Traurig - Fruhstueck mit Jean Luc

Sometimes in a foreign culture you just need the familiar – so it was last Sunday – we needed to be back in Hamburg. Rolls, bread, meat salami, jam, butter, coffee and cheese fitted he bill to a tee. Quite what the juxtaposition of the nexus between series 3 and 4 of Star Trek the Next Generation allied with this meant became clear as we surrendered ourselves to Patrick Stewart. The writers had cunningly provided within the requisite episodes the opportunity for JLP to declame in Shakespearean mode on a multiple basis. Many tears were shed!.

Having a e-life german breakfast with the virtual representatives of the Federation of Planets proved to be remarkably relaxing.

India needs both Data, Worrf and Jordi, and appears desperately in need of real leadership as it moves into its election period with all sorts of factions jockeying for position – Captain JLP come in now and restore some RSC type order.

India needs guidance such as his and is split by factional and internecine tensions – interestingly Ferengi is Indian for foreigner - Cricket is the only glue but not one that binds. One feels the void - a blackhole of leadership.

I fear that Ferengi type trade offs will be the winner – sadly!

Acting Ensign BR

This is the Sound of the Suburbs!

I guess that we live in a sought after suburb of Bangalore – a modern day equivalent of the Surbiton of Tom and Barbara Good. Our own Bengaluran version of the good life is accompanied on a daily basis by a relatively reliable but eclectic version of the dawn chorus. I am not really sensitive to background noise having been brought up directly beside Newcastle Airport runway, but this proceeds regularly in approximately the following chronological order, and is starting to get on my nerves:

Ca 5am: Call to the faithful from the local mosque

Shortly after: Neighbourhood dogs have an early morning discussion which escalates to a vigorous Indian level

Ca 6 am: Strange half guttural squeaky noise (as yet un identified) passes by on the road

6:30 am: Just getting back to sleep when the incredibly annoying alarm from Mrs Reivers Blackberry goes off

7.00 am: In case we might drop back off to sleep builder drop of a load of bricks at the building site next door, throwing them on a brick-by-brick basis into a metal skip to ensure maximum impact

7:05 am onwards - persistent but stupid humming bird repeated tries to get through our bedroom window replicating the sound of a very hestitant hotel waiter trying to deliver room service breakfast

7:15 am: Driver arrives, car roars into life and moves its ritual 2 mtrs down the drive

7:30 ish: Local veg seller with cart passes by with his plaintiff cries of what sound worryingly like ‘she dies’…’’she dies’

7:45 ish; Traffic starts to pick up with ritual honking and major axle groaning as trucks pass over the sleeping policemen just outside the house

8:00 is: Daily election vehicle with unintelligible loudspeaker message passes by – all Indian politics is equally unintelligible to me

9:30 ish: Driver returns from dropping Mrs Reiver at work and starts his regular cricket game with the taller of our security guards up against the garage door – listening to to regular thump of the ball makes me feel just like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape.

So goes the days, and though incredibly comfortable it does sometimes feel like the cooler. Any resemblance of our next door neighbours to Margot and Jerry is of course completely coincidental, and rumours that I have already started two tunnels are completely spurious. To keep the good life vibe going though we do get the odd sacred cow stopping by next door - it all helps the MOOd music I guess

Fantasy Island Revisited

In India especially there is a need to escape from time to time from the dirt, dust, chaos and poverty into a different world. One happy bolt hole is to join the crew of the Enterprise as we work our way through Star Trek the Next Generation on an almost daily basis. As well as providing a virtual escape it continues to act as the source of the most relevant leadership lessons, although I am somewhat concerned that Mrs Reiver is starting to exhibit certain Worf tendencies in parallel with her Jean Luc Picard (with Data undertones) aspirations.
Yesterdays offering (Episode 2, Series 3) concerned a small fantasy house and garden recreated by a pacifist superior being after his planet had been wiped out. I was reminded of this little green oasis amongst the devastation as I walked around to the gym we have recently joined this morning. The gym is part of the Leela Palace Hotel which is a lush verdant 5star luxury blot on the vibrant scurrying chaotic and noisy real Bangalore landscape.
My preference in gyms is at the grunt and sweat end of the spectrum – exemplified by Daves Gym in Northwich – no frills, as many machines as possible in one room, equal parts sweat, chemical cleaner and testosterone in the air – one small dodgy shower as the only facilities - £2.50 a session. The Leela is a bit different and more expensive – there is a gadgee just to help you get changed who hangs up your shirt and trousers, and then post exercise puts your sweaty clothes in a little plastic bag – just a bit too ‘Suits You Sir’ for my liking. Then there are the towels and the water – they must have got a job lot as everywhere you turn you are being offered both.
The juxtaposition with real life becomes even clearer when you walk down to the pool and notice the there is only some palm trees and cunning green mesh which separates the poolside from the balconies of the cheek by jowel flats alongside with their balcony washing lines to the fore – one can only hope that the force field continues to keep reality at bay.
To continue the surreal feel after splashing about a bit in support of my delusional ideas of sometime doing a triathlon, I was reading quietly (2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom – v funny – recommended) when I noticed that a middle aged white lady was about to go into the pool. Nothing untoward – but then she put on trainers and gloves as she got in??! – One can only assume she was an American!
So I will continue my fantastical life in Bangalore renewed by the thought that “Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.” (Terry Pratchett), and of course wait for…the Plane boss the Plane.

Eine Bibliotekwuste - Traurig!

Mrs Reiver virtually grew up in the public libraries of Manchester and so the complete lack of lending libraries in Bangalore has come as a big shock to the system. The compensation for this is that books are relatively cheap here – although that is often reflected in the printing standards – I had to prise apart my copy of (modern classic???) The Alchemist page by page – and wished I hadn’t bothered – new age twaddle of the worst sort. Anyway –in an effort to recreate a familiar atmosphere I decided to sort out the books in our library.

Stage 1 was the planar random tessillation by functional category approach as illustrated, but once I got past this we ended up with 15 sections as listed below. What can we learn from this ?

Category No
Literature 78
Popular Fiction 64
German 52
Cooking 50
Sci Fi/Fantasy 49
Business 47
Reference 45
Chick Lit 32
Popular Science, Philosophy, Economics 32
Poetry 31
India 29
Humour 28
Travel Guides 28
Childrens 26
History - Biography 20
Total 611

Despite the large number of cookbooks I will still insist in doing off piste cooking?

We love Hamburg - 9 of the guides were for there

Or more practically there are perhaps some new publishing niches which could potentially get cross segment appeal.

The german cookbook based on the adventures travel writer who was kidnapped by aliens and travelled in time (working title ‘A Brief History of Currywurst’) perhaps.

A travel guide to India delivered entirely in limericks, example:

There was a young man from Bombay
Who tried to explain he was gay
The Babus got flustered
Indignance was mustered
Forms stamped said impossible today

Or a combination of wild fantasy with business finance – oops I think real life has usurped fiction there!

And what is currently top of our local best seller list – it is the phenomenal publishing sensation that is ‘The Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act (1961) & Rules (1963) – with Notifications and Caselaws’ a real page turner – no further evidence is needed that one has to make ones own entertainment here.

The Vomiting Sheep & Other Ghosts

Singapore is not always somewhere that you would associate with being a barrel of laughs, but our visit there gave Mrs Reiver and me the best laugh we have had for a long time. There is much potentially depressing now with virtually all traces of the old Singapore subsumed by the concrete and steel vision of a premium brand led capitalist playground. The hawker food continues to provide welcome relief, and before attending the contemporary dance performance at the pineapplesque Esplanande arts centre we fortified ourselves with a rapid kway teow.

The performance was billed as ‘contemplating irretrievable loss in an age of unimaginable speed and technology..’ – I nearly irretrievably lost my cool when we couldn’t buy the tickets at the published price even at the venue (an agency fee applied everywhere) – advertising standards anyone??

I would have to say in its defence that there was some very elegant and poised dancing but for most of the performance Mrs Reiver and I had to sit apart as we were suppressing the desire to burst out laughing whilst everyone around was being desperately earnest. The performance was in a series of episodes with enigmatic titles, but this is my version of what I experienced:

1. Man gets tangled up in curtains and struggles to change the duvet
2. Extras from Star Trek (Class M planet captain, mid 22nd century technology) do the Singapore jumping the queue dance
3. Elegant women does the sweeping the path dance ( Stomp was much better in this respect – yes I am just a philistine)
4. Javanese dancer replicates the atmosphere at St Pauli when the home team gets a corner by rattling his keys above his head for 5 minutes
5. Formation ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ team strut their stuff
6. Man in sheep mask emerges, pushes around a few hanging umbrellas and imitates the sound of someone throwing up after a heavy night on the Toon continuously for 5 minutes – it must have been a very bad pie!
7. Elegant women now does the carpet fitter dance struggling with an annoying bump in the carpet
8. Everyone struggles to get home after a night out doing the ‘You’re my best mate – I Love You’ dance – where they have to pick up their mates after falling over after a couple too many
9. Sick sheep does the ‘When you can walk on the rice paper and leave no trace’ dance

Written out this makes about as much sense as it did on the night. We had a short dilemma in choosing whether to go to this or see Rod Stewart – the available Rod tickets being a ridiculous £180 each resolved that pretty swiftly. No matter how silly Mr Stewarts haircut or however much he wiggled his bum he could never have provided a fraction of the entertainment we got. FYI – Officially the sheep being sick episode was titled ‘I am not the goat – I am the meaning of the goat’ – there is nothing further to say.

This is a man's world ??

I attempt in my humble way to give a feel for life in India and Bangalore through this blog, and it also has considerable therapeutic value. Earlier this week I felt like giving up blogging having read Hemingway’s epilogue to ‘Death in the Afternoon’ – which managed to pack in more evocative detail in one short sentence than I manage in a several blogs worth. Reading ‘essential’, and very manly, Hemingway also seems to have affected some of my choices – I ended up with a macho DVD watchathon over the last couple of days Casino/Godfather Part 2/Platoon. I was also prompted to get a copy of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ which I did for ‘O’ Level several decades ago, and now am anticipating a dinner of barracuda and giant prawns.
I need to resist this and have put all the red tablecloths in a locked cupboard in case I feel the urge to try my matador skills with the local sacred cows, and I feel fly fishing in the local rivers would be rather fruitless. I clearly need to be careful with my reading, I will leave the ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ alone before flying off to Singapore later this week especially as my damaged legs have not completely recovered from rugby a couple of weeks ago.

Mrs Reiver has gone ahead, and it is worrying that she is finding it so reassuring just on the basis that simple things such as traffic, water and supply chains for food actually work there. Revisiting the OMATS was surprisingly pleasurable and I am hopeful that revisiting Singapore after living there nearly 15 years ago will be similar but I suspect it will be full of surprises. I may well miss the chaos of India, but probably not the dawn chorus of fighting dogs which woke me this morning. There are some linking themes through between the two counties, with Singapore operating its own ‘caste’ system but based on education rather than family history – as Mrs Reiver would point out these are however not independent variables. In Singapore there is also the concept of ‘Kiasu’ where extracting the most economic advantage out of every situation is celebrated, the same approach applies to interactions in India but on a more stealth basis. I will overtly extract maximum pleasure from my Singaporean weekend and possibly some covert payback if I happen to run into my ex Boss who still lives there – or maybe I have just spent too much virtual time with Vito Coroleone recently.

The Circuit of Life

There is much wisdom embedded in Disney song lyrics – and my personal philosophy is probably summed up best (if not tunefully when self delivered) by a medley of Jungle Book songs. I chose yesterday to dispense with the usual music whilst running round my local race loop (diagram attached) and felt that in this kilometre or so reminded me somewhat of ‘The circle of life’. Cross checking the Lion King lyrics they are rather apt:

There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

So as they used to do when I worked in F1 in my youth - lets take you on a lap of the tricky and variable Indiranagar Circuit.

Pulling away from Harmony with the rubber on my trainers smoking slightly there is a relatively easy down start but with regular speed bumps testing out the suspension in the dodgy knees. This circuit is littered with unexpected distractions so you must stay alert at all times. On the opening straight these consist of:

1) The open air ironing man – with still hot coals scattered around his stall – even more dangerous than the ‘marbles’
2) The building workers collected in a magnetic huddle around a hole watching one person work – if you slow down for a peek here your lap is ruined
3) The local HOPCOM selling fruit – you must ensure you are stocked up on papaya before leaving the pit lane

Then comes the tricky sharp ‘DON’T URINATE HERE’ lefthander negotiating the recently created 4) random piles of debris in the road. You can relax a bit on the shady tree lined bottom straight, hold you nose as you pass over 5) sewer bridge and then smoothly hit the apex and accelerate into the uphill back straight. You do have to keep your wits about you and your eyes open for auto-rickshaws coming up the wrong side of the road.

As you churn up the hill the pacemaker hits the limiter but it is critical that you are not tempted by any of the back straights wiles:

6) The Hindu temple – spiritual needs
7) The Street Vegetable Stall – 5 a day needs
8) and 9) The Electricity & Bottled Gas shops – energy needs
10)The Bakery – food needs (but of course not bread – at a bakery – come on!)

You are now approaching the prime spectator viewing areas as you negotiate 11) sofa corner (avoiding also the head tennis game that is permanently ongoing) and cruise along 12) Washing Line straight. As well as avoiding the washing lines, kite strings and small children being washed in the street – you need to prepare for the challenging corner combinations which end the lap.

Swinging left at 13) Bullock curve with the occasional misfire under braking, you need to watch your grip and then try not to titter as you pass the 14) ‘Vibrators for hire’ shop. The uneven surface of the next short straight tests the ankles and that suspected broken toe, but you can sniff the end of the lap as well as the coffee and ciggies of the blokes all standing outside the 15) local shop doing very little ( a national sport in India). Rounding the final turn is downhill all the way to the finish with the only real distraction being a 16) strolling lemon seller with a sack on his head.

Then in is into the pits supervised by the gate marshalls and definitely time to take advantage of some corporate hospitality!