Steph en Inde!

hey guys!!!

It has been a long time no news. I am in france now, since end of december

it is snowing here, in the south of france.... lol it stops all the bus and we cannot go to class...

i m missing the sun here...

here is an article about:

The art of selling in India

I noticed some selling techniques now I got to buy and above all bargain in India. Well first I will talk about bargaining and then how Indian sellers develop loyalty with the customers.

First, when we go to markets, or take a cab, before paying we have to follow the ritual of bargaining. The more patient you are the best price you can get. But this is really annoying when you have to do something important and you have no time to bargain. Then you just bargain a little bit and do what you have to do.  Actually, to my opinion, first of all, the rule number one is not to get angry! Indeed you need patience, and have to be friendly and smiley I saw that this technique worked far better! You consider them as friend in this case in the way you talk to them.

Then to develop loyalty with customers, you have to make them feel special, at least for the regular customers. I can tell it from the seller of OH shop. Indeed, you ask how the customer goes, we talk about family and stuff that happened recently. This is not like in supermarkets in France, where you just go and do shopping. In India, you also care about the relationship you have with the seller. This is more warm, then I prefer to buy everything in this shop instead of the other ones in the campus.

Other than that, when we go out of the campus, the sellers like to make you feel special when you buy something, for instance they make you feel you are special then you can get a special discount. In the same category, they ask you not to tell other customers present in the shop, that you had the special discount, this is in the purpose to make you feel special.

I also wanted to point out one technique of selling that I saw several times. When they try to sell you something, they start by the most expensive one and they don’t show you the cheap one. I experienced it in Agra, there were two rooms, one where they sell expensive marble products and another with cheap one. Of course we enter in the most expensive one and we were trying to bargain. At the end when the deal was done and that we paid, he showed us the other room with the cheap products. I did not really appreciate this technique but well it works well for the sellers as we cannot compare the expensive product with the cheap one…which makes us buy the expensive one first. And by comparison the cheap are very tempting, so we also buy the cheap ones.

it's from my learning diary :) that i had to write for a subject

Hey!!

Cette semaine est la derniere semaine sur le campus, end term et presentation de projet.

Je reviens de mon ONG, The Hope Foundation Kolkata, qui aide les enfants des rues et bidonvilles ainsi que les femmes. Ils travaillent de pres avec les Self Help group of Women, ce sont des groupes de femmes qui economisent de l'argent et le mettent en commun sur un compte en banque. Elles suivent le programme de micro credit.

J'ai donc choisi un cours qui s'appelle 'Entrepreneurship in NGO', il faut trouveer une ONG et travailler sur un projet avec eux..... En fait au debut j'etais super enthousiaste, mais en fait ca demande bcp de boulot et on se rend compte que ce qu'on fait est vraiment vraiment infime.. mais bon ca peut tjrs servir.

Mon projet est donc celui du combo pack: La nourriture de abse en inde: Du RIZ, du dal(cereals). Il existe des carences en iodine en inde, le moyen d'y lutter contre est une consommation approprié de sel, sachant que 30% de la pop indienne n'y a pas forcemment acces.

LE but est de faire des combo pack à prix negociés et sans middlemen pour reduit les couts.

C'est un projet 'sustainable' parce que ca donne du boulot aux femmes (packaging et vente) et ca permet aux plus demunis davoir acces a ces pdts de base à des prix justes.

Donc aujourd'hui j'y suis retourné pour obternir la signature de la directrice pour son approbation du projet.

Sinon aujourdhui, exam de BOp, Marketing to the bottom of pyramid consumer, ils reprensent les personnes les plus pauvres en inde: 30% de la pauvreté mondiale vit en inde.... ya qu'à voir Kolkata pour s'en rendre compte.

Apres avoir pas mal visité l'inde, Kolkata est vraiment la ville laissée dans l'oubli total. Je vais faire un article sur Kolkata... plus tard :)

DOnc exam aujourd'hui, les indiens sont cools comme dhab, les retardataires de 5 mins environs sont acceptés sans un mot. LEs gens peuvent sortir pdt l'exam, aucun surveillants ne les suivent, parfois plusieurs eleves sortent en meme temps....

En inde les cours sont bcp plus orienté pratique avec que des etudes de cas et donc bcp de lectures!!! mais finalment c pas plus mal; on comprend mieux avc des cas pratiques.

Bon jsuis crévée je vais faire une petite sieste, a taleur:!!!

Hello!!

The holidays are over..... huhu seems like i'm always on vacations :p This time i didn't want to stay 20 Hours in the train , change the bus and being sick... so i just decided to stay nearby West Bengal. I went to the beach and actually had Indian Style holidays hehehehe.

It was fun! 1st we went to Digha, lol this city is hmmmm how to say... there is only indian tourists, so for the food not my taste :( Normally when i go out the campus, i always eat well, but not this time. We just observ how indian spent their time. First of all, when they go bathing in the sea, NO bikini OF course! Women wear Saree, the traditional indian clothes but men can stay with underwear... hehe not always nice to see!

They LOVE photograph to take pic for them then they have a souvenir. So lot of photographs walking in the beach. You can also have camel or horse ride near the sea, poor horses they are disguised with very kitsh clothes.

At night, we went to some part of the beach where it has concrete everywhere.... what a pity! Then indian guys just sit there and watch the sea..... And its just so noisy! People selling Chai (indian tea) coppee( indian style to pronounce coffee) balloon for the kids. They even send lights that indian throw away in the sea then they are happy to see it floating... No need to say that it's dirty, indian don't know waht trash bin means, i get use to a lot of stuff here... but not to this bad habit of throwing garbage everywhere.

OH and another thing, it's the city where there was the most electricity shut down. When we were in the restaurant, in the streets.... And! all their bank ran out of cash lol so no money on ATM... fortunately we met some indian and they show us one ATM further... :)

Then we went to ORISSA again lol we wanted to go somewhere else, but we did it at last miunute so allt rain were full :/ But was fun we met some belgium guys in a beach that was the toilet of the fishermen.....this was aweful!!!! Everyone was poo pooing on the beach in front of us lol... even the children.. they learn it early :p We saw dead snake, one dead dog, and two dead pigs and of course they were cooking fish . So we met them in the wonderful context lol we were just trying a way to escape all this crap.

So nice night, we just ate and discuss :)

The night at the hotel was aweful... FUCKING MOSQUITOS, flying near my ear , same for my friends lol i just went out the room and woke up the indian guys, saying we cannot sleep in this room. They just gave me anti mosquitos encens...

Morning we wake up at 6, Was in really bad mood, only slept 2 hours lol. we had to do a tour with the bus to visit Bhubaneswar, lot of temples but we cannot enter coz we are not hindus. the guide was talking in hindi so didnt understand.. but was nice, i didnt want to organize anything so we just could visit all the Must see things.Zoo, temples...

I will put pics later on

And yes i havent finish my story in Rajasthan..... i will do it later ( thats bad indian habits)

coucou!!

Sorry i was too lazy to write in the blog! And we have a lot of readings too, i start to be so bored with indian class, the teahers do not really like exchange students....

have so many stories to tell, i havnt finished the one from rajasthan...but i want to tell more about my last week end to the beach in Orissa. Was lovely! I wanted somehting very relaxing, with not too much temples and visit and walking. just laying down and tanning :p

The first day we were in Puri, not muwh to see, a temple where we cannot enter coz we are not hindus, a fight with a monkey lol. Actually we went to a rooftop of a library. But to access it was long backshish story. The man told us, u have to give us donation to access and have the view on the temple. He showed us a notebook with doantion of 1000/ 5000 RS, lol i got fooled once already at the beginiing in kolkata! So this time we just pay 10 RS to access. When we arrived view was beautiful, we wanted a group picture. BUT! there is a BUT! A monkey was waiting for us...... you know the one with the pink bottom, this one was wild and scared us so much lol he ran at us with his angry face showing his teeth.... we went down, then man gave us a stick lol , in case he wanna bite us..... finally we went up and this monkey was just crazy!!!

 hahahhaha we tried our best, with the stick... but the monkey won -__-

Wa went to thr beach on the afternoon,was dirty dirty! we just lay down somewhere good. Our friend hery, couldnt sleep and he saw a that it was crowded somewhere, he went to see what happend. When he came back, his face was like shoked. If thought he would see a shark... but it was a dead man.. the wave are vey big and dangerous, maybe that's why... but what was shocking is that indian people go to see him in mass, take pics of him and...... just go away, no one call emergency... We tried with our guide book but nothing... they really dun have the same approach to death

So we stayed there 3 days, the second day we took a boat for 3 hours and we went to chilika Lake, we saw some pink dolphins :)

But i was sad to see that there is not propre regulation concerning the number of boats around them, its motorized boat and thus could be very harmful for them. Fortunately our driver was nice and stopped his boat so that we can observe them as weel. After we stop in an island, and we ate prawns (yes even me!)and drink coconut plus eating it ... heheh that was our lunch.

Then we went to a  beach with no ONE!!! only a few fishers as it was in a little island :^p

We even saw a water snake, was scary, and of course lot of Crab_man!!!

The day after we visited the Sun temple, which is quite famous in this region. We are supposed to come here at the sunrise, to have a beautiful view, but was too hard to wake up :p

Lot of kamasutra scenes in those temple huhu 3 explanations to this:

1. Sexual education

2. To see if priest resist to tentation!

3. In war time, we need more babies, so when couple went to temple, they just help indian pop to increase :)

We ended up to another beach if absolutely no one. which is very nice if we want to tan and swim. As it is not allowed to wear bikini normally.

Another good thing, we hate the food of the canteen now, always the same!!!! so we so enjoy the food this week end!!!!! Pasta, pizza, fish!!! fruits :p was heaven !!!

Sun temple

.... to eat a real pizza

une bonne raclette

Real Cheese (comté/gruyere/moza!!!!)

Chinese hot pot

Lok Lak Rice

Blanquette de veau

Pasta!

Fondant au chocolat

not Nutella for the moment ( I finished the one from my friend today, how lovely she is!!!!)

Bread with paté de foie and butter

Salmon

Cheese ham butter sandwish( soft bread)

Hot chocolate (with real milk)

Apple pie

Mum's food

...... I'm hungry!!!!!

Hola!!

Sorry for the silence, but this week i just slept, ate at mcdo lol needed to recover!

So i have to continue my story!

Taj Mahal! we were supposed to be there before the sunrise, but when we arrive it was already there! There is quite a long way to walk, especially when you are physically disabled...so we took a wheel chair for the grand ma...: ME!!! hehe my bro has some pcis but not me!

Taj Mahal is wonderful especially when you walk closer and closer :) no need to say that this was built from 1631 to 1653 and was dedicated to Mumtaz Mahal, the woman who inspired the emporor to build it. Taj Mahal is decorated by some texts from Coran.

After this guys went to see the fort of Agra. I just stayed with Shabbu our rickshaw driver, he showed me taj mahal from very far, very beautiful view, and we talked for couple of hours :)

Then after this we headed to Fathepur Sikri, 40 Kms from here, by bus.

I cant describe this city but i can just say that the reshouse was very nice, and the boss was lovely. he saw my foot and his daughter had the same, so he massage my foot with his cream! Boys went out to danse and to see the village. I just tanned on the grass :p

as i told u before, this week  is resting week, so i finished my lecture this morning

and now listening to spice girl songs lol.... ahhhh i miss it and childhood :p

dun know how to put videos :/

So here we are, we met lorenzo at the train station, we were actually very short with the time but we made it :)

Seb, Thierry and Lorenzo in the sleeper class (train)

Gupta, Mario and Luigi

So!! even the way to Agra was an experience, i would have prefer a soft journey..We had to get off the train, the guys were in front of me, we all had our big bagpacks. And indian guys were pushing us , not letting us going out of the train. so it happened! all the guys went out of the train, i was the last one, but when it was my turn, then train was already leaving.... i had to exit the train with indian style, the problem is .. i dun have the indian style lol

So i jumped, and fuck! i twisted my ankle... couldnt move at all... lorenzo went to take some ice. I was just scared for the rest of the trip.. We arrived at the hostel; and i went to hospital with my bro. I was scared. but actually it was a good surprised. they gave me a wheel chair, i went to see the doc, he examine my ankle, then i went to a room for XRAY, i was old and dusty. wasnt really "rassurant" (too lazy to check the english word!) very very efficient, i was very surprised. Coz normally u have to be very very patient with indian people.

Good news, the bone is OK, nothing broken. i have to take pills and put cream...

That's it for this morning :) i have some readings , so we get back later on!

xx

Hey Everyone :)

Im back to the campus, and i ahve to say that i really need to slow it down!! Non stop travelling is just too much for my body... so i will do nothing this week... just going to lectures:)

And i think i have to keep u updated with my trip to Rajasthan!

Ayaya i dont know where to start!

So first day Davide and I went to Delhi by plane. We arrived late evening, and we discovered that my bro was stucked in HK due to typhoon, so we just could meet him the day after.We took a taxi, and our first impression was that Delhi is really clean and modern compared to Kolkata! No one in the streets, that s normal for india it was 1:00am already. But the taxi driver was confusing, he didint know where we have to go so we were bit worried. Then he said' its there' we looked it look too crappy, and dogs seems violent... so we said that we dont go out of taxi if we dun see the name of our hostel. then i finally call the manager of hostel, it was really there.... no choice, we slept at a room on rooftop, with shitty shitty bathroom, argggggg, cheap room!

The day after, seb came, so we ate together, its funny, all his remarks are the same as mine first ones :)

We met an auto-rickshaw driver, and he showed us around! We saw the Mosque (wonderful), indian Gate (looks like arc de triomphe in paris) with the champs elysées, the red fort...

A lot of tourists in delhi, not like in kolkata, i have seen none.

Seb and I at the mosque, we had to wear some clothes to hide our shoulders, so hot with the weather

Refreshing :)

The Indian Gate

This nite, Thierry joined us.So we visited a little bit of Delhi the day after, then we had to meet lorenzo at the train station to go to Agra.

To be continued..... :)

Guys!

I will try to catch the bus to Darjeeling tonite after my exam! Wud be a 19h bus fuck!!!!!! hahah but that's india!!!

c uuuuu!

xxx