Editors Note World View Asia-Pacific Scene Indian Panorama Kerala Traveller Aviation Face to Face 10 Questions Woman of the Month Hospitality Columns Bookshelf Variety Quiz Back Issues asian traveller :: home :: Columns C olumns As I Travel - June 2010 Last week I was in Port Blair and as I was driven from the airport by a relative, I saw on the road at a signal point the amber turning to red and we stopped. The traffic sign did not flash ‘STOP’ but it said ‘RELAX’! Nice thought! In fact there is a touch of poetry in it (maybe the typical beauty of an island living and thinking). A positive replacement to the minatory word ‘STOP’! But then the question is: Do we get onto the road only to relax?! Life is funny, hilarious, and sweet with its uncanny ironies, come to think of it!Then a trail of long-brewed weird questions was running in my mind: Why the word ‘ABBREVIATION’ is so long?  Why there is no anagram for the word ‘ANAGRAM’? How come the... read story As I Travel - May 2010 You just greet people and enquire after them as to how they are or their life or business is. The invariable answer you would be getting would be one of the followings:-‘Not bad’ (80%)‘Can’t complain’ (10%)‘Can be better’ (5%)‘Good!’ (3%)‘Great!’(1%)‘Excellent!’(1%)The percentages represent the responses out of a hundred people who were subjected to this survey and analysis.Now the question is this. When it is not bad, why we do not call it good, when there is nothing to complain, why we are not jubilant about it, and when we say it can be better, what are we waiting for to make it better?Life is not what we have but what we d... read story As I Travel - April 2010 Anger is like the Italian pasta. If you really get to know the actual meaning of the names of various pastas, next time you may think twice before you take it. ‘Spaghetti’ means small strings, linguini means small tongues, ‘manicotti’ means sleeves and ‘vermicelli’ means little worms. ‘Farfalle’ means butterflies, ‘lumaconi’ means big snails and ‘fagottini’ means cloth bundles. While the least harmless name for a pasta seems to be ‘macaroni’ which would just mean ‘barley’ and by extension food made from barley (Greek ‘makaria’ = barley), the most disastrous name for a pasta is definitely ‘lasagna’ which in its original Latin means a chamber pot! W... read story As I Travel - March 2010 A young man goes to see his doctor. He is hale and hearty. He is having enough money as well. But still there is something amiss in his life. He is overcome by a terrible sadness which he cannot describe and he does not think anything will make him feel better. The doctor says, ‘Why not you do something happy, like going to see Grimaldi the clown? He is playing in the town’s circus this evening.  That should do the change!’ The young man answers, with a knowing look, ‘Ah, but Doctor’, he says, ‘I am Grimaldi!’This instance is from the life of the famous English clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837). Grimaldi was the one who introduced the modern clown to the world making him the central character in a harlequinade.<... read story As I Travel - February 2010 Many years ago, when Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper, he looked for someone to be a model for Jesus. Eventually he found a choirboy in a local church in Rome named Pietro Bandinelli, who not only had lovely features but lived a good life. Years passed, but the painting was still not finished because he needed someone to use as a model for Judas Iscariot and he looked for someone whose face would be so very hard and sinful. At last he saw a beggar on the streets of Rome with such an evil face that he decided that he would be the perfect fit for the vile character. He engaged him and started painting his face on his canvas. As he was in progress, Da Vinci suddenly stopped half way through  for a minute, peered hard and intent at him and exclaimed ... read story As I Travel - January 2010 If you want, you can! Can you? Yes, you can! Conditions do not make life; only decisions! Born poor is a condition, becoming rich is a decision. Being illiterate is a condition but becoming literate is a decision. Parents are conditions but friends are decisions. Conditions do not decide our life but only decisions do condition our life. Conditions just reveal what we are in and what our circumstances are. Orville and Wilbur were bicycle repairers by their early condition but then they wanted to make something that could go faster than a cycle, something that could probably fly like a kite or a bird. They experimented with their own bicycle mounting another wheel on the handlebars, free-spinning with two metal plates – one flat and one curved. While pedaling ... read story As I Travel - December 2009 This is Performance Appraisal time for most of the organizations as the year 2009 draws to a close and the year 2010 starts -the time for objective realization and goal setting. And we do have all kinds of degrees of performance appraisals: 90 degree - one person review (self or another, the boss), 180 degree - two person review (self and boss/manager), 270 A boss can make or mar a company. The man at the top is the change agent for good or bad for any organization. The three companies I have had resigned from in the past were more for the bosses I had than the very companies themselves. read story As I Travel - November 2009 What are the various ways of climbing up an oak tree? There are two. One is to start physically climbing the tree from its base to the top, step by step. The other is to bury an acorn, the oak seed in the sand and sit on it waiting for it to sprout and carry you aloft as it grows. The second one is the methodology most of us adopt for our own growth.All of us want growth in all kinds of spheres – career growth, economic growth, intellectual growth, physical growth, and spiritual growth etc. But what do we do about for them? Precious little!As regards career growth, one just joins a job and hopes to become nothing short of the CEO of the company over time as he is and where he is. Many tend to think that the me... read story A Piece of the UK in Spain "left">   Anke Stirner went to Gibraltar expecting nothing much. But a pleasant surprise was in Anke Stirner store for her. Here is the account of her first experience. This is the first of a series of articles she will be writing for Asian Traveller from Gibraltor.... read story End of an era… AI864 of October 20, 2009 operated by an Air India Boeing 747-400 from Hyderabad – Mumbai, was a very special flight. It was the last scheduled Boeing 747 service by Air India. This low key event brought the curtains down on 38 years of Boeing 747 operations by our national carrier after having flown millions of miles and millions of passengers most of whom de-planed much the richer for the experience.For Air India veterans, industry people and the average Indian – the most enduring images of Air India are the Maharajah (always spelt with an ‘h’ at the end), the Centaur and the Boeing 747 – not necessarily in that order. In a way the B747 stood for the very ethos of Air India as envisioned by J.R.D. Tata.... read story As I Travel - October 2009 We all just know the phrase ‘Aloha’ is a way of greeting in Hawaii so much so Hawaii is nicknamed Aloha State. But the word has more significance than that. ‘Aloha’ is composed of ‘alo’ and ‘ha’ – ‘alo’ means ‘to share’ and ‘ha’ means ‘breath’. Aloha means sharing one’s breath and sharing one’s life. The island nation encapsulates life in all its essence. The Polynesian wisdom is the panacea for all our illness as can be seen in its five fundamental principles:-Ahonui – PatienceLokahi – UnityOlu‘olu – AgreeabilityHa’aha’a – HumblenessAkahai - Kindness    read story As I Travel - August 2009 It would be quite interesting for a typical office-goer or a salaried employee to stop for a minute and take stock of the kinds of leave he gets in a year of 365 days: - Weekly Offs - 52 or 104 (either Sunday or Saturday & Sunday/ we can take an average of  78 days taking the half-days of Saturday as a rule), Casual Leave - 10, Sick Leave - 10, Earned or Privilege Leave - 30, Public Holidays - 15. We are not taking into account the other on-and-off kind of civic unrests and the acts of God like a tsunami and the holidays thereof under the Negotiable Instrument Act plus the Maternity and the Paternity Leaves. Beyond this, we have the phenomenon of coming one hour late or leaving one hour early for the day (nobody for any reason does reverse that order -... read story As I Travel - July 2009 The equal sign '=' was invented by the Welshman Robert Recorde in 1557. The two tiny lines one over another are of same length and thereby they signify equality. How many of our mathematics teachers had taught this or this way?Anything frigid ( as in refrigerator) is cold and what is not cold, or in other words hot or dry, would be a+frigid (afrigid) and thence came the dry and hot continent's name Africa. How many of our geography teachers had taught this?The growing moon is called crescent. But how many of our science teachers have told us that the name is from the word 'increasing' (increase - crescent) because the shape grows or increases in phases. Or how many of them added to our knowledge that the moon more than half but not full as yet is ... read story As I Travel - June 2009 A few months ago, I was booking a flight ticket to Singapore by our national carrier for my wife to visit our daughter. The journey was fixed and the ticket was obtained. While making the booking I gave my mobile number for the sake of contact, a mandatory element for making an airline booking. It so happened that my wife had to advance her journey by a day that instead of flying on a Thursday afternoon flight, she took the Wednesday's night flight by advancing the booking on the same ticket. So far so good. The next day I had a call on my mobile from the airline in the morning asking for my wife. I told that it was me, her husband and said that she had already left for Singapore by the previous day's night flight. They said they wanted to inform of the delay o... read story Chinese, Portugese, Dutch and Kochi Arriving in Kerala's Fort Kochi after travelling around nearby towns and cities, I was struck by the quiet tranquility of this quaint town on the southwestern coast of India. The narrow roads, lack of traffic and small cafes offered a much-needed repose from the bustle and chaos of the area's neighbours. Fort Kochi sits on the edge of the southern peninsula opposite other islands that make up the greater Kochi. Fort Kochi and Mattancherry,  an area just a 20 minute's walk away, offer great views of the Chinese fishing nets that date back to the 1400s, and the fish market near them, and of remaining structures from Portuguese, Dutch and British settlers. Having spent a day and a half in Kumily, a small but busy town near the Periyar National Park... read story How Green Was My Valley r> Did you take a look at one of your photo albums lately? Did you talk to one of your old friends about the good old times? Or did you return to some places where you have been many years ago, maybe for holidays? Yes, not only do we change but also the environment around us. When you compare your pictures or memories with the present and how all those locations look today you might say "Oh wow, look at all those green fields on that picture where we used to play cricket, they are all gone now!" or "Can you remember this little hut where this old man used to live? Last week they just finished a shiny six floors business glass tower there" or "do you remember our long hard way to school on foot; two years ago they built a new school... read story As I Travel - May 2009 One of the leading institutes of business management in down South of India once invited me as a guest lecturer for their graduation ceremony. And after a while, the same institute called me up if I could stand in for a scheduled lecturer-trainer who could not turn up for the workshop on organizational leadership for practicing managers organized by them. I was one of the five lecturers for the workshop. Barring me, the remaining four of them were full-time academicians, holding doctorates in their respective fields, and certified trainers. After the event was over, the next day the head of the institution called me up and congratulated that I had been rated the best by the participants in terms of course content and delivery. My visiting the institute among others... read story Gateway to Periyar National Park !/tbody> Florian Mayer On my travels through India I definitely wanted to check out one of the National Parks. To choose one is not very easy. There are quite a few. In the end I have selected the Periyar National Park in Kerala. The park measures 777 square kilo meters and lies close to the Tamil Nadu border. When you arrive there you have to decide if you want to stay inside the sanctuary or outside in the nearby towns - Kumily or Thekkady. I have chosen a very nice homestay in Kumily. Many of those hotels or homestays were built just behind the National Park`s fence. So you can watch the wildlife inside the sanctuary fairly comfortably from your room or an observation tower. I have seen gaurs, wild pigs and different kinds of d... read story As I Travel - April 2009 > The year was 1995. The airline was just two years old. My team and I as its leader were very much part and cause of the airline's evolution and growth in our own way at that time. We had doubled the revenue for the year and had readied ourselves to take on a second flight into the city. It was the annual appraisal time and I was rating every individual in the team anything from 8 to 9 on a scale of 10 and marked all of them as excellent. Prompt came the query from the HR at Head Office as to how it could be possible. I was at a loss to understand that question. It was as if there could not be excellence across the team at all as a rule. My explanation was dismissed that all of them were hardly two years in the organisation and that they could not be given t... read story India Has to Take Action in Fighting Pollution Although there have been coming more tourists to India every year, in 2008 about five million which still means a growth rate of more than 10 per cent compared to 2007. The expectations for 2009 and 2010 however are not that bright. Most analysts estimate that the tourism sector has to face a weaker year with a decreasing number of travelers worldwide because of that ongoing recession. So what to do to? The answer is as simple as difficult. India has to become more attractive for tourists if they want to fight against this trend. ... read story As I Travel - March 2009 > In every organisation, the standing grievance of any employee is that the organisation is least bothered about his or her promotion or career growth. Many a time, employees deem it fit that their mere tenure of service is more than enough to claim the move up.  Never do they realize that a promotion for one follows the act of one's giving promotion to the organisation. The lotus flower in a pond rises up directly proportional to the rise of the water in the pond. It cannot grow tall in isolation. Promote the company and get yourself promoted is the secret of promotion.All these years of my managerial positions, I am yet to come by a staff member who would call in to inform that he or she is coming early to the office for the day. Invariably they... read story Ozone Layer Depletion They used to be thrilling to watch… early Boeing 707s, DC-8s and Convair's taking off with an earth-shaking roar and thick black smoke spewing from their four turbo-jet engines were sufficient inspiration for any youngster who beheld that spectacle, to dream of flying those jets someday. A lot of them realized their dreams and today fly modern commercial airliners which despite their relatively larger sizes, behave far more politely in society, in terms of noise levels and emissions than their predecessors of the 60s. Though a lot of hard-core aviation enthusiasts (myself included) miss those heart pounding take-offs by the "ole smokies" as these jets used to be called, what hastened their passing were technological advances sti... read story As I Travel - February 2009 > We are all seeking happiness. But do we know what happiness is all about. I have seen people cudgeling their brains for hours to make a list of ten things that would make them happy. No wonder they are not finding happiness in life. That is asked after the manner of making a cake. How do we make a cake? What are the ingredients which make a cake? They are the flour, the eggs, the sugar, and the shortening. Once they are baked together in the right proportion, the cake is ready. The same way, once we know the ingredients of our happiness and we just blend them the way they should be, we become happy, and we are happy. But the problem lies in knowing the ingredients of happiness.Many a people think that money is the key to happiness. If money is the ke... read story Satyam - Hidden Truths in Aviation Never has a word developed into a cliché faster than the word 'Satyam' has, in the context of Indian business. I guess some would have seen it coming when the promoters of the company launched yet another business venture but decided to do a 'shirshasan' with the Satyam name and turned it into one of India's most notorious anagrams - Maytas.Ok… so much for the satyams that came tumbling out of the account books of one of the largest IT companies in the country. It came at the time when the economy was taking a beating and the period of correction that invariably follows any boom-time was swinging its scythe. It elicited many an uncomfortable squirming of bottoms on plush leather chairs and brought about introspection, with a host of re... read story As I Travel - January 2009 > It was the history class and Winston Churchill was the student. The subject was the Battle of Plassey, an important battle that was very decisive for the British in India (June 23, 1757). His teacher wanting to test his absorption and memory retention asked him when the Battle of Plassey was fought. That was the subject she was deliberating upon for over an hour just then. By way of answer, Churchill gave a blank stare and stood motionless. An irritated teacher chided him that despite his claim for an aristocratic background, he could not remember even such a simple fact. For that Churchill told: 'Madam, I am least bothered about when this battle was fought. I just want to know why at all this battle was fought in the first place!' That was a classical exam... read story Safety on the Ramp Getting Out of Fashion? The Mumbai terror strikes were unique in several aspects. It cut across a spectrum of social and economic strata to affect one and all in a collective, destructive embrace. It impacted the common man as much as it did the rich and the poor. It hit every single business directly and indirectly - ranging from travel and tourism to banking to hospitality to heavy industry with a collective estimated loss of USD 20 billion.For India, struggling to come to terms with a global meltdown that had seared its own economic ambitions, the Mumbai attacks could not have come at a worse time. I will not postulate on the causes and what could have been done but would like to analyze what this means for our industry - namely Travel.It is a fact that if we c... read story As I Travel - December 2008 > Quite often we do hear of and talk about'Thinking differently', 'Thinking laterally', and 'Thinking positively' etc. Many a time my sense of wonderment goes even deeper: 'Firstly, do we THINK at all?' An average human brain thinks of some 80,000 thoughts a day. But unfortunately, nearly 60,000 of them are the same old, repetitive thoughts and hence they are not thoughts but just recollections. A thought repeated is just a remembrance and retrieval from your old archive and there is nothing creative about that. When Picasso was asked whether he could reproduce his famed painting 'Guernica', he said that he could not 'reproduce' it but he could 'produce it again' which will be a creation by itself. Every thought is anew and everything is a creation by itself. read story A Fairytale Gone Well ng> A Fairytale Gone Well This time Anke Stirner writes about her recent visit to New Delhi, Indias captial City Delhi - the capital city of India, one of the busiest cities in the world, home of Shahrukh Khan, place of residence of so many companies from all over the world, heavy traffic, a city which is always awake - the idea I had of New Delhi was a mixture, a combination of impressions garnered from books and narrations of friends who had been the... read story As I Travel - November 2008 > Former President of Coca-Cola, Donald R. Keough has authored an excellent book titled 'The Ten Commandments for Business Failure'. It is a remarkable 'How Not To' manual among thousands of 'How To' series on business success, management, and leadership.The Ten Commandments are: 1. Quit Taking Risks 2. Be Inflexible 3. Isolate Yourself 4. Assume Infallibility 5. Play the Game Close to the Foul Line 6. Don't Take Time to Think 7. Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants 8. Love Your Bureaucracy 9. Send Mixed Messages 10. Be Afraid of the FutureKeough adds one more commandment as bonus at the end of these ten: 'Lose Your Passion for Work - for Life'. Just add the following two more to this list and your 'Package for Failure' is now total... read story Flying High - October 2008 In a recent survey, India was found to have the most number of road accident fatalities per annum. Without any intended black humour, I sometimes think that the air-side at most of our airports, are the inadvertent flag-bearers of this dubious distinction.On any average day, you are likely to find news of passenger coaches, fork-lifts, high-loaders… anything with wheels, bumping into each other, into airplanes, mowing down people - regardless whether they are passenger or worker, in every other sundry nook and cranny of our chaotic airports.So do we have a problem here?Yes, and a huge one at that. It has been my consistent observation that our aviation growth has been skewed. Ramp incidents are on the rise, employee turnover s... read story As I Travel - October 2008 > The words 'delegation' and 'legacy' are inter-related. Delegating is nothing but successfully passing on your legacy to the next in line. How many of us are doing it, be it a family situation or a company environment? A successful management is more of 'delegating' than 'doing'. The legend has it that the cat was the one that taught everything to the tiger. The cat only taught the tiger how to be agile, how to negotiate through a treacherous passage, how to pounce on its prey etc. Once the tiger got taught the art of pouncing on its prey, the first victim was the very cat itself. The cat ran up a tree for cover and the tiger was stuck at the bottom of the tree for it did not know how to climb a tree. The cat was yet to teach the trick. Might be it had de... read story C urrent Issue O ther Stories As I Travel - June 2010 As I Travel - May 2010 As I Travel - April 2010 As I Travel - March 2010 As I Travel - February 2010 As I Travel - January 2010 As I Travel - December 2009 As I Travel - November 2009 A Piece of the UK in Spain End of an era… As I Travel - October 2009 As I Travel - August 2009 As I Travel - July 2009 As I Travel - June 2009 Chinese, Portugese, Dutch and Kochi How Green Was My Valley As I Travel - May 2009 Gateway to Periyar National Park As I Travel - April 2009 India Has to Take Action in Fighting Pollution As I Travel - March 2009 Ozone Layer Depletion As I Travel - February 2009 Satyam - Hidden Truths in Aviation As I Travel - January 2009 Safety on the Ramp Getting Out of Fashion? As I Travel - December 2008 A Fairytale Gone Well As I Travel - November 2008 Flying High - October 2008 As I Travel - October 2008 To place your advertisements in this space please contact Marketing, Mediastepsindia home | about us | advertise with us | subscribe | contact us | team support : colorvibes The news items and Advertisements published herein have been collected from various source, which are considered to be reliable. Readers are however requested to verify the facts before making business decisions using the same. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the written permission from the Publisher. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2009