27 posts tagged “india”

There are a few car posts of late at Lucire, probably because I have been manning the blog a bit over the weekend. Here’s the latest about the Tata Nano’s launch yesterday in Mumbai, and the videos are below or here. They are out of order below, sorry.

March is Women’s History Month. Show us a woman in history who has inspired you.

Probably Indira Gandhi. When I think back to my childhood, pre-Mrs Thatcher, it was Mrs Gandhi who was the best known female PM. I seem to remember that she was the first female politician talked about at school. I was too young to appreciate her policies, but outside of my own family, Mrs Gandhi was probably the one person who signalled that men should not have a monopoly over positions of power.

My big package from India, that I had asked to be posted prior to my departure, arrived from TNT today and I noticed it had been opened by Customs.
   Normally, I support these Customs inspections. I have nothing to hide, and when I watched programmes like the Australian Border Patrol, it’s fascinating what they have to go through.
   But you also see the Aussies being ultra-careful when opening packages, in case they are suspicious, because they reseal everything as it was and let the cops follow up.
   Um, not so here, it seems.
   Everything escaped their scrutiny except for the most precious item of all, a figurine of Lord Ganesha given to me by the Proton Business School. Ganesha is the holiest figure in the Hindi religion. It was the only one with ‘Inspected by Customs’ tape all around it.

   So far so good and you could blame the box’s dents on transit (not really, but that’s my being nice). But then I saw what state he was in: Snapped right across the centre. I do not believe this is due to transit, because the plastic case is in good order. I guess Butterfingers wanted to check if there were drugs in the base. He’s in three pieces. Here’s one of his arms round back.
   What sort of pathetic, atheist bastard inspected this package? Is having something religious that badly frowned upon that Customs would go and destroy it now?
   You bet I am going to complain. Not that damage to packages is among the Customs FAQs on their website—I’d say by the damage it was far more frequent than expected. Dumb sonofbitches.
   And what if I was of the Hindu faith? I am pissed now, but I would be additionally mega-offended and I would think that the locals here were a bunch of f***ing, disrespectful dorks if I was of the faith. This damage looks malicious to me: what do you think?

Wow.
   That’s all I can say after the Crowne Plaza’s contact with me yesterday.
   As some of you know, I wasn’t that complimentary about the Crowne Plaza Today Gurgaon hotel during my time in India. The service was a trifle slow for such a top-rated establishment, and I blogged about it, almost in a throwaway fashion.
   Yesterday, two of the staff—Monica, as well as Nitin Sharma, the assistant director of the food and beverage department—called me to apologize. And this morning, I awoke to find a written apology from Mr Sharma, which I have gratefully accepted.
   His words: ‘I would like to extend my sincere apologies for the delay in service at the bar.
   ‘I hope you will accept my apology and give us another opportunity to showcase our hospitality. Once again I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused.
   ‘I would request to give us another chance of proving the real hospitality of Crowne Plaza.’
   If I wasn’t already enamoured with the high quality of Indian hospitality, I am now.
   Of course I will be delighted to return to Gurgaon and check out the Crowne Plaza Today once more.
   I’ve also offered to write about this in the online edition of Lucire, because the positive side of this deserves a wider airing. Who knew that the Crowne Plaza would make a customer feel this good after a negative experience?
   This is real customer service in the 21st century. It shows (a) consumer power; (b) the fact that brands are now being steered by audiences and that the legal trade mark owner tends to be a steward steering perceptions; (c) that the Crowne Plaza is willing to engage its customers, safeguard its brand, and help steer those perceptions positively.

That was impressive, especially since I am a loyalty card holder—not that they knew that. After saying less than charitable things about the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Gurgaon, guess who called? Monica from the hotel with a long-distance call, asking what the problem was, with an apology and a pledge that next time, the service would be top-notch. This blog obviously gets traffic I never even expected, and it has highlighted once again those world-beating service ideas that the Indian people hold. Now, if every hotel in the world cared that much …

I had never heard of Intopic until I bought one of its keyboards in Mongkok in Hong Kong. It turns out it’s a Taiwanese firm with a full line of keyboards and mice, as well as other products.
   So far, so good. I need a keyboard around 39 cm wide (this is 8 mm beyond that): any wider, I find that I develop RSI problems because of reaching for the mouse. This one is about one column of keys wider than what I generally like, but these days, in Hong Kong, it’s the narrowest multimedia keyboard money can buy.

   My old one was a Genius keyboard, which always presented a few problems. The first was that it was very easy for things to get between the keys and to mess up its operation. The L key never worked properly from scratch and needed cleaning. The full stop or period key was inexplicably narrower than the rest. But I loved that keyboard because it spoiled me: direct buttons to calculator, browser controls, volume, etc. It was also under that 39 cm limit. It was a pity that it wasn’t that well made: a slightly longer thumbnail soon put a dent in the space bar, and I had to take it apart on numerous occasions to clean it so its keys would continue working. It never stood a chance when some Glaceau Vitamin Water flew out of its bottle on opening.
   Basically, it was the least robust keyboard I have ever owned, dying in about three years. It’s meant to be laptop-style, but if I had a keyboard like that on a laptop, I would be very upset.
   Beautiful to look at, and not bad to use; plus the keys sounded nice when you pressed them. With hindsight, however, it was not the best ownership experience, regardless of the very low price I paid.
   The new one isn’t trouble-free, but quality-wise, it seems to beat the Genius hands-down. For starters, I paid a low HK$98 (plus HK$10 for a USB–PS2 adapter, which, I might add, needed a quick fix from me due to a piece of metal inside being flimsy). The keys feel a tad too soft, not in the materials, but in the springing action beneath them. There is an illogical addition of the backslash key to the left of the space bar, where I expect Alt to be. (It is unnecessary: there is another backslash key beneath the backspace one.) And the extra column of keys to the right of backspace and enter is a bit annoying: this is where Intopic has relocated home, page up, page down and end to, but this seems to be a common design now among narrower Chinese keyboards.
   The good news is that the keys have stood up to constant use better than the Genius; I finally have the luxury of a normal-sized full stop; the build quality is less flimsy than the Genius’s; and it turns out, according to the Intopic brochure inside the box, that this KBD-10 model is the narrowest it makes (39·8 cm). I have fewer hot keys, sadly, and only a couple are for browsing, but since narrow keyboards with these additional keys are hard to come by these days, I am not complaining. My brain is slowly rewiring itself to the new Alt key, and the fact that the home key is in a slightly more logical place than on the Genius (between Control and the Windows start menu keys).
   Genius still makes a multimedia keyboard which would have been the logical replacement to my old KB-19e, but I am happy to have the Intopic instead. Originally I had some doubts but the better quality, even in its first week, speaks for itself. I was lucky, in that case, that the computer mall in Mongkok didn’t have anyone importing the Genius brand.
   The only other one that could have been a contender in Hong Kong was a Logitech keyboard, which was also available here from Dick Smith Electronics at a mere NZ$30. However, there were no hot keys and I noticed the one in stock at Noel Leeming had Arial on the keys: a no-no for someone who detests the look of that typeface family. I was going to show you the picture of that one, but the Logitech website is not loading: not a good sign. (The one at left is from the Dick Smith site.)
   A hunt around the computer malls of New Delhi resulted in nothing suitable: either there were the laptop-style ones with no numeric keypad (since I write in French and German, I need the keypad for a PC) or ultra-wide ones which I could get anywhere else in the world.
   So, the keyboard search was successful: here’s to a reliable Intopic-owning experience. And as the first week has revealed fewer problems than the Genius, I hope the company gets to export its wares more widely.

Normally I can work out what’s being said but since I don’t know the first thing about Devangari, anyone like to enlighten me?

A few interesting things to note about cars in India.
   The Hindustan Ambassador is still plentiful in number. Though outwardly identical to the Morris Oxford of the 1950s, it is regarded as India’s first national car, rather than the Tata Indica. Cab drivers and government types prefer Ambis, and the big shots have white Ambis with a light on the top of the leading edge of the roof.
   A few of my hosts and friends knew of the Premier Padmini when I brought up the topic, but young people did not. I only saw two in my time there, one in Indore and one in New Delhi. They tell me they are more plentiful in Bombay—the majority of Indians I met referred to their southern city by this name, not Mumbai.
   The Hindustan Contessa, Premier 118 NE and the Standard 2000 were flops, so there was no surprise that they were totally unseen during my time there.
   Maruti is the market leader, and there are 800s everywhere. Maruti is expanding its line-up: the Swift DZire (four-door Swift) and SX4 sedan being newer entrants, appealing to Indians who like the size. DZire is doing well, despite a silly name; in Indore, SX4 taxicabs regularly ferried me twice. The regular Swift hatchback is also sold there, but it’s still the 800 that pushes the Maruti–Suzuki name. I was saddened to see the demise of the Maruti symbol, however, on the latest models, in favour of the Suzuki S.
   From my brief time there, it’s fairly safe to say that very, very few Sipanis and Standard Heralds and Gazels have survived. I saw none.
   I saw only two Tata Indica Vistas, or V3s.
   It took till my second day to see a Tata Indigo Marina. The Tata cars are popular but regarded by the locals more as a car produced by a truck manufacturer and not as refined as Japanese brands—although many of the Japanese and Korean brands are actually made by Indians and have quality equal to, if not better than, what emerges from Japan and Korea.
   There are a lot of Tata Indicas and Indigos.
   There are numerous Mahindra Scorpios and Tata Safaris, as some Indians go for SUVs. Let’s hope this trend doesn’t last. We should be copying them with their subcompact cars, not the other way around.
   Hyundai is growing like crazy and the i20 is a big deal, though it was too soon after the launch to spot any on the roads. However, there are plenty of i10s, which are made in India for the world market.
   Honda is considered a premium make, and the City (Fit Aria) is a big seller. The latest model is advertised on billboards around Gurgaon, and I managed to see one of these. Civics are considered quite upscale, especially considering India receives the fancy Thai-made sedan. The Accord is very flash.
   Both Hyundai and Honda are arguably in a better position than Honda, which began its market assault on India with the Innova, a utility vehicle that some taxi drivers adopted. It has been harder for Toyota to establish a name for itself as a manufacturer of passenger cars. The Corolla Altis (E120) is gaining ground, but not as successfully as one might think.
   GM is very thin on the ground. Daewoos are rebadged as Chevrolets, and there are a few Matizes, Kaloses and Lacettis around, with other model names. Of earlier efforts, there are some four-door (booted) Opel Corsas about, but not many. Fiat also failed: I saw one Uno, and a handful of Palios. One expected better from this master of small cars.
   Of American brands, Ford is doing an incredible job and its Ikon and Fiesta models seem to have done very well, certainly better than Toyota. The Fiesta is more advanced than any compact that Ford sells in the US.
   As in Roma, there is a sense of rhythm to driving in India. Appearing chaotic at first glance, the road rules make some sense if you drive, or are driven, for long enough. I am actually game to give it a shot.

A few more shots from this fascinating country. You can tell I am really into India.

   This is probably the only country in the world that puts is tourist-marketing slogan on its bureaucratic forms. Already a tick for India as I filled out my second Indian form. It’s also far easier to follow than anything the US gives out to us foreigners.    Above is the first outside scene I had of India at ground level, exiting Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. I must have gone back via a different part because it looked nothing like this (image below). Or the pace of change was faster than even I have said.
   Even my Indian hosts said that they were not 100 per cent sure of where I could be met because things change so quickly at the airport.
   I was most fascinated by the Hindustan Ambassador taxicabs. I haven’t seen this shape of Morris Oxford (on which the Ambi is based) for years.    If you are wondering where all the bicycling Indians have gone, they are motorcycling. And all the old motorcyclists are on four wheels. The above is the motorcycle park at IGI.
   I saw very few of the family-on-a-bike situations that Ratan Tata spoke of when he launched the Nano, though I am sure they exist. In Indore, I did see a man and a woman on a bike—she was keeping their new PC from falling off while hanging on herself. In some ways, that was quite an encouraging sign.    This is what IGI looked like when I flew out, from the entrance to the departure gates. Totally modern and the equal of any airport in the western world.    This is not my last Christmas tree pic, but it shows again that the Indians got more into the mood of the season than I expected. With hindsight, it was only logical: Christmas is a big deal in Hong Kong, for instance, yet again it would not have as many Christians per capita as New Zealand.    Finally, this image illustrates that IGI is fairly typical. The flight departures’ board is not digital, but I quite enjoyed seeing the letters flip over in the traditional way. If it works and it generates less electricity, then I say keep it. Don’t go modern for modernity’s sake; only do it when there is a practical reason to do so.