Today was special day with all possible wonderful events.
Never did I think that I'll be visting places which i have never visited in my life.
The day started normally, everything was fine except that I was bit late to leave for office. Almost everyday while going and coming from office to home I would speak on my mobile phone. For some reason I was not doing that today.
While I was overtaking another vehicle (a big and expensive one), I looked into the rear view mirror and realized that something is not correct. The other driver was changing the lane before my vehicle cleared the space for him. And thud …. was the sound. Fine I said.. I will be cool and not get into argument.
Finally I got down to inspect the damages, and same did the other driver (lets call him Mr. Tom for simplicity).
His car was damaged more than mine, we exchanged contact numbers and names and continued with our ride. So do you think it is over …………
The real fun starts now. After an hour I get a call from police station that I have hit someone and I need to be available in police station. Ok cant help but I was frustrated.
So I asked Avinash who works in finance deptt and is a localite to accompany me to police station as it would help in dealing. So this time Mr Tom told me that he would take the claim from insurance company but the balance amount needs to be borne by you. In India the insurance company depreciates the fittings/assets/cost of car based on its market value. Hence the insurer has to shell out money from his pocket every time he claims insurance cover. Police incharge also suggested that you settle it amicably and don’t get into all the lengthy process.
Giving money even though I was not at fault was something that I would have never agreed, but looking at the damages I convinced myself that I would pay say 2K to help him.
So do you think it got over here .............Nah
It turned out that Mr Tom was hell bent on extracting atleast 50% of cost of damages and was willing to lodge a formal complaint with police. Avinash suggested me to accompany him to workshop and first get an estimate for repairs and then negotiate. I agreed.
Now the next meeting with Mr Tom was in a workshop. I choose the best people for negotiation and tactics for this part. Sandeep and Vikram (a localite) were with me this time with all the adrenaline required to fight this case.
After the assessment it turned out that the insurance company would not pay for 8K of damages to few parts and the insurer has to bear this. At that point Vikram revealed told them that “boss we are going to pay you 2K only and that to just to oblige because the damage to your car is more”. It seems Mr Tom’s team had different plans; they still wanted half of that amount as compensation.
Sandeep pushed us out of negotiation and told them to meet in police station or do whatever you want. So the next meeting place was police station.
By this time we were hungry and halted at office to have lunch and do some pending work. Coming weekend was a long weekend and everyone had lot of work to be completed.
Sandeep suggested that we need not go to police station also. But I insisted that we shall go and finish it off, however all unanimously agreed that now we will not pay them a single penny, whatever happens.
So after half an hour I got a call from police station again. I told him that I am stuck in traffic and will be late. So after an hour we reached police station, by that time Mr tom and his team has left.
We told the incharge that we offered them money and they did not like the idea. He told us that he’ll convince Mr Tom to accept the money and settle it ……..”you can give money to me” ……………..interesting we all thought.
Vikram told him that we have 1K at present and someone will come and drop rest of the money. Incharge was fine with that J, we were also fine with 1K.
So do you think its over. Atleast we think so …………..
The stories in olden books were true I think. I remember the story of one monkey who negotiated for two cats who were quarrelling for a piece of Bread. In the end monkey was winner. Probably in this case too, you can make out who gained maximum and who lost with nothing in his hand.
Interesting incidents are waiting to happen ……….. watch out.
Disclaimer : Some incidents may not be based on facts.
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Chubby cheeks, dimple chin
rosy lips, teeth within,
Curly hair, very fair,
eyes are blue, lovely too,
Teacher's pet, is that you??
Yes, Yes, Yes
Sahil was two years old when he used to rhyme this poem. Deep within me, I would know that the “lovely eyes” he is singing about would be covered with spectacles one day.
The only thing Geeta could do was to delay it by giving nutritious food to him.
Finally, the latest eye check up for Sahil revealed that he would need spectacles so that he does not strain himself.
Even though I always knew that this would happen one day, it was difficult to digest this news. For me, it was like experiencing my childhood pains again as the same happened to me when I was 7 .
In the coming few months, we are going to try out few natural techniques which are supposed to check further degradation of his eye sight.
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Beginning of March I visited Grenoble, a small city in France. Although it was an official visit, I could manage to go around and see some places in Grenoble and Paris.
Grenoble is a valley city with lots of beautiful snow tipped mountains around it. From Paris we took a TGV (France’s super speed trains) to Lyon and then a regular train to Grenoble.
“The Eternal wait of Taxi”
Unfortunately, we were booked in a hotel away from city. Other than being away from the city, the worst part every morning was waiting for taxi to pick us up for office. It could range anywhere between 15 minutes to 1 hour. This very regularly gave us time to share thoughts about times to come in our professional lives.
The funny part was that sometimes the taxi driver would arrive and then wait for us for 30 minutes and later tell us that he has come for us only. Thanks to the language barrier that we started those chosen days with frustration.
If you think that sign language is always there to save people like us then even the sign language would lead us into problem. Asking him how much money he makes using sign language may lead the taxi to the nearest ATM because the driver thought that you want to encash money.
“The Power Shower”
Out of curiosity if you happen to fully turn the hand shower knob to check the flow then you can enjoy a snake dance in bath tub. The water gushes out with full speed and the hand shower would go out of control and dance like snake in bath tub. It is only co-incidental that you and the bathroom gets wet with this.
If that is not enough then read this. The shower in bath room was mounted on a one-of-its kind angle. The water would typically fall on the wall on which it was mounted. So if you desire to take bath with shower mounted on its hook then you need to have spider man like wall climbing and sticking features. You literally have to embrace yourself to wall to enjoy shower.
“The Food”
Not many people would say that but I liked eating at company’s cafeteria. The food was French and there were options, Chinese, Mexican et all. To us all appeared as French as the names were written in French on the menu display.
So why did I like the French food, because it was bland. It did not have any taste of its own. Once I added lots of salt, black pepper, Tabasco and other spices, I could easily Indianize it and eat.
"The Paris Expedition – Day 1”
Finally the work was over and we had a chance to go to Paris. Lots of expectation from this weekend as we were visiting the city of fashion, glitters and monuments.
On way back too, we took train from grenoble to lyon and then TGV to Paris. Ok, here I must tell you that don’t rely on restrooms of the platform. We figured out that people tend to use it more often than toilets at home. Susmit, Jayanth and Gurudatta tried in vain to relieve themselves.
Finally we reached Paris. All excited as if we have achieved our final goal of this trip.
The hotel was located inside the paris airport and I had a view of concorde from my room. The sight was awesome and room was excellent. Though the hotel was away from city we never regretted staying far from city.
The two days that we spent in paris were the most adventurous days of our visit.
We had some great discussions on which car is better on road and Gurudatta giving his explanation that truck driver cannot force Scorpios off the tarred road while maruti 800’s are easier picks, hence he next car would be a Scorpio. We successfully attempted to keep professional talks away from these last two days.
“Bir hakim”
This is one of the numerous metro station names which we till date cannot pronounce properly. It is actually called “Bir Hakeim”, for convenience sake Shiv transformed or indianized it. But this station has more than just indianization, this is the very station where we saw a person promoting an Indian restaurant. Jayanth somehow got hypnotized by this person and would not agree to dine anywhere else. From a distant corner of paris we came back hunting for this restaurant and to make things worse rain gods also joined us in expedition. Finally we managed to dehypnotize Jayanth and come back to hotel where we ate ……will tell you later.
Coming back to names, we could make out after 24 hrs that Champs-Elysées is pronounced as “shahn-zay-lee-ZAY”. Someone verbally told that you must visit shahn-zay-lee-ZAY . While I was reading a road sign, a lighting struck my head and I realized that I am already standing on so called road. How in this world do French expect us to pronounce it like that?
“I am Monalisa”
Finally, we met Monalisa on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. However we were more impressed by other paintings in museum .
In Louvre's gallery, a single “s” to make “painting” plural is not sufficient. There are hundreds of paintings in Louvre Museum. And I bet you can not see all in your life time.
Ok ... , one analogy we noticed while appreciating the paintings and sculptures. We defined a theorem based on this analogy.
You can never ever, ever never, never ever ever ……whatever, become a French artist till your subject is wearing clothes.
“Tyre Technology Metro”
One of the greatest technological innovation, though we found it funny, was a metro train running on rubber tyres. No not joking, it was real, infact we were so much surprised and disapproved what we saw that we waited for two more trains to pass before boarding, just to make sure that it was actually running on rubber tyres and not on any other metal tyre which is not visible externally.
“Freestyle French market”
Five of us split into two groups. Susmit and jayanth went back to bangalore on Sunday morning and myself, gurudatta and shiv planned to stay back to enjoy paris. On Sunday we visited a freestyle market lane of france after de-boarding at chatelet (nick named: cutlet by me). It has lots of freestyles eateries, bars and pubs.
An unusual contest - Two pubs were contesting with each other in an unusual way. For evey customer which enters the pub they would break a bone china plate at entrance. Whoever has more broken pieces of plates would take pride and swell his chest. More broken plates also means that people like his pub more than next door pub.
May be we should have tried fooling them by going in and coming out within few seconds without eating or drinking. Hmmm ........ then probably we might have seen some broken bones too.
“Paris ka Taj Mahal”
How can someone write a blog and not write about Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower). It was magnificent and even more marvelous at night.
We almost would have missed the sparkles if I and Gurudatta did not wait for clicking few more pictures of tower. I don’t think that the magnificence of this tower can be described in words, it is worth a visit even though there are more taller structures than this one.
The last section is dedicated to our all time companion. Whenever we were in trouble we relied on it.
“Cup-o-Noodle: The Savior”
People who have not traveled to Europe (minus UK) and Far East can never imagine what the power of this magic container is. Without this our trip would not have been worth this blog. I would be criticizing company’s management for sending me to the alien land. Moreover apart from saving us from starvation at night it had a dual effect of saving cost.
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