In Israel: fundamental questions, karaoke horrors and secret office parties

Giving out the the standard disclaimer. This is part three of the series. Parts one and two go before this. OK, this is not the Bourne series and you can skip one or two or both. But I'm just putting this out here to give you the big picture. And mutual fund investments are subject to market risks. 

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The training session, my main reason for this trip, is actually really useful. Over the course of three days, the mild fog hanging over a few disparate topics begins to lift. It is one thing to learn the old school way - seek out the right people, schedule and reschedule meetings, think of intelligent questions to ask, get the answers - the whole nine yards. But it is quite another to have a seat and have the teachers come in and present while you get to ask questions. But what is really special is doing it with the sales team. They hold the ultimate license – the one to ask “fundamental” questions. Pro tip 1: Stick around with them and you can safely get the answers to nearly all the questions you are too embarrassed to ask yourself.

Sales person: “Hey I have a fundamental question. How does this copier work: do I first put the paper in and press this button or is it the other way around?”

Average Joe: “Excellent question Mr. Sidebottom, but that’s the shredder. The copier is over there. Here why don’t I make a copy of that purchase order for you?”

One of them, a pretty senior one, asked a really, terribly fundamental question that could have gotten people to do a double take had it been posed by an engineer or marketer with similar experience. But from a sales guy? People are only too glad to clarify. After calling it a good question first. Pro tip 2: They know to throw a good party and show everyone, including themselves, a good time. In most companies, the sales guy is the go-to man for all questions concerning fine dining establishments, the best golfing venues, nice hotels, resorts and all things good in life. As a result, there is some reception, dinner or other after hours activities planned for most evenings. Compare this with engineering or other training sessions where an evening after a brutal day of lectures and activities would include scarfing down a late and lonely dinner and hitting the sack exhausted. One such night includes hitting a karaoke bar. It has been almost 10 years since I had set foot in a karaoke bar in the karaoke capital of the world: Tokyo. After a tepid start, the party comes to life. Nothing quite warms the hearts of middle aged Asian gentlemen like the sight of a karaoke microphone and a captive audience. Especially after they have been primed with strong beverages. And they gustily start channelizing their respective inner Elvis-Sinatra-Beatles (and now Psy) through an uninhibited, all-out aural attack. Oh and as the night progresses, they put on some dance moves too. Over the next few hours you understand what the phrase “sing like no one is listening” truly means. Passersby that night could be forgiven for assuming that some sort of a primitive ritual involving painful animal sacrifices to a hard-to-please deity was going on within the confines of karaoke hall number 12.

And it is at this karaoke bar, I suspect, that I pick up my infection from hell. Granted, there were sniffles and sneezes during the training sessions. But finger food, shared microphones and inebriated sick people in a confined space is a deadly combination that overwhelms my immune system. I’m running a mild fever, coughing up what I hope are not chunks of my lungs (There goes your appetite!), my chest is weighing a ton and I’m sounding like Frankenstein but less cheery. And as it usually happens in these circumstances, the next days are packed with meetings where I must actually talk. When it rains, as they say, it pours. From my nose, in this case. (Pro travel trip: Never fall sick in a foreign country. You’re welcome.) I want to push out the first meeting in the morning in favor of sleeping a bit longer but the call of duty trumps my body’s loud requests. But guess what? At the very last minute, as I haul my beaten-up self all the way to the room, the meeting gets pushed out to late evening. I must have pissed off many Gods in many ways, I’m sure. But just when I think things are falling apart, a random colleague pours out two glasses of champagne, hands one each to me and a colleague I’m discussing something with, and simply walks away, not even giving us a chance to thank him or ask about the occasion. Glug, glug, glug: gotta love buzz-rael! I mean Israel.

To wrap up this piece, I’d like to share a few interesting things I notice about our office here. Number 1: There are email announcements sent out whenever a colleague loses a family member. They are somber looking emails entirely in Hebrew. Google translation reveals that the email says this: XYZ employee has lost this member of his family and the funeral is to be held at a certain cemetery. I’m familiar with the emails from HR announcing weddings and baby arrivals. But this is the first time I’m coming across official bereavement emails. Interesting. Number 2: Every morning, at about 10:00 AM, there is fresh fruit and vegetables – cucumbers, carrots, baby tomatoes on the vine and some seasonal fruits – placed in baskets in the lobbies on each floor. You get off the lift or stairs and you are face to face with a basket of fine produce. They are even washed. Vegetable peelers are hanging on hooks in the pantries nearby. The crunching sound of carrots and cucumbers can be heard along the corridors. The previous company that I worked for tried this for a very short time in their Singapore office before quickly discontinuing it for reasons unknown. And there is a stall set up on most Thursdays in the front lobby with different vendors, in turns, selling an assortment of interesting things: dry fruits, raisins and nuts (the most popular guy), a florist, homemade pastries and cookies and sometimes linens and bed sheets. But the most amusing thing has got to be the display of empty whiskey bottles that many colleagues have put up on their office shelves. Going by the sheer quantity of the bottles, there must be wild parties going on somewhere unbeknownst to me.