Forty years later...

Or something in that region.

A story often told by my mum is the day she took all us kids to London to go to the revolving viewing platform at the top of (what was then) The Post Office Tower. In one of those odd quirk of events it didn't happen. Much like the time we didn't make it to London Zoo as someone jumped under the train at Berkhamstead station in the morning.

I have no actual recollection of the day, but it must have been around 1972 / 73, and Mum had taken me and my two sisters to London, which was a big thing in those days, to see some sights and specifically to go up the tower which was then open to the public. Some vague link to an IRA bomb or bomb scare meant that Mum was not allowed to take the push chair (for my younger sister) into the building, so the treat was cancelled.

And that was it for years. 

The tower was closed to the public as it was clearly a target and security risk, and much like my dreams of flying on Concorde as I grew older while I assumed it would happen, the opportunities weren't there.

Until I started work at BT. Meetings all over the country, visiting towns and city centres and spending days in meetings in the old telephone exchanges, surely at some stage this had to pay off and I would get up the tower. Nope. Never happened. All those years, and aside from a few trips to Italy (tough, I know) and various other global ventures, the one target never happened.

I took redundancy in the early 2000s, not exclusively because they wouldn't let me up the tower, but that was there! I then started work in the ISP industry, as a customer of BT - surely this meant that they had to take me there, the revolving 34th floor of my dreams. Still nothing. Meetings in many BT buildings, some of them in my old office buildings from when I worked there. Always just a sandwich for lunch, and always someone would say "have you ever been up the tower?". Everyone else I ever met or worked with in telecoms seemed to have been up the tower - why was I never invited?

As luck would have it, during a restructure and buy out of a company I was working for at the time, the invite for the regular meeting came through, and I was the only one who could make it. And the address was the BT Tower.

This was it, I was going to do it.

The 8th of August 2007, I am not sad enough to have remembered this, I have the picture I took on my phone saved with the date in the corner. Like the picture above, on the way to the tower I had to take a shot, I was that excited. But disaster struck again. When I checked in for the meeting I was told to take the stairs down to the right. Down? That doesn't sound like an instruction to get to the 34th floor, and it wasn't. I spent all day in a windowless basement with the standard deep fried snacks and cheese sandwiches for lunch.

So, like the retirement of Concorde I now felt it would never happen.

The invite came through to my email box a few weeks ago to the semi-regular ISP meeting with BT, and at first I ignored it. Then a chance conversation with someone about the retirement of a system rang a bell - that was one of the agenda items. Linked into a few other coincidences I thought I had better go to this meeting in London so registered on line and added my questions in advance.

Then it happened.

The venue changed to BT Tower.

I couldn't believe it. I double checked and it definitely involved lunch at the top. 

A long day of work, but we had lunch in the revolving restaurant on the 34th floor. Like previous posts about the small things, this has made me so happy that as I type this on the train home I am grinning like an idiot. The pics below are from the top of the tower, shame it wasn't a clearer day, but this will do me.

Sometimes it just takes 40 years on the waiting list to get in.

The Smallest Little Thing...

Anyone who knows me probably won't be surprised by this, but it is the little things that get to me, more often than the big issues. Just those little tiny things that bug me beyond any rational level, and this mornings post had one of those magical letters in it. What I should have done is just put it in the shredder with the rest of the offers from BT & Sky that constitute my post these days, but it just sat on my desk, taunting me.

More than once I thought to myself, "just doing what they ask will take me 10 seconds", but after far to many times of trying to decide what to do, I decided to write to them.. Their letter first, my email second:

Hi

Copying in both companies.

Scottis Power Acct No. xxxxxxxxx

Siemens MPAN No. xxxxxxxx

Today I received the attached letter, can either of you explain why?

I provide my meter readings on line to Scottish Power as I have done the last few years and as far as I am aware there has never been an issue with this. It is clear that Scottish Power have outsourced some of their meter readings to Siemens - and they need a record of my readings for some reason - this really doesn't bother me that much, and should have no impact at all on me.

What bothers me and when it does impact on me, is when a company I have no relationship with wants me to do some work for them that they are being paid for by someone else. Siemens claim that “we have been unsuccessful in obtaining a reading from your meters on each of our visits during the last 12 months”. The only way you can have been unsuccessful is by not coming to my house, the meter is outside. I can not see how visiting my house can possibly end up with an unsuccessful visit.

So, as you have not bothered to do your job, I don’t see why I should do it for you.

Should Scottish Power need anything from me, they can contact me directly, should Siemens need a reading, you can’t miss the box, it is next to the front door.

Yes, I get annoyed by the little things in life, and you all now have an email to forward around for comedy affect – but if I was Scottish Power I would be asking myself what I pay Siemens for?

Regards

Rumbles and Grumbles

Yes, sometimes I amaze myself...

Less than 2 minutes walk

From here 

To here

I gave her the money rather than have the beer.

Not Quite NIMBY

The Not In My Back Yard argument is something I have written about before, as the current plans for the HS2 railway in the UK pass close enough to my house that I will be able to wave at the people on their way to and from Birmingham. By close I mean just about 300 metres, which is pretty close for a major engineering project, which will have trains running on it 18 hours a day. Not as close as some building I have been walking around today though.

It is impossible not to notice the huge flyover being built through what seems like the whole of Kolkata, but is probably just in the areas I am staying and working in. Built over the top of the existing road, the eventual aim will be to get traffic moving, when you consider a 5 mile trip can take well over an hour, it is clearly needed. Since my last visit 6 months ago, the progress has been immense, Health & Safety doesn't seem to be a prime concern and some of it already seems to be falling apart, but I am no engineer so trust they know what they are doing. What caught my attention though was the way it cuts through the areas around the hotel.

I am sure that there is planning and considerations, maybe not as much as the decades long processes in the UK, but this goes not through a theoretical backyard 100s of metres away, but actually through houses. 

The construction work carries on seemingly all through every day and night, and as you can see here, is actually on the doorstep of this small shop and houses. The noise and dust alone make it hard to even walk down this road, to imagine having to live and sleep this close to it is impossible to comprehend. This was a small street last time I was here, and I would probably have bought a drink or snack from one of the stalls here, but to get to them at the moment involves a pretty complex mission and balancing on planks to cross the cement footings and trenches. I walked along towards one of the areas I was for the Diwali celebrations, and the construction is everywhere, and the majority of people seem to not actually notice it.

I met some of the children I had met before, who not only remembered my name but asked about the football and the cricket as we wandered down the road, which I have to say was a surreal, but incredibly heartwarming time. At the end of the current road, it is clear to see where the next stantions and turrets will be built, and these are not close to where the inhabitants live, it goes through the middle of their houses.

It will cross the road and then cut straight through the middle of the little shanty town, where this morning life was carrying on as normal, cooking, eating and going about their daily business - no one apart from the workers on the building appeared to notice that in a few weeks at most their area will no longer exist. I asked a few of the people what they would do and where they would go, and they just shrugged and pointed to the other side of the road. A simple acceptance that it was going to happen, but no need to do anything until it was time to do so. 

For people who live with their entire family in one room, to have that taken from them is not as much of a logistical nightmare as it would be for those being displaced by the HS2 in the UK. Moving their entire possessions and building the new family home wouldn't take a day, so why do it before there is a need?

I tried to understand if there was any compensation or assistance with the enforced move, but there appeared to be none, how do you compensate someone who sleeps on the pavement?

With the speed of growth in India, and the same in China and many other countries, there is a need to build infrastructure far quicker than we would now do in the UK and Europe, but it is clear it is not going to be to the benefit of all in the short or medium term. There isn't really a point or message behind this piece, it just struck me that when I return here next time, hundreds if not thousands of people will be living the same life, just 50 metres down the road.

No worries about compensation for noise and inconvenience here. 

Back On The Road Again

Through work again I was back on the plane to Kolkata, and was approaching it with mixed feelings, work was going to be incredibly busy meaning little time off but the time difference allows for walking in the morning. Once checked in to the hotel, oddly in the same room, I set off for a walk and the same sights, sounds and smells greeted me - and it didn't take long for me to be eating the various offers from the roadside. As a point of reference in the hotel three somasas cost 360 rupees, you can get 2 for 5 rupees about 200 yards from the hotel.

As before, there was what appeared to be piles of rubbish and litter everywhere, but I now saw far clearer that this was all being moved and packed up for a reason. What looks like rubbish tips with people climbing all over looking for valuable waste are exactly that, but everything has a value. While it was clear that all the rubbish was collected and sorted for a reason, and that reason had to be financial, it was purely by chance that I found out how much it was worth.

Wandering around the side streets sights like this are common. People of all ages with sacks of rubbish, sorting it out and bagging into the different sections, much like we all do on bin day where the glass and plastics go into the different coloured boxes for the men to pick up. The main things I have seen being collected are newspaper, cardboard and plastic bottles. Paper and cardboard seem to be used multiple times as wrapping and protection for any purchases on the markets, and plastic obviously has some value, as the scramble for a water or coke bottle discarded can't mean anything else. While assuming it would be pennies, and thinking that one day I would look into the values, when as chance would have it the answer appeared in front of me.

Following my usual method of just randomly walking up and down roads, knowing that worst case scenario is a taxi back to the hotel for a couple of quid, I chanced upon this sign. It was the door to an "exchange shop" where as an individual you can take your recycling and exchange direct for goods, as far as I could tell not for cash.

It seemed to be a private rather than a state business, so they are clearly making profit as well, but it gives a small insight into what the people picking rubbish out of bins are able to get back. So with a little internet searching and some simple maths, a kilo of plastic water bottles (litre size) is in the region of somewhere between 40 and 100 bottles - which is actually a lot less than I thought it would be. So imagine collecting 100 empty water bottles, crushing them as small as you can to transport them, getting them to the shop and getting paid. On the exchange rate today that would get you 37 pence. 

100 bottles doesn't sound a lot does it, in the picture of the lady above I doubt she has 100. That is a lot of work for 37 pence isn't it. But at a roadside food stall that will get a vegetable curry and rice, enough of a meal to fill me up, as I had it earlier.

It is still no life, but it is recycling and and economic lifeline on a micro level. It is unlikely that anyone collecting plastic bottles from bins and gutters in Kolkata is thinking about saving the planet but it does go a long way to explain why there are so many people doing it.