Again two weeks later and longer in this sometimes strange country. I already noticed before, but as we have our own biases against (some) of the people in India, it also works the other way around; these two clippings I took from Maxim India…

Although still a joke, it is a good representation of how some (not all of course) Indians think of western and especially blond women. I guess this attitude originates from the good ol’ sixties when many westerners fled to India for finding Ganja, an affordable life and their Nirvana. Still you can find communities like these in Pondicherry (Auroville), Pune and Goa. Want to live there? Bring a negative HIV test and find you’re self more than welcome…

Most people will remember India as a dirty country, with open sewers, poor people living in slums and dirt/beggars everywhere but with a really big service industry, mostly focused on IT. As a friend stated; “India is one big shithouse with an internet connection”. Maybe that could be partly true, but this shithouse has some damn nice toilet seats, but only if you’re able to pay for it. If there is no traveling going on we mostly spend our weekends in clubs like FUGA, which is according to me the best place in town, with a really great ambiance, DJs and even more striking; Indian girls with skirts the size of a belt. And that is, softly speaking a huge outrage in this country where (old fashioned) norms require women to cover their body (curves) at all times.

Sundays we tend to take it easy and hang out at the Leela palace (5*+) or at the Taj (5*)… Basically it means that we join the brunch (actually more a lunch) with unlimited drinking and eating for the afternoon, service is excellent, we can make use of the pool and what is the best; they have decent cheese, bread and other good stuff I miss from back home… Not bad for Hans the Trainee ey?

Haven’t written much about work lately, anyway, haven’t written much at all… I think it’s because I don’t have much free time at hand: since I realized that complaining about work doesn’t really take you anywhere, I decided to take het hef in eigen handen (take control of the situation in Dutch). And now, I actually work 9 hours straight, which is, very uncommon for the average AIESEC trainee in Bangalore. Next to my work at the DLT (distribution, Logistics and Transport) division, I did some work for e-Governance, and currently setting up the research for a book written by our CEO about innovation in multinational companies. I’m part of the research team for this book, in a few months this team will be spread over the world; Felix in Michigan, Ilker in Turkey and Hans in Europe. From those locations we are supposed to visit CEO’s or any other person of strategic importance for an interview, which will be used later in the book as a case study. So at the moment we are preparing the methodology part of the project. We still have a long way to go, but I’m sure we’ll get there.

Travel… Of course! Been last month to Kerala Backwaters, Fort Cochin and Kerala beach! I like! Btw, did you Kerala is actually the only Communist state in India?

If interested there is this documentary the travel program RTL travel (in Dutch).

Cheers…