Oriental odyssey- Part 1

Yes it must be seeming like I have a lot of time on hand to be able to write another blog within one week!! Well....kind of yes, but then it's more out of my lack of faith in my memory, that I am writing this post. Lest I should forget all the details, I should pen down (or in this case type out). I was scheduled to travel back to my project in US, when I was told to cut short my vacation and travel to Shanghai (China) for a week and then travel back. As much as I hated leaving home earlier, I was tempted to (OK this will sound pompous!) add another country to the list.

Well, since it was a week long trip, naturally that left no time to venture the 'Manhattan of China' during the day. During the evening, me and my colleague ventured out on foot to see the local Shanghai. We decided to go see the "Bund", which curiously enough is derived from the Urdu word "band" meaning embankment (just a bit of trivia I just found). The word travelled to Shanghai through the Jews who fled from India and settled in Shanghai. This area traditionally housed banks and trading institutions. But the history aside, it would have been one beautiful place to walk, had it not been for the enormous structures covering the Huangpu river. Shanghai is preparing for the World Expo in 2010 and you can see the difference in preparation between there and in New Delhi for the Common Wealth Games.

I had stopped writing the blog last night and guess what? I am resuming the same from within my office. Everyone is in the holiday mood and so the calendar has no meetings, and the mails have only one response OOO (Out of Office)

So coming back to my riverside walk. All was going well till me and my colleague thought that it would be a good idea to have a coffee in the freezing weather. And we spotted a McDonald's cafe right in front of us in a street we later realized was India' version of Fashion Street (actually think that is what is was called even in Shanghai!). Just when I decided to take out my wallet to pay for the coffee and the glass of milk (yes, keep no doubts, I was not the one ordering the milk :) ) I realized that I had been mugged......MY WALLET WAS MISSING!!!! I was consoled that I was carrying a huge bag and that the wallet must be somewhere in there only. And I believed it :D

Anyways, we drank the coffee, clicked some pictures, fake bargained for some items in the Fashion Street and returned happily. Then when I checked my bag, what was I to find? What else....the bag was not there! Hurriedly I called up all my credit/debit card companies and blocked the cards and then sat down to think. Foolishly enough I had not kept any money with my luggage and had it not been for my colleague, I would hae been stranded in a non English speaking country on a business trip, without a single paisa!!!! Had placed a request with American Express for a replacement card (God bless them that they stuck to their word and delivered the card within 24 hrs!!), but the aadarsh (ideal) world citizen in me told me that I should lodge a complaint with the police for the lost wallet. So I tried to explain to the hotel reception that I need their help in getting the FIR written. low as they are, it took 4 Chinese people to understand this. After that they told me to go back to my room......hello.....I wanted to talk to the Police.....Oh is it? Then they made a call to the local Police station and took me to a meeting room away from the eyes of the public loitering in the hotel lobby and the Policemen came there. The room was shut. Me, 2 cops, and an ENGLISH SPEAKING CHINESE!!! Then started the interrogation----where did you go, why did you go there, who went with you, what time did you go there.......

(I hope this is going somewhere).

I tried to tell them that the wallet was brown in colour, had a photo of an Indian Saint (Sai Baba), my driver's license (and all other content description) and that I had the number of the cab in which I was travelling. To my layman mind they seemed like important information. Apparently not!!

And then cops then told the conceirge, who then told me that I was supposed to go to the Police station with them

(What??? I have not stolen the wallet!!! It was MY BROWN wallet and it has been stolen!!! Why should I go to the Police station? You have the information you think is important to find the thief.....go fetch!!)

Yes that was my thought bubble as I walked towards the cab.

I knew this bit of trivia but never thought I would find it irritating. Neha (my name!!) is phonetically verrrrrry similar to Hello in the Mandarin language. "Ni Hao" (don't believe me? read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_hao). So how is this irritating? I am in a Police station in China, at 11:30 PM, with a police man who is so old that you would want to help him sit straight in a chair (so naturally he is hard of hearing too) and I am trying to tell him my name......and he is smiling back and nodding!!! I rambled something (censored) and smiled back (I could ramble in any language I wanted....English or Hindi....they understood neither!!!! :D ). Then finally I handed over my passport to him and told the conceirge who was accompanying me to tell the sweet old man that I had enough of saying hello to him and that he should read my name from the passport.

After snoozing at the police station for an hour, I thought I had worried my parents back home enough, to have their first born sit in a Police station in a foreign land at an ungodly hour, I decided that the rate at which the FIR was being written, I could safely conclude that I would never get back my wallet and head back to the hotel. Oh...by the way here the guy finally asked me the wallet description and contents (phew!!! something to make me hope that they were not just humoring me by writing a fake FIR). I told the conceirge, that it was getting late and that I would come and collect my FIR the next day morning and we should leave now. Somehow the ultimatums always make people work faster (not as fast as I had hoped). The grandfather policeman quickly asked me to sign on few places which were duly translated to me in English. I wrote it down, that I am signing based on my understanding of the translation only and should not be held responsible if I have been misquoted cuz I could only see ants on that piece of paper and somewhere between the ants was the name "Neha Chaturvedi" (that was the only English on that paper, in case you did not get that!!). And then he said he will complete the rest and keep it so that I can collect it tomorrow. So much so for the speed :)

I signed the paper and stepped out hoping for a cab (though it was just a 5 minutes walk to the hotel, but Shanghai does get really cold in the night). The concierge had kept himself warm with 3-4 cigarettes in the 1 hour I was there. We literally sprinted to the Hotel. Before I could finally call it a day I recieved a call from the reception that the police were waiting for me downstairs. I rushed downstairs, literally singing praises for the fast action that the Chinese police take.....they already found my wallet??? I was told that people did not find their passports, how could I hope of finding my wallet, but they had found it....!

By now the lift reached the reception. I eagerly walked up to the Policemen (never was I so happy to see a cop).....and he handed me.....MY COPY OF THE FIR!!!!! So people don't really find their wallets in Shanghai!!

I was too tired by now to mull over the happenings. I called up home, let them know I was okay and that the Chinese police had not put me in jail for losing my wallet and finally hit the sack.

wan an (Good Night!)

Mexico- Where vegetarian means CHEESE

Well though a short trip, it was by no means an uneventful one. I have battled the DTC buses of Delhi and the local trains of Mumbai, so I was a little irritated with the hype about security concerns in Mexico. Ok ok....i was going to be right at the border and the drug mafia in Mexico is super active, but not letting non Mexicans step out the office premise without a "Sentry" was bit of an overkill :)
Anyways...that's not how the trip became eventful. I always maintain that something up there constantly conspires against me. I got up at 4 AM on a Sunday morning to catch a flight to Dallas. Oh did I forget to mention that I was not travelling to Mexico City or.....which are the other big cities of Mexico??. I was travelling to a place called Nuevo Laredo. Its on the Texas border, next to a place called Laredo. In Spanish "nuevo" means new or renewed.
So in order to get there, I was to fly from San Diego to Dallas and from there in a small 50 seater plane to Laredo. From there I was supposed to be "exported" to Mexico everyday in the morning and "imported" back into US every evening, with strict instructions in between parent company and client company that I would be safe within the client premise and not brought to risk by virtue of team lunches or dinners outside the office facility :)
Anyways, as my luck would have it my flight from Dallas to Laredo got CANCELLED cuz that tiny winy plane would not be able to survive the winds!!!! I hung around at the airport through the day, through the evening and then through most part of the night before giving up to the fact that I would not be able to make it to that 9 AM meeting. They could have told me that they would not find space on any of the next flights, and I could have gone to see Dallas city!!!
I was back at the airport at 9AM the next day (no i was not on the street at night, I caught up on my long needed sleep and some really bad french onion soup and baked potato (whoever said room service is better than dial up food!!)).
There was no airport for immigration check, so on the way to office we stopped by at the immigration office of Mexico with the "Sentry" as the interpreter, got the Visa stamped and were on our way to Mexico. Strangely enough the country reminds you of India. The streets are narrow, there are numerous mushroom shops on the street side and best of all honking cars :)
Not that I was dying to eat out in Mexico, but still one important part of any country are its eating habits, so I was in for a culture shock (that's really an exaggeration....I am done with the eating habit shocks :) ). It took 2 full minutes to get it translated into Spanish that i do not eat any "meat", "fish" or "egg" and after that the reaction was that of shock ("what does she eat then?") Anyways for 3 days I survived on salad for lunch. Dinner was the scary part, when I went out with hard core non vegetarian Americans!!! (on the US side of the border). Managed like the usual by ordering a bunch of side dishes. What was killing was anything which fell in the vegetarian category was dipped and soaked in cheese (there goes the calorie control from lunch!!!!)

The second time I felt like India was of course when I was returning from Mexico to the US side of the border one fine evening. Waiting in the van to cross the border was a 2.5 hr long ordeal. So we decided to walk across the border the next day. The sentry did not need to show his passport, so he could take a shorter route and wait for us at the US side of the border. 3 of us walked across the border and waited in a well formed line awaiting our turn to cross over to the immigration officer. And there comes this wave of 100 some people and just like that there is no line!! how much closer do you think it gets to India :)

Once on the US side of the border, my colleagues had a tough time waiting for the van to arrive. Its not like people would have been waiting on the other side with the trademark Texas guns ready to mug US citizens crossing the border. Anyways, who am I to judge. They must be having their reasons for being paranoid!!

My return journey was relatively calm except for the sprint between flights....I had half an hour between my flight to Dallas and the next one to San Diego. Thank God I caught the flight, else I would have never gone back to Laredo ever again!!!

More from Spanish land after the next visit.

Till then....hasta la vista!!!