CURRENT MISSION

To Meet, Greet , Enjoy and cherish the Diversity... Love to meet people from different parts of the Globe and Learn them.. Let's start the phenomenon of Care, Affection and Support.

ABOUT ME

I am Hospitality Educator. I Teach Post Graduate and Under Graduate Students.....Strongly belIEve in the thought -“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people”......

I am Creative and Enthusiastic by nature.. Have travelled more than a Dozen of countries across 3 continents... LearnT alot of People and looking forward to LearN more people... I think The Beauty of Friendship is - Friendship is possible between equal human beings, totally free from all bondage of society, culture, civilization, only living true to their authentic nature.... So Let's get Talking... :)

PHILOSOPHY

I am Me ...My Philosophy - 'Create More friends, and as your friendship goes deeper into different dimensions, you will find yourself becoming richer and richer; your own heights will start reaching Everest, your own depths will start reaching the Pacific'

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have Hosted few people.. I WAS at South East Asia and meT Lots of CS friends from different parts of World..... I love CS,, its so amAzIng...

Planning to Host More and More people...

I Also like to participate in CS local meetings during travel... they are Greatttttt

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Superb... have met Real Angels.....just Amazing People... i AM Loving it.... CS is way of Life.. CS is a Journey of emotions... It's just Fanatic...

CS taught me the real meaning of Life and I am extremely fortunate to be part of CS community....

Interests

Learning Cultures, Appreciating Cultures, Meeting new people, singning , painting, writing articles, Photography, Documentaries.... :)... Teaching - Gosh - Too many Interests.. ;)

• culture
• writing
• folklore
• photography
• documentaries
• beauty
• education
• environment
• wine
• modeling
• clothing
• traveling
• socializing
• painting
• swimming
• teaching
• religion
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

I watch Mainly Documetaries on any topic ;) dont ask me all... I love Indian Classical Music.. and now a days French Music too.. ;)... Books - I read ALOTTTTTTT ;)... what gosh its so much that..... ;)

iF ANY one needs tips about Bollywood ( Indian ) Movies.. I can Certainly be a BIG Help.. :)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

had wine in Open Sea while floating on a tube in Vietnam ( I dont know how to swim ;) )....stayed with 8 CS friends at Chiang mai on may be 3 mattresses.. Ostrich ride - Elephant Swing ;) - Crocodile Ride, Tiger Ride.. aNd yaaaaa I am still Alive.. ;) Met ICON of CS at Bangkok - Toom....Been to Mount Titlis in switzerland.. Got drunk over B'fast in Cambodia..been to Leaning Tower of Pisa.. been to Effile Tower... Been to Kanyakumari... been to Phuket... been to manila... been to Laos.... :) Seen the REAL Life .... hmmm also Completed all 8 levels of Mario 15 times.. ;)

Teach, Learn, Share

The word culture itself makes many bells to ring aloud in most of our mind. Today, knowingly or unknowingly, we all belong to a culturally sEnsitive envIronment, due to globalisation. We all try to be culturally toleRant. However, this era is demanding more of cultural appreciation than just cultural tolerance. Communication is the key for success these days. It will not be an over statement to say that culture is communication, communication is culture. Being a hospitality educator, I always thought it is good to read and know about the meaning of culture and be happy about it. According to me, culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. I never thought that cultural understanding can have such a great impact on hospitality education, learning / teaching process until …

First cultural difference: My first session at the university in Bangkok, Thailand was on May 24, 2008: I was appointed as head of department – Hotel and Tourism Management and I was technically sure about my subject content, rehearsed the class two times and had planned innovative management games. As expected (being an Indian hospitality educator) students did not stand up and wish me when I entered the classroom. I felt a little upset and insulted, however, I did not let that show up in my behaviour.

Second cultural difference: The class strength was comparatively very less as compared to an Indian class room scenario. There were just 16 students in the class. Students were extremely diverse in culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs and ideologies, which I could sense during the initial introduction segment. I also learnt that all the students had a nick name and they preferred calling each other only by nick names rather than the real names. Then we started discussions on their views about the hospitality industry, which was mostly one way communication from my side. Students were intelligent however, no one was responding to any of my queries. I could sense there were some reasons. However, I was not able to locate that.

Third cultural difference: As planned, I started distributing the handout for the session. I gave handouts to most of the students and I reached one of my students in the class, who was dressed completely in vermilion clothes, completely bald. He was a Buddhist monk. This was real diversity. I had a few students from Russia, a few from Africa and one was an aspiring model. I stretched my hand to the monk along with the hand out and for my surprise, he did not take it. He looked at me, smiled, joined his hands and wished me. (Namaste Gesture in India, in Thailand it is called as ‘Wai’) and bowed at me. I did not know how to react to it, so I decided to freeze it for the moment and ignored his behaviour.

Fourth cultural difference: After the session, I started calling out the names of students as per the attendance sheet (which had the student’s real names) so they could answer their roll call. (I personally believed in the practice of marking / taking the attendance at the end of the class so even the students who entered in the class late could get the benefit.) Here came in one more cultural difference for me, I called out the name of a gentleman and some female voice answered the roll call. I initially thought that he is joking with me, however, later I learnt about the confusion.

I concluded the class and came back to my cabin. I must say, the real learning started after the class. I realised the importance of learning the local culture before teaching in the classroom. I also learnt that culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behaviour; accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behaviour through social learning as well as it is the sum of total of the learned behaviour of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of those people and are transmitted from generation to generation.

I started discussing my cultural issues / differences with local Thai hospitality educators and they had a laugh on it. They clarified all my doubts.

First clarification: It is a general cultural pratice that, students do not stand up for the educators at university level. However, it is a common practice at school level at Thailand. Here, I realised that it is unfair to measure students by my scale of thinking, pre-conceived knowledge. By now, I understood that culture is the system of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

Second clarification – by nature: Thai students are extremely shy and introvert. And, when I was sitting in front of them on an open chair folding one of my legs, my foot was pointing towards them (I did not realise this during the class. After the class got over when I introspected my actions I realized that) and according to Thai if any one points out their foot towards them – it is the biggest insult. Even in Thai culture head and feet of a person are considered as extremely private parts of theirs and that is why no one touches any body’s head or feels ever as it could lead to even riots. (Thank God that I did not tap student’s head). I learnt that culture could also be a symbolic communication.

Third clarification: This was just too interesting for me and I really learnt how dynamics of culture could affect the learning / teaching patterns. According to Thai culture, Buddhist monks are being given a highest level of respect regardless of their age. According to that, as a gesture of holy respect, one (including teacher) should not give anything directly in their hands (including the handout, as I was trying to do it). So, ideally I should have shown the handout to the Buddhist monk then should have kept it on his desk and stepped back and then he would have picked that up. This is an extremely common custom for them. However, I found it unique and really appreciated the way Thai culture is still being followed in this modern world.

Fourth clarification: Lady Boy is a term which refers to a male to female transgender person or an effeminate gay male who dresses up like a lady. In Thailand, Lady Boy’s are not accepted officially/ legally. However, society has accepted it very loudly and there seems to be very less friction in accepting them as a part of society within people. So, I realised that the student who answered the roll call in my class was as Lady Boy. His classmates accepted him as it is, his surroundings were reacting with him in a very normal manner, some one new was me and I had to accept the fact that I need to respect and appreciate the differences in cultures, customs, beliefs, traditions and mindsets.

Rightly quoted by John Powell – Sometimes the main obstacle to empathy is our persistent belief that everybody is exactly like us.

Being an educator, I feel that educators need not only accept the diversity of the cultures and be sensitive about it, but also appreciate the diversity and differences and celebrate them. Few years before, there was an immerging concept of Emotional Quotient (EQ). It was considered much more important than Intelligence Quotient (IQ). May be the next era is going to be of CQ, anyways. How many of us know these facts, tipping is not a custom in Japan; in Morocco, the gesture of touching the front of one’s forehead with the index finger means that the person is being referred to as stupid and it is considered insulting to give a Nigerian host a gift when you are invited for a meal On an average, a hotel’s workforce represents 5.2 nationalities.. The implication is that you doubt their hospitality and ability to be gracious hosts. So, let us decide to work hard on developing our CQ!!!!

Countries I’ve Visited

Cambodia, France, Italy, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, India, Thailand, United Arab Emirates

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