the company for their services, you have to pay another fee for the privilage. Whoever came up with that little doozey obviously deserves a payrise for corkscrew thinking.

As shocking as all this sounds, it actually gets even worse, below is the text that is included at the bottom of your confirmation email hidden amongst the terms and conditions that no one actually reads…unless you’re me. Apparently.

Due to security measures from the UK Government, all airlines are required to provide advance passenger information (API or APIS) for all passengers travelling to and from the UK on an international flight. API requires Passport/valid photo ID information to be captured prior to travel. Failure to give APIS information will result in passengers not being permitted to travel. Please note that if you have chosen to check in online, you will have to provide this information before you check in online. To ensure the security measures are addressed in the most efficient and precise manner, each passenger must provide this information online prior to checking in online or arriving at the airport, and at least 3 hours before the standard time of departure. It is the responsibility of the passenger to ensure that the information provided is correct. Please note if this information has not been provided in full prior to arriving at the airport, there will be a charge of £5 per passenger per sector for bmibaby to administer this at the airport. You will have to go to a check in desk to provide this information. APIS data cannot be taken at the departure gate. This charge is non-refundable. The request for the advance passenger information is a direct requirement from the UK Government and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Well, in a nutshell it says you should login (no link to the page is provided) and enter your passport details otherwise you’ll be charged £5 at the airport. What?! Why don’t they ask for this as part of the checkout process. Entering your details takes 30 seconds, but BMIBaby sees fit to charge you £5 for this.

Now I have to come to the point where I will bring my Indian friends close to tears, as for the first time since I started this blog, I am about to admit that India does soemthing many, many times better than England.

In India, budget airlines are proper airlines with cheap tickets. The prices are comparable to England, but they don’t make a fuss over baggage allowances, check-in, payments, it’s just “here’s the all inclusive cost, please make a payment”.

And even once you are on the plane, the pleasent experience continues as the airlines practice the somewhat dubious policy of employing only young beautiful girls, which, to be fair, is wonderful for the predominantly male traveller in India :D The seats are leather (or leatherish), they recline, you get plenty of leg room and the real clincher is that no matter how long or short the flight is, you get a full in-flight dinner, all included in the cost. None of the day light robbery that BMIBaby practices with £1.50 for a tiny can of Coke.

Frankly, airlines in England have an awful lot to learn from their Indian compatriates. They do it better, cheaper and with more class, elegance and flair than anything I’ve seen back in Britain.

However, being the business man that I am, I’ve come up with a number of innovative ways these tight arsed penny pinchers can suck even more money out of us. Who knows, maybe I’ll get employed as Head of Outrageous Charges by one of these companies.

1. Councils are doing it so why not budget airlines? Charge a pound for every time someone uses the toilet mid-flight.

2. New security measure, you must use airline baggage for the flight. You hire the baggage on the outbound flight and return it on the inbound flight. This allows the airline to efficiently pack bags in the hold, saving time and maximising luggage space. The cost will be £5 per bag.

3. Ticket prices by weight of the passenger. It’s a well known fact that the waist line of the average Briton is explanding. Why not charge £1 per kilo? Surcharge for those over 80KG.

4. Surcharge the 18-25 crowd. Because they are always drunk, going on holiday with their mates and generally causing problems on flights. Let’s penalize them all.

If you were a low cost airline in Briton, what surcharges would you add to increase profits?

Home of the Ridiculous

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So here I am, back home. Back in England and back to Western culture. India is wonderful of course, but there’s only so long you can go before you start craving the Western vices (like friends). Last year I managed 12 months, this year I didn’t do so well and had to come back after just 10 months.

Well, I say had to come back, the words of my father are still echoing in my ears “son, if you don’t come back for your mothers ??th birthday, you may as well not come back for Christmas.” No one ever even mentioned the word ‘threat’.

So I have come from one country which by all accounts is utterly bizarre to another country which I firmly believe has lost its marbles.

India is bizarre because first of all they wouldn’t let me leave the country (tax stuff, it’s not pretty), and now I’ve left, they won’t let me back in! Bastards. Not to mention that people get married without even meeting each other, it’s considered taboo to hold hands in public but acceptable for men to take a piss in full view of everyone, guys hang off the side of buses on their way to work and they like to wake everyone up with insanely loud music at 5am.

Anyway. The first thing you notice moments after walking through arrivals is how stupidly expensive everything is here. When you are used to paying £3.50 for an excellent two course meal, coming to England is like diving in to a pool of ice; you become numb with shock.

In my first day back in England, I got the train from Heathrow Terminal 5 (which is amazing by the way, even my Dad, the man that could find fault with the Sistine Chapel begrudgingly conceded that they had done a fair job with T5) to South London which cost £10.

From there I went and had a pint (from landing to first pint in 90 minutes is not bad going) which cost £3 and then it was off to buy a Pay As You Go sim card, topped up with £20 and some toiletries.

Three hours in the country and the total cost so far was £35.

That evening, I went to a pub to meet up with some old uni friends where we had dinner and many drinks. Dinner was £9 and drinks came in at around £15. By the time I got to bed I’d managed to spend nearly £60 since landing.

The next day I went and had my first McDonalds (you honestly don’t realize how much you miss Quarter Pounders until it’s no longer available!) before catching a train up to my hometown.

Now in India, you can travel the length and breadth of the country for about a tenner. This will get you a nice air-conditioned carriage with a full length bed since the train journeys can last for days on end as the train invariably gets lost en-route.

England, on the other hand, seems to think that everyone is as rich as Mr. Monopoly, so a basic 1 hour train journey costs £39 if you want a single or £41 if you want a return – simply proving that someone, somewhere failed their maths GCSE.

Having been in the country less than 24 hours, I’d managed to spend a grand total of £100 (and a bit more). Utterly ridiculous, I hadn’t even gone very far or bought anything of any value, simply ate to stay alive and took public transport to get from A to B.

Back in my adopted country (which doesn’t want me back), £100 lasts you a month! And you get to live like a King!

But rip-off Britain gets worse – and for any Brits reading this, you don’t know how bad it is until you go to other countries – once back home, I had to get a hair cut which ended up costing £8.80 for a quick buzz round the back and sides and cut short on top. Admittedly, there were no hair raising experiences (pun intended) this time, but honestly, £8.80 for a haircut! We’re in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930′s, people can’t afford to go around spending £8.80 for a bit of cranial topiary!

I haven’t even touched on the absurdity of the (non) budget airlines here, but they deserve a blog post all to their own, which they will in due course. And then there’s the benefits system which is so broke there’s no chance of it ever being fixed again.

The world has gone mad. And Britain has become ridiculous.

Oh. And it’s still bloody raining here!

It’s Actually Kind of Endearing

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The other Saturday a friend came over for a few beers (ok, I had a few beers, she had a fruit juice) and to watch a couple of movies. Since I subscribe to the can’t cook, won’t cook school of thought I informed her before hand that while I can lay on the entertainment, catering will not be provided.

Not a problem, she announced, she’d just order a takeaway when she got to my place.

Now my apartment isn’t particularly difficult to find, you simply go along the main road and hang a right at the supermarket, go down that road for 500m and my apartment is on the left. Easy huh?

Well there are two hurdles, no, wait, three hurdles. First off, the road that I live on is called 3rd Cross Street and the wisdom that is Indian urban planning decided that it would be a wonderfully efficient idea to name several streets in the local vicinity 3rd Cross Street.

None of this really matters anyway because, in my experience, the average Indian (and by that I mean the working class, the auto drivers etc) doesn’t know how to read a map, so they wouldn’t be able to find 3rd Cross Street anyway, let alone navigate to it.

And finally, even if by chance we got someone who could read a map, there are no street signs telling you what road you are on anyway!

Navigation in India works on the basis of landmarks, even in official docs there is space to enter a landmark when you enter your address. It’s not uncommon to see a company address say something like “nr Passport Office”.

Getting back to the takeaway order, I advised my friend to do some food before she came over, ordering food would simply be too stressful, as I have previously discussed in another blog post about how poor tandoori wala is.

The single biggest problem is that my nearest ‘landmark’ is several streets away and the person would need to understand where to turn left or right or what to look out for. This even causes problems when I get an auto home, if I were to say RK Nagar, I get a blank look, if I say Mandavelli Railway Station (in a very weird accent, mind you) then they understand. The problem is my apartment is about 3 minutes from the station and you’ve barely passed it before the driver will start complaining “long distance boss, 20 rupees more”.

So my friend was explaining my address and getting more and more frustrated by the second, but eventually after 10 minutes there seemed to be some understanding. No doubt there would be phone calls later saying the delivery boy was now in Mumbai but couldn’t find our street.

Next she had to actually order some food which is where I had to leave the room because she stared at me with murder in her eyes!

She was trying to order some tomato soup. Now although people do speak english to a certain degree, you have to say things with the right accent to be understood, still, when a restaurant has a choice of just 5 different soups, one of them being tomato, you wouldn’t have thought there’d be too much of a problem!

But no, try as she might, they couldn’t understand tomato.

‘to-ma-to’ she tried
‘to-may-toe’ was next
‘to-mae-too’ came another attempt. Thinking on her feet, she decided to spell it out…

‘t-yo-yem-yay-tee-yo’ (which is how letters are pronounced here) still nothing. There was a pause on the other end of the phone, and a hopeful response came back, ‘mushroom?’, at this point she gave up, ‘fine, mushroom’.

She proceeded to place the rest of her order with very few problems. They totted up the bill and told her the final price, less than 200 rupees, about £2.60 and enough food to feed two people.

Then came the final bombshell, ‘romba (means ‘very’ in Tamil) busy madam, 2 hours minimum delivery’. My friend couldn’t believe it, she’d spent close to 25 minutes placing the order and it was going to be gone 11pm before they could deliver it, fast food is still a new concept here apparently! So she did the only thing she could which was to cancel the order and wish she could have the last 25 minutes of her life back.

We carried on watching the film and she left when it finished. I continued with another film, when at 11.30 there was a ring at my door.

‘hello sir, sangeethas delivery’

It was at this point i decided that actually India is quite endearing, (which is very patronising of me). Not only had they found my place without assistance, they had even got the order right which included tomato (or is it tomayto?) soup! Despite the fact that my friend cancelled the order, they’d pushed ahead and delivered it anyway.

So if you know anyone who wants some tandoori paneer, sambar rice and tomato soup, I have some in my fridge :-)