The TimePass of India

Audi
Mercedes
Siemens
BMW
Blaupunkt

See the trend? All the above mentioned companies apart from being among the best in the business are also German...

I have always had this fascination about German Engineering, so much so that I wanted to do my Masters(yeah in engg!!) from Germany! But that was long ago, just around the time I had entered engineering.. After 4 yrs of hardcore(and theres absolutely nothing sexual about tht) engineering, I was damn to tired to get involved in Automobile Engineering in an alien country... But the point is, Germany always amazed me..
I mean, imagine, a country with a population of 8 crore, being the third strongest economy in the world..The number of Scientist this country has produced..The fact that someone from this country actually thought that they can win over the world if they wanted to!!.... But most importantly, the engineering brains that this country has are what finite element analysis is made up of!!

There is this joke about German enggs tht I am fond of..
The Russians send the first man in space in April '61...
JFK, the US president at time was really miffed at this. He called his chief engineer and asked him, - "How in the world did the Russians get their man in space before we did!"
To this the chief engg replied - "I am sorry sir, but their German engineers are better than ours!!"
Hahahaha... wait till I tell this to my boss...

Talking bout my boss, hes the Head of Tech transfer, so effectively hes the one who's responsible for the entire factory. Now he is one of the representatives of his country for me.. So when I talk about Germans, a lot of my observations will be based on him... Ofcourse there are other Germans who come here in really good suits and really bad English.. Sometimes when they don't know a word, I suspect they throw in the the German equivalent.. Every other of their sentences starts with "nicht" or some word sounds like that... The shrug accompanied by-"I dont know!" is native to all Germans ... And may I add, apart from the guys who are a part of management, the others have a terrible sense of fashion!! I mean, Paris is just a stones throw away ppl!!

*One of the things I have noticed bout these guys is that they are extremely polite.. And these guys are supposed to be gas-chamber-suffocating types!!
*They don't change jobs that often! The guy whom I am talking about has been working in the company from like ages!! He worked for Audi for a few years before moving to this company though...
*They are extremely patriotic .. They have a simple policy- everything German is quality! Everything German is good.. German cars, German electronics, German beer, German cellphones !! It took us a lot of cajoling to make them allow the usage of Indian spares in the factory...
*One more thing I admire about them is their dedication towards work.. So someone who works 36 hours a week(yeah! try believing that!!) back in Germany, does 48 hour weeks(Like the rest of us) here!
*Somehow quality inspection takes 3 hrs when our German boss does it.. Somehow 25 yrs of service for a transformer isn't good enough for him..
*Somehow he can run around the factory all day when there is a crisis(Hes 52!).. A bolt not fitting in? Crisis... Too much copper/iron dust on the shopfloor? Crisis..! Nut not tightened correctly?..You guessed it right! Crisis!!!

There are times when something gets messed up real bad and I look at him and he seems to say to himself - Why the f*** am I here!.... No, not angry, just despair..
Sometimes ..well, things don't get messed up and he seems to say to himself.. "Man! They did it, didn't they!"

There is this middle aged colleague whos really cool, and always positive, he has 10 years of work ex and we(the young ones) look up to him.Lets call him GS sir.
All the guys in my dept. have been to Germany..Sir has been there more than a couple of times..But he does not contribute much to the conversation, its only the new foreign-returns who do the talking... And most of them are starry eyed about the buildings, transport, the facilities, the engineering, the cars, the people... They talk about the places they have seen and the Mercedes and BMWs they travelled in... And how fast their trains are.. and how when a train is late by 3 mins its considered a breach of quality ...& How a crater on the road is a national crisis .. " All the young ones(like me) gather around them, listening to their stories and wondering why we cant have smooth roads and trains that are on time...
"Apne yahan sab chalta hai re",they say...Somehow "chalta hai" is our ideology. "We are like this only!!" Garib desh ki yehi problem hai...

Garib desh?

The young ones look at each other feeling bad, feeling helpless.. Garib desh?

Sir says nothing.. He just looks outside the window.. and keeps looking there...
Comeon say something...someone..anyone.. Comeon sir, say something to get our young, inexperienced spirits up!

"Aaayega", sir said....

"Aaayega... Apna bhi time aayega.. Abhi toh humne sirf shuruvat kiy hai....Kuch din theherjaao... Yeh Garib desh, ek din sab ko dikha dega...Apna bhi time aayega..."

Apna bhi time aayega.. Yeah..

The difference is - German Engineering!

You know you are from Mumbai when.....

Stock market quotes are the only other thing besides cricket which you follow passionately.

You take fashion seriously.

You spend more time travelling than you send at home.

9:47 fast, means something to you.

u think tht delhi copied INDIA GATE frm mumbai's GATEWAY OF INDIA...

You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

Amitabh Bachans house is a landmark

When there's no place to breathe in the trains but there's place to play cards and sing bhajans!

You refer to the city as Mumbai and not Bombay .

You say that Pani Puri is waayy better than Gol Gappa's even when they're the same thing

Every three months you look at your street and say "Why're the digging the road again?"

You actually pay for your rickshaws by the meter.

You know what the term "video coach" stands for in the local trains...

"Gheun Tak" is your life ideology.

You aren't surprised when somebody throws a water balloon at you while you're walking on the streets during March.

you can only smile forgivingly about the size of any other city in the world.

Every time you speak Hindi in front of a Delhitite they have the WTF expression on their face.

When while giving directions you say "Right MARO aur wahan pe ek bridge GIREGA"

You have hung on to dear life at the local door.

When you think everyone who lives to the south(Mumbai) of you is a snob and to the north of you sucks

when u c movie names like "shootout at Lokhandwala" & 'Ek chalis ki last local" & don't have to ask what the name means

you consider the local train "empty" when you find a spot for your two feet to stand on.

when "chalta hai" is the most commonly used word

Everything to the north of Mumbai is UP-Bihar and everything below is Madras

if someone calls u "aap"-- u start laughing on their faces...

when you call the BEST bus, BST, even though BEST is painted on every single public transport bus operational in Bombay

It takes longer to get off from your house to the station than from one end of Mumbai to another by train.

Being truly alone makes you nervous.

Crorepati, Lakhpati, Hazarpati, Chillarpati all travel in local Trains daily-together!.

You have learnt how to stand in a queue

u treat mumbai as a country itself

when you actually see random people coming to help you when u have a problem

u want to get into the train already that is already in motion & u have 5 hands taking u in..

You are back to work next day after the city is bombed - Truly the spirit of Mumbai

When you allow complete strangers to spend the night in your house because its raining outside and half the city is submerged...
You know you are from Mumbai when....

There is this post where I have written bout me being a Pro-man... I dont think too much on the words I use, but this one was pointed out by a friend and I have to explain what I meant!

So I searched in the dictionary on my cell phone.. (Yeah, I hav a dictionary on my cellphone, techsavvy or wht!)
The dictionary on my cell says - Proman - Not found! (Arrrgh these cellphone dictionaries)

Therefore(wow! I said therefore, whatta day!), I had to come up with my own definition of Proman

Proman/pruh-maan/1 n. someone who believes that men are better at most things.

Let me refine this -
You see, a proman believes that men are better than women at most jobs like changing a flat tyre, driving, hunting duck, ice hockey, engineering, arm wrestling and stuff..

But then women are definitely better than men in jobs like say nuturing a child, nursing, jobs involving creative designing, writing, colours, decorating, organising...

I mean, most of us have had female teachers while we were young, and I for one didnt like male teachers being introduced when I was in the 3rd grade. If my decisions were worth anything in the Mumbai Univ, I would make them recruit only female teachers.

Talk bout nursing, how many of us would want male nurses? Or lets take fashion desinging, even though this field is full of men, not many are tht straight... And women take up these fashion designing courses, while I still have to come across a guy whos enroled in such a course...

In short in jobs requiring high EQ girls will always be better...

Take for eg-babysitting, most men would suck at it. I dont know if its the cologne that men use or sumthing, but babies hate us. The only men I know who rocked at dealing with kids were Danny, Uncle Jessie and Joey. For all I know even they needed the services of Aunt Becky for things to fall in place...



Now, I am sure you feel women can be good drivers and can change flat tyres, and beat guys in arm wrestling, infact my cousin beat me back when i was 10 yrs old and she was 8yrs old (not to mention double my size and strength)... But then I grew up to have well rounded biceps,and she grew up to be all girlie, 6yrs down the line I challenged her again...sweet revenge!.. life is so fair!
I feel there are guys who can be good male nurses, and as American idol showed some of them can be good nursery teachers and good singers at the same time(not to mention good looking..)

There is nothing that men cant do or women cant do... But then we were hardwired differently so that we could complement each other(this is my guess). This different hardwiring makes us good at some jobs and suckers at others, and I guess thts how it was meant to be... And remember, there are exceptions to every rule. You might be one guy/girl who might be good at the things that I believe are opp sex territory... If you are one,...celebrate,... coz you are the exception to the rule.... You are exceptional!!



This post is dedicated to all my female readers who take time out to read this gibberish!
And yes, Happy Womens day! Proman!