Feb 4, 2016



Martin mentioned that he was in dubai  on a sunday and was asked by hr to be the travel buddy of this new malaysian guy who was starting out at bgc. Hence both martin and this chap would be travelling into basrah on monday on new visas. Lets call him Van. Van came over to meet martin at his desk and incidentally was carrying all his paperwork- visas, work permits, oilfield passes - everything in triplicate. Martin was amused and advised him that only one copy was required at basrah airport.  Van smiled and said he felt better carrying the extra copies just in case. Also required coming in on  a new iraqi visa was the precise sum of usd 202 to be rendered to some obscure iraqi person in a box at the airport immigration. Martin remembered this and promptly withdrew said amount from the atm at the bottom of the office. The next day these guys breezed thru the dubai airport and after a short flight landed in basrah without any fuss. Martin and van stood in line and martin pulled out his wallet to retrieve the 202 usd. Oops , it wasnt there! Of course not, seeing as he put the cash in his coat pocket and had chosen not to pick that particular coat this morning. He started to panic and explained the situation to van. Van was unperturbed and picked out exactly 202 dollars from his backpack pocket and loaned it to martin. He said " i am carrying the 202 usd in triplicate as well". Kiasuness rules!

So much for martin being van's travel buddy!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering KC Ryan

Image
As I lay on my bed in Block 2-Room 11, in the campat khor al zubair, a distant memory came rushing in ..seemingly out of nowhere. But while the analysis of why it came could wait, I thought it best to pen the memory itself. Kenneth Charles Ryan (KC Ryan).. Ex quarterback for univ notre dame now salesman extraordinaire for spx contech ( pronounced contetch by kartik) . He used to be the main man for our business with Daimler Chrysler. We would visit the chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills , Michigan- that really elegant north detroit suburb. The office was out of this planet for a car maker. Sleek as hell- futuristic with the then in vogue gangster car strewn randomly across the corridoor. I forget the name ( PT Cruiser? ). I had wanted one but could never get beyond the predictable and pragmatic toyota corolla. My first as well as second car- need to tell the story about the demise of my first car. ( btw, now I drive a beautiful and german Audi Q7 SUV).  I looked forward to these...
Read more

Thoughts on Contemporary Leadership

Leadership has to be value based and not normative- as complexity increases, rule books cannot be all encompassing and cannot keep up with the rate of exponential change. Therefore you need values and emanating from those values are the ethical considerations which are part and parcel of your interiority- that has to be the guiding force- and to me it is the only way forward. Which then means that leaders need to be compassionate people and not power hungry megalomaniacs- which is a change from the last century- and you see the tech industry already reflecting what I feel is a larger impending phenomenon.    Where Indians in particular, but all developing countries within a democratic set up in general have a leg up over their counterparts is that these folks have had first-hand experience dealing with inequality and systematic macro-inequities all their life. Therefore if you find someone within this mix with the right values, chances are that they are the real deal. It is ba...
Read more

Nov 25, 2019

The trap of second comings They say that the second coming is never quite the same as the first- and the incandescence of the first time in any successful endeavour is a tough act to follow. Parallels particularly present themselves from the rock music industry where there is a band that brilliantly bursts into the scene and produces some magic on their first album- never to quite repeat that ever again. Infact , our own bangla band in Singapore was a bit like that. In 2011 no one expected much from a pot pourri of amateurs that were only marginally bengali or even Indian to begin with but who took the stage innocuously at 9.30 pm on Nabami Night. What followed were some high quality renditions of familiar band songs. It left many people in the audience in awe- not just entertained. Bengalis are notoriously squeamish about offering any praise in matters beyond their ken. Music was one of those subjects where they , generally speaking, could be said to profess some degree of knowledge t...
Read more