Tag Archives: Travel

In My Hands Today…

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Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China – Leslie T. Chang

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China.

China has 130 million migrant workers–the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life–a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.

In My Hands Today…

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The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen – Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen is a collection of essays and articles which describe rarely written-about Asian people, places and events; most have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, CNN Traveller, Geographical, Travel and Leisure Golf, Destinasian and other leading publications.

Speak with the Sultan of Yogyakarta and learn about his love affair with the Mermaid Queen. Meet the homeless man in Hawaii who has the resume to prove he’s the real last emperor of China. Learn why isolated Indian villagers are angry at the monkey God Hanuman for not returning their sacred mountain. Meet the last elephant hunter of Vietnam, who has reached Michael Jordan-like status through a very Asian-accented product endorsement. Play golf on the world’s highest course. Bargain for good-luck on the Philippines “amulet island”. Learn why the white elephant is being used by Burma’s generals to try to justify their hold on power. Ponder the disappearance of Bruno Manser, a Swiss Robin Hood who vanished in a Borneo jungle while trying to help the downtrodden Penan tribesmen stand up for their rights.

Holiday Packing

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So we’re down to the one-week countdown for our trip. Our helper V left last night and it’s just going to be the four of us till we leave next Monday. Since I do not have any more leave from work, I’ll be going in to work the rest of the week with S staying at home to be with BB & GG. Luckily, I have some time off due to me, so I’ll be coming home earlier (at lunch time) on Thursday and Friday. The children are spending their time today at their grandparents place, so that’s taken care off. GG & BB are super excited that from noon on Friday I’ll be with them 24/7 till the morning of the 3rd, when we have to go back to school/work.

Most of the shopping (aka lists that need to be purchased) have been done. S pulled down the luggage yesterday so our guest room now resembles a hotel – suitcases, both belonging to V and us, plastic bags full of stuff waiting to be packed and other assorted stuff that needs to either go into a closet or out of the house.

My packing style is making lists. I love making lists and so will usually make a couple of lists for each trip that we make. This year I found an iPhone app uPackingListFree that will do that for me.

What I usually do is pack my clothes and other things which I will not be using from that point on till the destination. I usually overpack and over the days between the time I start packing till we leave, I will keep refining my items till such time I am satisfied that I’ve got exactly what we need.

Now that we’re at the one-week mark, I think I will start the packing process from Wednesday. I’ll keep you updated…

P.S: WordPress just informed me that this is my 150th post! So woohoo to me!!

In My Hands Today…

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BBC – India: One Man’s Personal Journey Round the Subcontinent – Sanjeev Bhaskar

As a young British Asian growing up in the 1960s west London, writer and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar was fed stories of exotic, old India – of cobras and leopards, trapping fireflies and riding in rickshaws. But his childhood visits to the old country revealed stifling heat, powercuts and the pervasive aroma of cow dung – baffling to a young boy brought up in an England of fish and chips and light drizzle. Now, years later, Sanjeev embarks on a uniquely personal journey through the heart of India, where he is reunited with old relatives with traumatic stories of the Partition – but also discovers a shiny new India of high-tech industry and glittering Bollywood kitsch. Sanjeev paints a unique picture of this chaotic, beautiful and remarkable country – this is India as you’ve never seen it before.

Ticketing tales

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On Tuesday I finally booked our tickets for our holidays this year. We’re going to Chennai this year as opposed to Mumbai since my sister is there and my parents will come there from Mumbai. Also since we’re going on a very short trip, we just don’t have the time to do two cities. We are going on a very truncated holiday this year for a couple of reasons – one, since I just joined this new position, I do not have many days of leave and two, GG has her ballet concert in the third week of December and she wanted to be a part of it so we leave the day after the concert.

The concert is on a Sunday and so we wanted to leave on the first available flight on Monday morning. That happened to be Jet Airways. I have flown this airline before and have liked the service they provide although both I was not too crazy to fly this particular airline to Chennai as it is a single aisle aircraft. Both S and BB didn’t want to fly this airline, but because it was the only one with a flight in the morning, we decided to go for it. Now the fun starts in my story. I checked the prices around 2 pm and it should me around S$ 2200 for 4 tickets. When I got home and tried buying the tickets around 6 pm, it had increased to S$ 2700. I was angry but still went through the online reservations system as I didn’t want to waste one day of the 13 we were going to have. Then there was some issue with my credit card and the transaction didn’t go through. When I redid the booking, the cost was now more than S$ 3000! I got angry and checked the fares for Singapore Airlines. The fares there were only S$ 2400, but the flight was at night. That was it, I decided to go with SIA and booked my tickets. I then wrote to Jet Airways about my experiences and so far, they’ve still not given me a reasonable explanation (one that I can understand) for this whole fiasco. Initially I thought of not blogging about this, but given what happened, I think I should do it so if there is anyone out there reading this blog (the one or two people maybe, hopefully?), it’s a lesson to them.

Image courtesy airlines.net

Image courtesy of airliners.net

Below are my two emails to Jet and their responses:

My initial note to them using the feedback form on their website

Hi,

I tried reserving tickets to Chennai yesterday. When I checked the fares around 2 pm, I found a figure which was acceptable to me. Then when I tried booking the tickets around 6 pm, the rate had increased by around $500 compared to 2 pm. During the transaction, I had a query for which I tried calling your office here in Singapore, but was on hold for 15 minutes during which my transaction time had exceeded and I could not make the booking. Then when I tried again, this time the rate increased by another S$200. This means that between 2 pm and 6 pm, the rate for 4 tickets increased by S$700! This inspite of not having icon near the rates to show that they are increasing or even letting me know before I book the tickets that the rates will be increasing! When I tried your office at that point (it was around 6:10 pm), I got a recorded message saying that the office is closed for the day. I got fed up and booked my tickets using another carrier. I then see an email which came to me at 8:15 pm saying that my tickets are on hold. I had already booked my tickets with another airline by then so this was of no use to me. I do not think this is the right thing to do. I would appreciate if someone called me or wrote to me with an explanation on why this happened. I have flown Jet many times and have always had a good time with the airline, but when something like this happens even before you fly, it makes you want to rethink using the airline.

The first response from Jet

Thank you for your mail and contacting Jet Airways.

We would like to mention that fares are dynamic and can change based on flight loads, seasonality and promotions. 

With regard to the contents of your communication, kindly allow us to mention that we have various classes / levels of fares loaded in our system taking into account different factors such as demand, season, traffic on any given route, cancellations etc. 

May we assure you that we are not in any way trying to discourage our passengers as a matter of fact these fares are designed to benefit our passengers. 

We look forward to your support and apologize for all the inconvenience caused. 

Huh? Maybe I am thick, but I don’t think they actually answered what I asked them

My response to this email:

Thank you for your email. I don’t think that there were so many people trying to book the exact same date combination as I was within that 4  hour period that the prices increased by S$ 700. I don’t see how the prices can be adjusted so much in such a short period of time. If what you say is correct, then the prices should have stayed at that increased rate of about S$ 3000+ for 4 tickets to Chennai on the same dates that I booked. I just checked your website for the same dates and the prices are in the range of S$ 2600, which is about S$ 400 lower than what was quoted to me when I tried to book the ticket. Does this mean that the time we book the ticket has a bearing on the prices? I would like a response from you since if this is true, the next time I fly the airline, I will know the best time to book my tickets.

Their reply

Thank you for your mail and contacting Jet Airways.
With regards to the same, the Online Booking Engine on jetairways.com quotes fares from a pricing database, which is delinked from the actual system where the booking is made. The reason why we have used this approach, is to optimize the speed of the system, so that our guests do not experience delayed responses. 
Once the guest confirms his purchase, as a check point, the system then reconfirms the actual fare in the backend reservation system. If it is a match, it goes ahead with ticketing and if not, the repricing page is shown, where the guest needs to reconfirm the new price to proceed. Note, at this point in time, the guest can withdraw his willingness to purchase the ticket. 

The probability of the reprice page to show up is less than 1% as we have automated mechanisms to pick up the fares dynamically from the system based on an internal logic flow. Note, there can be times where the guest cancels the reprice page request and tries again from the start. The probability of the old fare being shown is very high as the system takes time to then update the new fare into the database. 

I am not going to reply to this email, but will think multiple times the next time I fly this airline. I used to be such a fan, but now, they’ve lost a paying passenger! C’est la vie…