HipAeroNerd

India is a country that has always had a scarcity of resources. Per capita, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. As such, the people were constantly competing for everything, from food, water, and housing, to education. The Supreme Court just a couple months ago passed a law that schools could not interview pupils under 5 for admission. Children as young as 3 had been subjected to gruelling entrance exams and interviews while trying to get into the best preschools. After hearing this, things started to make sense to me. I will use my professor as an example here, but we have all had an Indian coworker who acts in this manner. My professor is constantly saying that he attending India’s "elite" institutions, that he ranked 86th out of 500,000 on this entrance exam, that his brother and sister own a house worth USD $500,000, etc. Another example is the coworker who starts every comment at a meeting with this credentials. While there is no excuse for arrogance, we fierce competition for scarce resources in India is what breeds that behavior.

DISCLAIMER: There are many, many Indian Americans who are not arrogant like our professor. I realize I have made an overgeneralization, but I think we all will agree there are enough Indian Americans who display these behaviors to make this exercise interesting.

Arriving into Indira Ghandi International Airport in Delhi is an experience. As soon as you step off the aircraft, you see the black, missing, and delapidated ceiling tiles, giving you a first glimpse of the poor infrastucture of the country. The road from the airport to the hotels is even more striking. While I have seen poverty before in other developing countries, this is the worst I have seen. There are people living in shanties on any open tract of land. In front of brand new shiny glass office buildings, there are tents and shanties, with women washing their clothes in the sewer water. There are cattle grazing on the medians of the highways and occasionally wandering into the traffic lanes. Delhi is one of the wealthiest cities in India. I cannot even imagine what the poor areas are like.

After arriving at the hotel, I quickly hired a driver and headed out, trying to beat the 100 degree heat with nearly 100 percent humidity. My driver was very friendly. He was studying computer science in the evenings. He took me to all the sites I wanted to see, negotiated with the entrance people so I was not overcharged, and provided a very basic tour of some sites. However, as happened to me in Egypt, he kept stopping in stores on the way between sights. "Just look. Ten minutes. You don’t have to buy." The drivers get a commision when they bring customers to the stores. Even if you ask not to be brought there, they tell you, "My company requires it so that you have the opportunity to purchase anything you need." By the end of the day, with temperatures approaching 100, I just wanted to jump in the pool and cool off. I finally told him I would tip him an extra 100 rupees if he would take me straight home.

Since
I had a 12 hour layover in München, I dropped off my carry-on in a locker in
the Lufthansa lounge and took the S-Bahn into the city. I traversed the city’s
gardens, palaces, and the gayborhood for about four hours. It is such a
beautiful city. There are trees and flowers everywhere! The only thing as
pretty as the city are the German mens.

In
one of the streams, there is an area of whitewater where there were four,
muscular, German men in skin-tight wet suits, leaving nothing to the
imagination, surfing. I never thought of Germans surfing, let alone in a stream
in the middle of a city in Bavaria!

I
have decided that I will start German classes when I get home. I hate not being
able to understand what people are saying to me. Its so embarrassing. When I
was in Spain this past March, I had wanted to practice speaking Spanish, which I think I do
fairly well. However, everyone kept speaking to me in English even when I
continued speaking Spanish to them. I speak very little German (for the time
being). Consequently, I speak English to everyone here, yet they keep speaking
German back to me. Why!

I have decided that Boston is
joining Frankfurt on my blacklist of airports.
In order to connect from a domestic to an international flight, you must not
only exit security, you have to walk down a sidewalk outside. I had the
pleasure of doing this in the rain. Then, I had the pleasure of being detained
by the TSA and having them try to send my things off with a confused Italian
teenager. When I boarded the plane, I thought my annoyances were over…

Just as all the passengers completed boarding, and we were
about to push back from the gate, a severe thunderstorm hit Boston Logan
International airport. The wind was so strong it was rocking the plane back and
forth. Next to us, two Aer Lingus cargo bins blew off the loading machine and
began sliding down the tarmac towards our aircraft. Two vans were able to park
and stop the bins from hitting my plane.

After waiting for the weather to calm down, we were finally
ready to take off. The rain had stopped but the runway was still wet. As we
began to lumber down the runway, a very strong crosswind caused our planned to
begin skidding and crabbing down the runway. The plane was shaking and making a
horrible noise as we slid for about 100 yards. I didn’t know if we would be
able to stop on the runway or if we would slide into the grass or into the
water. Luckily, the pilot was able to stop the plane, sideways on the runway,
and we were able to taxi around and join the queue for the runway once again.
While we were waiting, two other airplanes also had to abort their takeoff
because of the crosswinds. On our second try, we took off without incident.
Once in the air, I enjoyed the comforts of Lufthansa’s new business class
seats, ate a good meal, and then slept for a couple hours. I arrived in Munchen
ready to enjoy the day!