MaxaBlog.com

Why Nordstrom Service is Legendary; Thanks, Steve!

Recently, while hurrying to pack for a trip out of town to give a speech, I tried on two of my dress shirts and found that somehow the collars had shrunk while hanging in the closet.

Which is to say, my neck grew larger.

What to do?

I had to attend a black tie event, but I didn’t have time to pick up a shirt—my flight overseas was due to depart in three hours. And I didn’t want to pay European prices for a new shirt—especially given the muscular euro.

On a hunch, I called the Nordstrom store at the Mall of America, just about four miles from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport where I was to catch my flight. 

Asked for the men’s department.

Got a guy named Steve Slivken.

“Steve,” I said, “I’m a big fan of Nordstrom’s. I know how famous Nordstrom’s is when it comes to service, but tonight I’m really going to put Nordstrom to the test.”

“If it can be done,” he replied without missing a beat, “I’m your man.”

And, sure enough, Mr. Slivken was my man. About 90 minutes later, as I pulled up to the departure level around 8 p.m. at the airport, there he was standing by his car at Door Number Four, a men’s dress shirt in my size at the ready, my credit card already charged (at half what a similar shirt would have cost me in Monaco).

If you’re ever in the Mall of America and need some men’s clothing, ask for Steve Slivken. If it can be done, he’s your man.

Dictionary Definition of Culture Shock: Flying From Monaco to India

If there’s a little European city more neatly trimmed, buttoned up, and flaunting affluence than Monte Carlo, I haven’t found it. Well, maybe in Switzerland, but generally speaking nothing beats Monte Carlo for polish as well as the number of Bentleys and Ferraris parked outside the principality’s flagship hotel, the Hotel de Paris.

Then there’s Delhi, India, whose old downtown market is a chaotic collection of tiny shops selling just about every product known to the world amidst a swirl of dust, a parade of goats, monkeys flitting from roof to roof, jostling pedicabs (called “rickshaws” by Delhites), donkey-drawn carts, bicycles overloaded with cargo, and any other manner of transport you can imagine. The fanciest car is sight is a Honda Accord.

I jumped between those two destinations for work with just brief stops in my hometown of Saint Paul, MN, and Los Angeles; I think I established a new personal best in the category of culture shock.

I ’ve spent a lot of time on the French Riviera, so the cavalcade of luxury cars, the glittering hotels and restaurants, and the well-groomed couples taking $150 lunches outside at the Café de Paris came as no surprise.  (That's the famous casino on the left--the Hotel de Paris is adjacent to it.)  And I’ve also done Delhi a couple of times before this trip, so I’m not completely overwhelmed by the impossibly crowded streets, the press of the crowds, and the omnipresent evidence of poverty. But it was the rapid juxtaposition between the two that made me marvel at the disparity between two of the world’s great destinations.

Each, I think, offers travelers reasons to visit; each is fascinating in its own way.

Monte Carlo is a kind of Disneyland for the wealthy, a place to gawk at Belle Epoque architecture, the gorgeous Mediterranean, the super-sized yachts, and the manicured landscaping--not a bougainvillea blossom is out of place. Delhi is thrilling for its press of humanity, the ingenuity of man (just check the electrical wiring in Old Delhi), the brilliant colors of saris that pop out of the dusty cityscapes, and the jumble of religions with their various temples and traditions.

I find Americans are divided into two groups on a couple of subjects. The first is beets. Either you hate them or you love them. The second is India. Half of Americans love the country or can’t wait to visit; the other half dislike it or would never consider visiting. I love beets, and I love India, where, by the way, there’s beet juice available in street stalls everywhere. I tell friends that you can take a movie camera, set it up on almost any city street in India, turn it on, walk away, and return in two hours and you’ll have an Indiana Jones movie.

For three weeks in December, my television crew and I have been shooting our first episodes on India; now I know I was right in that description of India’s cities. In Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur (our first three destinations), we’ve barely had to move the tripod when shooting downtown. All of it comes to us if we just stay in one place—the cows, the elephants, the camels, the monkeys, and the panoply of bicycles and motorized vehicles with two, three, four and more wheels. Oh, and the people. Indians are famously friendly, and they love to come right up to our camera and are content to stand there and quietly watch as I botch my lines. When we shot in Monte Carlo a few years ago, no one gave us a second glance.

More on the French Riviera and India in upcoming blogs.

Four Minutes of Fun: Lufthansa Tests Your Knowledge With a Geography Quiz

Lufthansa has posted a fun little quiz that tests your knowledge of European geography.  You're a pilot who has to land his or her aircraft in the right city.  The name of your destination is flashed on the screen, and you have five seconds to click your cursor over its location on a map of Europe.  In the first round, the countries on the map are identified by name; in the last rounds, there are just borders indicated, and you have to place the city as best you can.

You're told immediately how many miles off course you are with each selection, and your total points are based on how close you come to the target city.  You can then compare your final score with others who have performed the exercise to see if you're a geographical genius or if you're merely a lost pilot in the skies.

American Airlines' Airport Clubs Introduce Free Wi-Fi--But Don't Try to Poach!

Following the lead of other airlines, such as Northwest, American Airlines announces free Wi-Fi access to guests who are members of its Admirals Club airport lounges.  But if you're hoping to lurk outside the door of American lounges and pick up that signal, well, don't bother.  In the case of American, you'll have to type in your Admirals Club membership number in order to get onto the Internet.  Membership costs between $300-$450 a year, though day passes may also be purchased.  Of course, if all airports offered area-wide, free Wi-Fi, the world would be a much better place.

India Today: The Strange Melding of East & West; Bollywood, Mick Jagger . . . And What the Heck Is a 'Super Dense Crush Scenario'?

Turkey holds title to the cliché “where east meets west” because it straddles Europe and Asia. But while shooting two episodes of “Rudy Maxa’s World” in India, I grew convinced that India is an intriguing runner-up in that category.

More than on any previous visit, I was struck by melding of cultures taking place as the “new India” assumes global center stage with China.

Unlike China, however, India is more westward looking. That’s partly thanks to the legacy of British colonial rule—in New Delhi, the massive Connaught Square shopping area could be in London save for the pedicabs and motorcabs (what the Thais call “tuk-tuks”) buzzing around the streets. And the growing outsourcing of jobs from the US and elsewhere in the west must help explain the cultural stew, too. After all, employees of those phone banks you reach when you call for computer help or reservations are schooled in such things as American sports teams and other popular topics of American conversation.

Characters in Bollywood movies deliver dialogue partly in English, partly in Hindi. Every day, the dozens of English-language newspapers are filled with up-to-the-moment gossip about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and celebrities du jour. Shopkeepers in the crowded, old market of Jodhpur try to entice me into their stores with promises that Mick Jagger and other Western rock stars have shopped there.

(In the case of Jagger, they may not be exaggerating—the old rocker is best buddies with the maharaja of Jodhpur, a portly, serious figure who is a revered symbol of a family that ran the region for 600 years before Indian royalty there was stripped of its privileges about 60 years ago. While I’ve never met Jagger, I did interview the maharaja, and you couldn’t find two people that are outwardly more different.)

[MORE]

The British tendency toward understatement is still evident in Indian life. “Rash driving” is a euphemism for hell-on-wheels motorists. (Traffic in India is something to behold, with two lane roads routinely becoming four-late roads as cars jockey for space; it wasn’t unusual even on toll roads—our equivalent of interstates—to see a tractor-trailer truck coming at you the wrong way with horn blaring.) The phrase “bold scenes” substitutes as a description of risqué scenes in movies, though in India, an actor and actress brushing cheeks qualifies as quite naughty.

Indians seem to have acronyms for everything; reading a daily paper requires a local translator because of the number of abbreviations. One of my favorite is SDC, which refers to a jam-packed bus or train, as in this line from a New Delhi paper this week: “The new trains will also have four blowers to pump in 15,000 cubic metres of fresh air—in a Super Dense Crush scenario where a 12-car train ends up carrying 5,300 passengers against a total capacity of 3,504 passengers, the significance of these features needs little underlining.”

“Super Dense Crush” is more than a descriptor—it’s apparently also an official category. Flying coach these days, for example, presents a Super Dense Crush scenario.

As India hurtles into the future with a robust economy and rapidly changing mores, there’s still the legacy you’d expect in a largely Hindu country. Virginity before marriage remains critical in most communities. In fact, suggesting otherwise can get you in hot water. Several Bollywood figures have recently come under not just criticism but also legal scrutiny for speaking frankly.

A former Miss Universe, actress Sushmita Sen, was charged last week with obscenity for “making lewd sexual comments” in interviews. Among other things, she remarked in a television interview that “no Indian is chaste or virgin anymore and having premarital or post-marital affairs is nothing wrong in society nowadays.”

She’s charged under laws titled the “Indecent Representation of Women Act” and “Young Persons Harmful Publication Act” in a court in Madras. When a couple of other Bollywood figures were charged last year with obscenity for striking a couple of, um, bold poses for an evening paper, the Tamil Murasu, a fellow actor who spoke out in their defense was slapped with a warrant for “casting aspersions on the judiciary.”
It’s a ropedancer’s game, this meeting of the traditional with the modern.

December is a perfect—and very popular—time to visit India, largely because it’s the dry season and temperatures are moderate. It is the foggy season in Northern India, however, as you may be able to tell in my photo, left, of the Taj Mahal.  For the first-time visitor, I’d suggest starting with the classic “Golden Triangle” tour of the north. Fly into Delhi and visit Agra (the Taj Mahal is worth the 2.5-hour train trip or five-hour drive), then Jaipur, and end up in Jodhpur before flying back to Delhi.

It’s easy to see India as an individual traveler if you hire a car and driver and tour guide when you arrive in India. Local travel agencies in Delhi will rent you a car and driver for about $60 a day to take you around the north. Figure on a bit more for a guide.

The crew and I were lucky to have the services of Rajesh (“Raj”) Ranjan, a delightful state-licensed guide with an MBA who managed to smooth our way into almost every site we needed to shoot—no small feat in a country filled with bureaucrats who feel the need to establish their territory when something new, such as an American television crew, shows up. (Yes, we’d secured advance permission to shoot from federal authorities, but that didn’t keep local pooh-bahs from searching for reasons to deny us access; the very diplomatic and persistent Raj eventually won the day.)

Drop raj an e-mail at ranjandl@bol.net.in if you'd like to retain his services--tell him Rudy sent you. 

Yikes! Don't Touch That Hotel Room Glass; Hidden Camera Proof

I've written before about the presence of yucky, germy items in some hotel rooms.  Major offenders include television remote controls, telephones, and the biggest one of all, ice buckets.  (When someone suddenly gets sick enough to vomit, guess what they reach for first?)  A Florida television station brings home the dangers of sloppy housekeeping as it applies to glasses in hotel bathrooms with the aid of hidden cameras. 

While local, Cobb County health authorities had plenty to say when they saw the footage, the hotels either wouldn't comment or were less than candid. Check it out yourself.  Does "flesh-eating disease" mean anything to you?  The moral: Touch that hotel glass at your own peril.