Yeah, I am finally in Jo'Burg. Its a beautiful place from whatever little I have seen of it so far. The flight was exceptionally bumpy and thus allowed for very little sleeping time. Must have slept for about an hour and a half in the long 9 hour flight. When I was waiting at the Mumbai International Airport, I ran into another person who was on his way to Durban and as luck would have it, he was also from the pharmaceutical industry and soon we got talking. In no time the laptop was out and the both of us gave presentations on our companies to each other (now I know why they say, you must be prepared to give a presenatation at the shortest notice). There was this guy who was sitting next to us and was on his way to Delhi from Riyadh and what surprised me the most was this large can he was carrying along. It has some liquid in it and the can was sealed shut. There was a label on the can which said Zam Zam. Now the only other time that I have heard about this word is when I was travelling in the 63 number bus from Byculla Station to Haji Ali for work everyday. There is a shop somewhere near Mumbai Central which goes by the name of Zam Zam sweets. So i guess it must be like the raw material for some muslim deilcacy or something.
Other than that the weather here is quite fine. It is a fine 12-14C which feels really fine when you are coming from 40C temperatures in Mumbai. Even though the temperature is cool, the sun is out most of the times and is shining bright which makes the weather really pleasent. The bad part about this whole trip is that I don't think I will get to see too much of what is around this place. The reason being that there is too much of work to do and my boss might also drop in by the end of my visit so I really have to have something to show for my stay here (put in better terms, justify the money spent on me). The good part about the whole thing is that there is a lot of work. I mean the work to do here is really good and I will get to learn a lot of stuff. Already in my stay here of a whole of two days, I have already met two CEO's and an executive VP of some big companies. Some more meetings are in the pipeline. Lets see how things shape up.
As for the people of Jo'Burg, haven't interacted much with them but they seem to be really friendly. Whenever you stop at a restaurant or perhaps the security gate of an office, the people will give you a broad smile and make sure that they say hello and also ask how you are doing. When they come to know that I am from India, most of them will spend an additional minute or two trying to ask me something about the country. Its really good to just chat to strangers. The other great thing about Jo'Burg which I saw yesterday in action is the amazing driving by the residents here. I mean people are so civilized. I saw this guy who cut a lane because he kinda forgot where he was going, he did cut the lane, but then he looks out of the window and apologiges and stuff. It was really cool and yesterday again I was returning to the hotel and there was this big traffic congestion because there was a power failure and none of the lights would work. So there was a lot of traffic, cars standing at one place for like 10 minutes on an end but the best part was that no one was honking. Wonder when things like that would happen in India.
I was travelling with Satvir and he was talking about this time when he was in Jaipur and the cabbie just refused to take his hands of the horn. It was as if the driver was programmed to do that every 15 seconds or something. Anyway have to get going to the hotel. Its gonna be lonely now, but I'll live through it. Have got hold of a world call calling card, that means I can finally call back to India.