India trip: KLM's costly delay, Jet Airways corruption and the high-fives

During my recently concluded India trip, a few things stood out that I thought were worth calling out:

1. KLM systems are inefficient and probably need an upgrade.
The longer version: Our SFO-AMS flight was timely. However, our AMS-DEL flight, that was initially on time, kept getting delayed, first by two hours and then by four hours. Now, flight delays are not uncommon. What I thought was remarkable (sic) was the lack of empathy one of the ground staff showed to the weary passengers.

After the first delay information (of two hours), we asked how it would impact the flight arrival time in Delhi. Clearly many of us had onward journeys from Delhi and hence wanted to make arrangements if needed. We were very clearly told that there would be NO IMPACT on arrival time.This was obviously great news and we laid easy.

Then, after two hours, the flight got delayed by an additional two hours. Just to be sure, I again asked for the anticipated arrival time in Delhi. This time, I was told that arrival in Delhi would be delayed by FOUR HOURS. This was a surprise for us since just some time back, the attendant had informed us that there would be no delay in arrival time due to the first two hour delay. So why this four hour delay in arrival just with an additional two hour delay in departure.

The answer could have been (and as it turned out, it was) that the original information about "NO IMPACT on arrival time" was wrong. However, the attendant really got pissed off at me for asking what I thought was a reasonable and logical clarification. She refused to accept that just a few minutes back, her own system was showing NO IMPACT on arrival due to the original two-hour departure delay.

Any way, another attendant came to our rescue and apologized for the original mistake. Good for her, not so much for me though. I had to cancel my current DEL-IDR flight, getting only 20% of the original amount back. Then, I had to book another flight, at THREE times the original price. So in summary, I ended up paying 3.8X of the price, thanks to a KLM goof up. And because I was travelling with my spouse and our kid, the damage was amplified 3X. Ouch! Thanks KLM...

2. (Unexpected) corruption shown by Jet Airways Delhi Ground staff
The general feeling in India is that the public services have endemic corruption, the private services are generally clean. General day to day encounters in India typically reinforce this. So it was a great surprise (and dismay) when I experienced first hand corruption in Jet Airways, one of India's premier airline carriers. Here is how it went:
After reaching Delhi, we proceeded to check in with Jet Airways to fly to Indore. Yes, this is the ticket we had booked at 3X the original price, thanks to the KLM delay I covered above in part one. At the check in counter, we were told that we had about 15KGs of extra luggage. This was not a surprise to me since we had weighed ealier and knew the domestic flight luggage rules. The conversation went like this:
Jet Airways check-in staff - Sir, you have about 15 KGs of extra luggage. This will cost you about Rs 5000.
Me - Yes, fine.
Staff - How much can you pay?
Me - I have already paid a lot for the tickets. Perhaps you can take that into consideration and reduce the price.
Staff - Ok, how much can you pay?
Me - you tell me...
Staff - How about Rs 3000
Me - Sure. I took out Rs 3000 in cash and attempted to give him in full public view at the counter.
Staff - No, no, don't pay here. Go with that person (pointing to the baggage handler).

He completes the formalities (even adds priority to my baggage). Then the baggage handler takes to a side and signals me to hand over the cash, which I do. He slyly pockets it.

This entire episode is happening right in front of everyone, a very busy series of check-in counters. Although small, this episode of corruption was sad to see happening at Jet Airways. I can only hope this was a one-off.

In contrast, I must mention the following five positive service interactions (the high-fives):
i) I was able to submit paperwork for my land mutation formalities in Bangalore (Mugalur Gram Panchayat office) without any bribe. The officer was especially helpful and considerate.
ii) The security guard at my housing complex in Bangalore refused to accept a tip of Rs 100 for a small favor he did for me. To put this in perspective, these guards are very poorly paid and Rs 100 is a reasonably high amount of money for them. Still, he didn't accept the tip.
iii) The bell boy at Royal Orchid hotel (Whitefield) also refused to accept any tip for bringing my luggage up. Very pleasing experience.
iv) On my return, the Indigo ground staff in Patna promptly charged me Rs 5000 for my excess luggage.
v) The KLM flight crew during my return flight (both DEL-AMS, and AMS-SFO) were very kind and considerate, especially towards our 5-year old. Thank you!

So overall? Well, I guess a generally positive travel experience except for an unnecessary deep hole left in my pocket due to KLM flight delay and mis-communication.

Next blog on my Indian Railways experience and how a Railway GM delayed my already late train by another hour.

No Country for White Men

Like most people, I listen to the public radio (NPR/KQED  San Francisco Bay Area) while commuting to work and back every day. On most days, the (obvious) liberal bias is annoying but on some days, the bias is so strong it leaves me frothing with frustration. The liberal narrative makes it appear as if all the problems in the world can be blamed on USA, and in particular, on its white population.

And I am not even white.

Sample some of the narratives in the recent times:

Black Lives Matter 

Of course they matter! But doesn't this movement sound exclusionary, at least a little bit. What if I substitute "Black" with "White", or "Christian". "White Lives Matter" is so Ku-Klaxian, the liberal media would have certainly been horrified should such an organization was forming anywhere - and rightfully so. But then why is saying BLM ok? Imagine being a white person being told in your face day-in day-out that "BLACK Lives Matter". Wouldn't a sense of frustration start building up - slowly yet surely.

Instead, can we look at the media and prominent black organizations to change the narrative to "All Lives Matter" - something that is more inclusive and that we can all associate with.

Shooting Tragedies

Am I the only one to have noticed a distinct difference between the media narratives describing different kinds of shootings. In case of police shootings, even though more whites die at the hands of police, the liberal media only wakes up when the headline reads "WHITE police office shot and killed a black...". To be clear, this is not an apology for the despicable murders some police officers seem to have committed from what we can see in videos circulating in the public media. But it begs the question - why does the liberal media wake up only in one situation. What about cases where blacks are murdered by blacks - something that accounts for the vast majority of black deaths? Why is there a near-zero outcry about crime rate of Chicago - a city governed by democrats since 1931, and that is now synonymous with crime and corruption. Isn't the silence of liberal media on utter failure of a once-great-city under the democrats incredibly dishonest at best and racist at worst? 

Ideological nut cases driven tragedies

This is where the liberal media really shines in their bigotry. Should the perpetrator be anyone other than radical islamists, they will make it clear in their opening statement that the perpetrator was a "". People start going crazy blaming gun-owners so much so they don't even want them praying for the victims.  However if there is the slightest hint of radical islamism at play, the great liberal media circus starts, with them doing every kind of gymnastics just to avoid stating the obvious. The latest tragedy in San Bernardino caught even the POTUS off-guard with his completely orthogonal and nonsensical response. 

How many times have we heard the line "let's be clear, a vast majority of muslims are peace-loving..." in an effort to not generalize the issue. And THAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO - Of course, we can't blame an entire community for the actions of a few nut-jobs. But why can't the liberal media follow the same standards when the shooter is a white gun-owner, in which case they seem ever so enthusiastic to generalize the entire gun-owning population. 

We are not going to have gun reforms by vilifying a large part of our population. 

Illegal Immigration

The left does their best to conflate legal immigration with illegal. As Douglas Murray put so eloquently, there is a big difference between the two - the law is on the side of one and NOT on the side of other. USA is still considered the land of opportunities by many, and it draws talent from around the world. However, to come here, most of them follow the laid-down process, a process that is lengthy, excruciating, and sometimes seemingly unfair. But following the process should be the ONLY way to get here. However the liberal media talks endlessly about the plight of illegals. The politically correct term I believe is "undocumented", as if it is merely an issue of documentation. Platitudes like "no human being is illegal" are thrown around. Of course that's true. Should we then invite about 30% of India's poor and nearly whole of Africa as well? The bastion of liberal hypocrisy, NY Times, has nothing but disdain for Indian IT workers affecting 250 jobs at Disney and yet their complete and active support for the 11 million illegals here. 

It is no wonder the liberal media can't get their head around Donald Trump's appeal (they have been predicting his demise for ages now). If you are a white guy, sick of getting liberal hypocrisy shoveled in your face every morning and evening, you would even consider a guy as blunt as Trump for President. 

I consider myself a liberal progressive, the kind that believes in freedom of speech, human and constitutional rights, less government, women's and LGBT rights, freedom of and from religion, environmental protection etc. Alas, today's "liberals" are mostly the leftists of yesterday's - an ideology that completely failed in the twentieth century and resulted in unspeakable misery for almost half of humanity. They are not progressives but regressives. The true liberals amongst us must speak up and claim the right liberal narrative. We cannot let NPR and NYT turn USA into USSR.

Free Electoral Promises - Signs of a decaying society

Free food, free medical access, free education, free retirement plans - the lure of the free stuff is overwhelmingly compelling to the voters. So it is with awe and admiration I look at political systems where the debate has not degenerated into who can promise the most stuff free.

The path of "free" is also the shortest path to poverty of a country and its economy. What's more, societies with a lot of free promises are also the societies with the least freedom. That politicians still promise free stuff after the failed Soviet experiment (communism is the epitome of a society with free promises and the least freedom) speaks to how quickly collective amnesia takes over a society.

Now we can all agree that everyone should have enough to live a healthy and productive life. The only question is how do we make that possible at a societal scale. Some (many?) argue the way to be to just give the stuff away - make everything a right - food, housing, medical care, education and so on. This is all very hearty but what you get is East Germany, USSR, even India pre-liberalization - where everything is free and nothing is available.

The other approach is what USA showed the world - you want stuff, you work for it. At some level, this is cold-hearted and doesn't jive with the goody mushy feeling we yearn for. But this system produced the most prosperous society on earth in merely a couple of hundred years of its existence (and yes among other and some horrible things as well but not unlike other societies that have had their own issues). Compare that to societies that are hundreds and thousands of years old, and are still trying a way to figure out a way to bring mass scale prosperity to their societies or are looking at slow but sure decline in living standards in decades to come.

It is in this context that I fear the whole democratic party rhetoric currently underway. Their platform and message is simple and goes along the lines of "you should have a right to a good life and we will fulfill that by making things free for you." Never mind that they have no clue about where they'd get the money from (except that they will raise taxes more). I sure hope they are sane enough to appreciate that people (doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers) won't just show up for work without being paid, just in the name of the greater good of the society.

You would think given the Democratic rhetoric, it would be easy to pick the Republicans with their commitment to fiscal discipline, small government and focus on economic activity as an engine of wealth generation. Alas, they have done their best to portray themselves as the party of people leaving in cuckoo-land. In this day & age, what mainstream nitwit politician advocates against women's right to make decisions about their own health, and against gay rights. Whatever small government they want, they want that meddling in women's affairs. The so-called pro-lifers need to get a life. The travesty of the GOP presidential debate was not the tough questions Kelly asked Trump, it was that she didn't expose Walker and Huckabee for the regressive positions they take on abortion. "I'd like you to keep your legislative hands off my body" would have been a nice straight line from Kelly.

Please America, don't lose your working soul. Don't be under any illusion that you are somehow special - you are not. Your system and work ethic is what makes you special. Barter that for the promise of free stuff, and you get nothing but a society of moochers. 

Je suis CHARLIE

Over the last few days, it has been encouraging to watch the mainstream international/western media debate. It appears as though the liberals are finally realizing that ignoring or dancing around an issue doesn't make it automatically go away. In fact, it can come to bite them (and all of us) as it did in France. The sad part is that it took out the bravest amongst the media.

There have been attempts to paint Charlie Hebdo as a racist, right wing organization. It was/is exactly 180-degree opposite - this group is so far to the left, it is actually one of the most trenchant critic of Marine La Pen and her right wing French party. The fact is that Charlie Hebdo is one of the few LIBERAL media organizations in the truest sense of the word - they regularly lampoon the powerful, and regularly challenge the authority of the most powerful opium the human race ever had - religion.

It hasn't even been a few days and there are already apologists popping up for the cowardly massacre. And this group is an eclectic one - from Financial Times to OutlookIndia columnists to the so-called (a few) religious spokespersons. Excuses vary but here are the major ones I have come across in media so far:

Excuse 1: Charlie Hebdo had it coming when it chose to publish beyond the boundaries allowed by religions. It is such a medieval argument, it almost seems like we still live in a theocratic society, not secular one.

Excuse 2: Charlie Hebdo murders are a result of Western invasion of the Middle-east, or segregation of minorities or something else, anything but what the murderers expressly said during the attack - they were avenging printing of cartoons (not fighting for Palestine, not fighting for better social conditions, nothing). We have to start challenging the victim-mindset put forth by the apologists. One can only blame the world so much.

Excuse 3: Charlie Hebdo is racist. No, it is not. Charlie Hebdo lampoons religions, not races (two entirely different things). It's cartoons are filled with caricatures of multiple religious figures. And while it is perfectly alright not to agree with them, to ignore them or to lampoon Charlie Hedbo in return, physically harming in any for, least of all by murdering their staff has to be criticized unreservedly.

The event is so appalling, it has been condemned by major religious leaders of all denominations, as it should. But my clearest ray of hope actually came from the President of Egypt, when he talked to the religious leaders about the need for a religious revolution, no less. He gave that speech before the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Alas! His message didn't reach the French brothers soon enough. Here are some excerpts from his speech

Freedom of Expression is not and cannot be a grey area. Putting it in a grey area harms not the powerful but the very weak. Answer to a satire is another satire, answer to a book is another book - not guns, machetes or bombs. Charlie Hebdo is a grim reminder - we must all defend our freedom of expression actively and not leave it to just the few among us to carry the weight for all of us lest we want them to keep getting buried under that weight.