Make belief – The official blog of Renaissance Creative

Imagine stepping into a time machine and traveling into the future. That would be a neat trick, wouldn’t it? Well, I can tell you what it’s like because I just did it; mostly on Emirates Air, racing along at about 575 MPH for more than 26 hours of non-stop travel from Jacksonville, to Atlanta (Delta), to New York, to Dubai (yes, that one), all the way to India. Along the way, I leapfrogged US Eastern Daylight Time by about 10 hours. If you need the score of Saturday’s cricket match (India’s beloved national past time) by end-of-day on Friday, just call me, and I’ll hook you up.

So, why am I here? As I mentioned, exploring the future. You see at Renaissance, we live by the mantra, “Think Forward”. It’s how we help our clients think about their businesses and how we always think about our own. For this reason, we’ve been researching forging a strategic partnership with an organization that operates inside India, the UK and elsewhere in the US and are studying ways we might be able to work with one another.

During this time, I’m spending 12 days in a place that is quite unlike any other I’ve ever been to. And since I haven’t posted to our blog in over a month-and-a-half (an SEO no-no– as those search engine crawlers have insatiable appetites for new content), I thought I’d use this opportunity to share some of my experiences in this fascinating land. I only arrived yesterday, but here are some notes I can report from my trek thus far:

• I consider myself a strong traveler, but am feeling seriously jet-lagged. It is a long haul.

• Dubai’s airport is beautiful and the city is quite stunning from the air in the early morning light.

• Emirates Air has the nicest jets and best customer service of any airline I’ve ever flown on from the terminals, to the food, to the pleasant and immaculately dressed stewardesses in their professionally elegant burquas. The technology on the jets is exceptional– media players on the backs of every seat with rear, forward and below live action cameras, great to watch night landings with! And their First Class seating could only be described as something out of Star Trek (I passed through on my way to economy!) They also handed out warm, moist towels on multiple occasions, which was a nice touch. In case you were wondering how they afford to do all of this while American airlines struggle to survive, I give you two words: “jet fuel”. They get theirs for much less.

• They say that Indians don’t typically worry too much about the pace of life. Because their culture often emphasizes destiny as a shaping force of events, they tend to operate by the mindset that, “What will be, will be”. Unfortunately, this attitude was not evident at the airport on the night I arrived, judging by the stampede from the plane to immigration!
Our flight got in at 3 am and I didn’t exit the airport until 5 am after being mercilessly out-positioned, out-hustled and out-jockeyed by nearly everyone including babies and a few (deceptively) harmless looking, but obviously experienced and tactically-savvy granny line-ninjas. “Sure, you can cut in front of me. Bring your whole family!” : ) I think I knew what my own destiny was, so just accepted it with a smile.

• I thought Florida was the “King of Hot” and given its humidity, could give India a good run for its money. Nope! The nighttime temperatures here are 95 and daytime temps, 107 every day this week (Did I mention that it was sunny?) And summer is only just getting started.

• I am staying in Ahmedabad, a growing technology and educational center up in the northwest corner of the country, not too far from Pakistan. The city has a mix of old-world buildings and modern architecture. It looks like an area in the midst of a growth spurt.

• The are a ton of motorcycles and auto-rickshaws on the roads and masses of people (1.18 billion in this republic).

• Steering wheels are located on the right hand side of autos and driving is to the left; errr… right; err… middle! Yikes! Thank goodness I have a good driver!

• Everyone I’ve met has been warm, friendly and very smart (There are a lot of Doctors and engineers in India, including the husband/wife Doctor/Engineer couple I sat next to on the plane). They were expecting a baby who I predicted for them would grow up to become a bio-medical engineer.

While India is mind-blowingly vast and diverse, I am here for business, and not sightseeing. But the sights are everywhere, so I will be posting more pictures (and perhaps some video) in the days ahead, as my experiences and time permits. Hope you enjoy it.

Namaste! (“Hello” and “Goodbye” in India)