Thursday, November 20
It was a long layover in Dubai. When I booked it, it was an hour and a half. About a month ago, they changed it to four and a half hours because they are repaving the runways in Mumbai today. And now it’s five and a half hours. That’s brutal, after a more than 12 hour flight to get this far.
The saga with Indian customs is not over, either. Now they have sent me another form to fill out and upload to the portal with the impossible CAPTCHA. This one is entitled “Individual-Importing-at-Company-for-personal-use”. Presuming the company is the Oberoi, I am going to leave it for the hotel concierge to deal with, for a nice big tip. He’ll love me for the rest of my 5-day stay.
Emirates economy class was just fine. I probably slept as much on the short flight as I did on the very long one. Of course, that was likely because it was the middle of the night somewhere and I had been up for a very long time.
You won’t get any accuracy from me on this stuff as I try not to care what time it is until I get to my destination and sleep until a reasonable getting up time. Then I get up and get on with it and don’t know what jet lag is all about, because I don’t believe in it. That works pretty well.
Friday, November 21
The Oberoi Mumbai is lovely, with wonderful caring staff, who cannot do enough for you. They also have a good business centre. I spent most of my time there.
I got up at 10:30am and was at work by noon. My first order of business was to try to lay my hands on the FedEx shipment from Distinctive Voyages. It’s just a box of letterhead, folders, comment cards, etc. Absolutely no commercial value, as I had already managed to tell their obstinate web site, after multiple attempts. I got Sachin, the Duty Manager and Chief concierge, involved right from the start. His business centre person, Prathamesh, was my main buddy, assigned to the task, but there were two or three other caring people in that business centre. They did their best to contact FedEx but none of the numbers we were given in the multiple emails actually got through to live people. No live people at all for the first day, only persistent, likely AI generated emails, asking for information they already had, sometimes in different formats, sometimes in another version of “to whom it may concern”, always preferred to the KYC (know your customer) web site, whose CAPTCHA wasn’t letting them in either.
I had a nice snack at 3pm, in Fenix, with Edwin, who became my pet server, worked the emails some more, and decided to check out the RBYC, who had never answered my emails requesting a booking for the 25th.
The Royal Bombay Yacht Club is right downtown, around the corner from the Taj Mumbai and the Gate of India. It’s an old, old club from the mid-nineteenth century. I showed my credentials and paid my fee to get in (<$3). I talked to the doorman about booking 10 people for dinner on the 25th and he gave me the email and phone number of Mr Gotam, who was in charge of such matters and suggested the next day after 10am, email first, then phone.
I poked my nose into the library, of which I had fond memories from the days when I needed to find internet on shore.
It’s old and cosy and look what it has peeking out of one of the shelves.
I had a Margarita in the snug bar on the second floor, having got there in a manned cage of an elevator. It takes you back.
Back at the Oberoi, Carolyn, Shelley and I had a very nice dinner in the Italian restaurant. Mine was Osso Bucco on Polenta, yum.
Saturday, November 22
Shelley and Carolyn were off on a reconnoitering tour of Mumbai. I got up earlier and was probably in the Business Centre by 10:00am. My email was full of requests from KYC, as if it was all my fault that they had not even taken my package to Indian customs yet. I decided to involve Truly India, our tour supplier in the process. Saransh gave the job to Pradeep and Sachin at the Oberoi got copied in to it. Ten or twelve emails went back and forth, numerous futile attempts were made, from many computers, to get the documents into the recalcitrant web site. I wrote another letter describing the contents of the package, as per directions from the emails. It wasn’t letting up.
RBYC was the opposite problem. No answer to my email and when I got Mr Gotham on the phone, he just told me to wait for his reply to the email.
Carolyn and Shelley went to Shabbat and made a friend, who is going to take them to the Cricket Club. So posh, us.
Sunday, November 23
I moved into my twin-bedded room on the 19th floor yesterday, because Nona was due to arrive in the wee hours of this morning, like around four. She did, and she didn’t even wake me up, I just found her there around eight when I woke up.
I got a phone call from Pradeep at Truly India, who had got through to a live person at FedEx, so it looked like there was hope. Nona and I went to see the Holy Name Cathedral, so she could apologize to God for not getting up in time for mass and we could see it. We were treated to some very good hymns, by a small but mighty choir, and it passed for devotions. Then, we went shopping on Colaba Causeway, the shopping street.
It was crowded and junky, but where else can you buy a pair of sandals, that they size to measure in a half hour, for $24? I also got a light pink salwar kameez, that looks classy and will be good for hot touring, too. $6.50. Then the Oberoi charged $6 to press it, but that’s another story.
Next on the agenda was the usual Nona and Helen thing, a beer in a special place. We were within walking distance of the Taj Hotel, so that’s where we had our beer:
Just outside that window is the Gate of India. It doesn’t get much more interesting in Mumbai.
We used the Taj’s Sikh to get our taxi. A little tip insures that you get an honest cab. The Sikhs know. While we were waiting, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this sign. I offer it sans commentaire:
The four of us had dinner at the Oberoi again. It’s good, and it’s easy. Not cheap, but easy.
Monday, November 24
Wanda arrived from England, in the early morning, and went for a nap. Truly India had managed to get her an early room, so she didn’t have to use one of ours. Nona and Carolyn and Shelley went on tour. I went to the Business Centre. The demanding emails continued to make ridiculous demands. The best one wanted a copy of my India visa (which they had had for a week) with the number in the body of the email it would be attached to. No one can read the attachments, it seems. I needed to spoon-feed the artificial intelligence, which is real stupidity. I do not like the way the world is going on that front, and when it meets Indian bureaucracy, it’s a perfect storm.
There are wonderful things that happen in India, too. It turned out that our tour guide, Anahita Tarapore, is a member of the RBYC and had dinner there last night. My people told her how much trouble I was having getting my group in there for dinner and, next thing you knew, it was done. BTW, everyone loves Anahita as a tour guide, too. Ask me for her coordinates if you are going to Mumbai. She understands us. She lived in Ottawa for a few years.
I had my snack at 3:00pm and took myself upstairs to get ready to meet the Montreal contingent of Patrick, Rose, Joan, Andrea and Maureen. Maureen is a docent at the Montreal Museum of Fine arts, which Montrealers know by its French acronym, MBAM. We didn’t know her from before, but she has been following my blog. She’s Steve Harrold’s sister, so we do have quite a connection. A week or two before, Maureen took the rest of us through the Kent Monkman exhibit at MBAM. There we met Miss Chief Eagle Testicle, his alter-ego. I came out of my room on the 19th floor of the Oberoi, and became Miss Chief Blue Booby. The hall overlooks the atrium. I saw my five people get off the elevator and make for the front desk. I got excited, picked up my pace and my rubber-soled Mephisto sandal caught in the thick carpet. I went down so fast I never put out an arm to break my fall, which could have broken the arm, so was probably just as well.
Quick as a wink, there were three hotel people around me, wanting to help me up. I asked for time and to bring myself up unaided, please. There was nothing broken. I went down to the lobby, greeted my folks, saw that their rooms were correct, and went back to rest with some ice before dinner. Everyone was glad of three hours to rest, including me, who did it with the hotel provided ice packs. They were just hard lumps of blue ice wrapped in towels. I should have insisted on real crushed ice that melts, soaks the towel, and is a pain, but works so much better.
Tuesday, November 25
In the morning, my right breast was a very dark blue, the whole thing, and it was sore. I had awoken in the night every time I rolled over. I shamelessly showed the whole group the blue booby photo. I don’t think I want to publish it on the Internet, though. It might be seen as the world’s ugliest porn. Patrick, the one guy in the group had the best idea. I needed to wear my bra to bed.
I checked my email, with high hopes that my shipment had cleared customs, but the message from KYC was just happy to report that it had got past them and they would now put it through Indian customs, which might take up to 48 hours. I didn’t have that kind of time left and the hotel told me there was a stationery store across the street and to the left. Nona and I set out.
Office Depot, it was not. It was a shop where they did passport photos and sold stationery. You couldn’t browse the shelves. You had to describe what you wanted and some minion would go search in the back. We weren’t doing too well, even after I got a piece of paper and folded it to what I want. The closest we came were opaque dark blue plastic folders and they were ugly as sin. But, backs against the deadline, we sent the minion off. While he was gone, we looked up and hanging there were a bunch of bags, white with gold Indian designs, in assorted sizes. I started thinking, why not those, at least they were nice looking, and the design was sort of like the old DV logo, which I like better than the new one. So we got bags, big enough to hold the letters and flyers, and then we got a bunch of little gold binder clips to Hold the papers to the sides of the bags. Binder clips are a useful item on a cruise.
Back in the Business Centre, I crafted letterhead, using the DV logo, and altered the welcome letter to explain why the bags, while Nona collated the whole thing. Then the Business Centre printed the letter for us and Nona put it all together. She was a great help and said she was happy to do it. We just needed some time together. It didn’t matter what we did. You know, she’s right. It’s like that with good friends. These were the Welcome Packets we would be delivering:
That night we went to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, no small thanks to Anahita, because their misogyny sure hadn’t done me any good. We explored the library
had a drink at the bar
And an amazingly good dinner for $15 each. The special of the night was Steak and Kidney Pie, and mine was delicious.
Wednesday, November 26
All good things come to an end but this one had a great new beginning waiting, so something to look forward to. The ten of us gathered, with our bags at the appointed hour, checked out, and were met by Richard of Truly India. About ten Oberoi staff were there to wish us well on our journey, but not one of them made everyone check that their bags were boarding the van. I should have done it my good self. I always eyeball my own, saw some of the pax doing it, made an announcement in the bus and left it at that. One person trusted another to have done it and that one, who shall be nameless, thought she saw her red bag in the luggage compartment of the van and presumed that the bags belonging to her and the one who tasked her with looking, were in there. Let this be a lesson, people. Eyeballing the bags means every bag you brought and don’t trust anyone else to do it for you. When we got to the ship, we were missing four bags. Luckily, it wasn’t sailing for about five hours, so there was plenty of time for Truly India to go back to the Oberoi and fetch them. No harm done this time, but a good lesson.
Then we dealt with getting through the terminal and ran into the useful combination of Indian bureaucracy and technology again. A lot of the phones, including mine, would not work from the door of the terminal but were OK, once farther in. it created a pretty bad bottleneck at the door, and it was hot and humid and nasty outside. When my phone finally pulled up the Celebrity App, I found out that no good deed goes unpunished. I had had that lesson before. While teaching Joan how to get her boarding pass on her phone, I had managed to get hers on to mine, too, and it was in pride of place, such that I couldn’t get to my own. That eventually got sorted out, but I am going back to my rule of carrying paper copies of everything and not trusting the electronics.
Once on board, I met with Irish, the Concierge assigned to our group. Our manifests matched perfectly, which was great, because there was much about the Internet that wasn’t. I immediately upgraded it to premium and eventually to two-device premium, so I could move photos from my phone to my Computer and even that never worked, but cost about $500.
I delivered the Welcome Packets and managed to make dinner with my own group of 10 at seven. We convinced the dining room to let us squeeze 10 people around a table for eight and were happy there, celebrating Joanie’s birthday, with our stewards, Roy and Rose. The entertainment was an Australian couple, piano, violin, vocals and they were very easy to listen to.
Helen Megan 