We Indians love in-flight chat with strangers

The Independent, Reuters & IANS

Indians are the third most frequent travellers in the Asia-Pacific region, with an average 7.6 flights a year, according to the Expedia Flight and Hotel Etiquette Survey 2018.

The online travel agency has released the results of the 2018 Flight and Hotel Etiquette study, an annual survey on flight and hotel behaviour of travellers across 23 countries.

The survey was conducted online across North America, Europe, South America and Asia-Pacific using an amalgamated group of best-in-class panels. The study covered 18,229 respondents — 793 from Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.

The survey results pointed out that Indians were at the top spot - with 59 per cent globally - of those who often engage in a conversation when sitting next to someone they don’t know. It revealed that 70 per cent Indian travellers also dread sitting next to someone who talks too much.

Indian travellers prefer big chain hotels (29 per cent) followed by vacation/holiday rental (22 per cent), boutique hotel (15 per cent) and short-term room rental (11 per cent) the most.

The least preferred accommodations include hostels (39 per cent) and bed and breakfasts with shared bathrooms (29 per cent).

“The findings are a testimony of the growth in traffic being experienced by the aviation industry as Indians are the third most frequent travellers in Asia-Pacific region, with average 7.6 flights per year after Thailand and Japan,” said Manmeet Ahluwalia, marketing head of Brand Expedia.

Some other findings of the survey are that majority of Indians (79 per cent) prefer window seat. Also, 53 per cent of Indians recline their seats only when they are going to sleep and 48 per cent recline if it's a long flight (3 hours or more).

Greece starts up

Greek student Stavros Tsompanidis was walking on a beach when he saw a business idea in dried-up seagrass. He decided to recycle it to make iPhone cases, sunglasses and gift boxes.

Four years on, his startup, PHEE, sells its products across Greece and abroad. He represents a change in mindset among young Greeks who are turning to entrepreneurship as a result of the crisis.

“If we don’t act, in the next five years we’ll be saying the same things: that Greece isn't going well, that there are no jobs ... that we have a new programme by the International Monetary Fund and European Union to support us,” the 25-year-old said.

Like India, which saw an addition of over 1,000 startups in the last fiscal and their number swell to 19, 000 (Economic Survey), Greece, too, is witnessing a startup revolution. 

Only just recovering from the great financial crisis of 2008, the Greek economy has shrunk by a quarter and cut off traditional routes to employment. During the crisis thousands of firms shut and unemployment peaked at 27.9 per cent, with six in 10 young job-seekers out of work. About 223,000 Greeks aged 25-39 emigrated in 2008-13 to richer countries, central bank data shows.

But things are changing, with “startups” creating jobs and offering some hope that Greece can reverse an exodus of its highly skilled youth. It can take a cue from India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, which according to talent assessment firm MeritTrac, will create three lakh employees by 2020. Indian startups employed about 50,000 to 60,000 people in the last financial years itself.

Even though Greece has no official startups register, several private databases show they number between around 600 and 1,100. The earliest count of startups, made in 2010 by non-profit advisory Endeavour Greece, stood at just 16.

Bhutan the carbon sink

Most countries in the world have a positive carbon footprint, meaning that they emit more CO2 than their forests absorb. But one country is different. Yes, only one.

Nestled between China and India, Bhutan is the only carbon-negative country in the world. This means that their forests are able to absorb more carbon dioxide than is emitted. 

The sovereign state is made up of about 800,000 citizens, and the country’s commitment to sustainable energy is part of its national identity.

Bhutan’s prime minister Tshering Tobgay said in a 2016 TED Talk via National Geographic: “Our enlightened monarchs have worked tirelessly to develop our country, balancing economic growth carefully with environmental sustainability all within the framework of good governance.”

In fact, sustainability is built into the country’s constitution, and legislation commands that a minimum of 60 per cent of the country’s total land area must be forested at any one time. In 2015, a team of 100 Bhutanese set a world record by planting 49,672 trees in one hour.

The country also has a detailed river network that is used to generate much of the country’s electricity, and its policy of decarbonisation makes this landlocked country at the forefront of honouring the Paris climate agreement.

Trump’s excellent health

A doctor’s letter lavishing praise on Donald Trump’s “astonishingly excellent” health was not written by the Republican’s physician at the time, according to claims in US media.

Dr Harold Bornstein, who was Trump’s doctor for 35 years until he entered the White House, told the CNN his billionaire patient actually dictated the whole letter in December 2015 before the Trump campaign released it to the media. 

At the time, the language of the letter — which claimed Trump would be the healthiest president ever elected — raised eyebrows. 

“He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter,” Dr Bornstein told the CNN. “I just made it up as I went along.”

The White House has not yet commented on Dr Bornstein’s allegation, but it comes following a separate interview with NBC News in which the physician claimed his offices were “raided” by White House officials in 2017, and that Mr Trump’s original medical records were all seized. 

The new claims are the opposite of what Dr Bornstein said just over two years ago, when he put his name and signature to the hyperbolic letter. Of Trump, it said: “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary”. 

B’desh cyber heist

Bangladesh would consider an out-of-court settlement with a bank in the Philippines over $81 million stolen from its accounts in New York by hackers who wired the money to Manila, Bangladesh central bank officials have said. In one of the world's biggest cyber heists, the hackers stole the Bangladesh Bank money held at the New York Fed in February 2016 using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system and sent it to Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.

From there, it disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines. No one has been charged for the heist despite an international investigation. "There is an option before us to settle the issue out of court," a senior official at Bangladesh's central bank said.

The official, who declined to be identified, cited as a precedent an out-of-court settlement in February reached by Ecuador's Banco del Austro and Wells Fargo over a 2015 cyber heist.

Bangladesh’s finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith recently met Carlos Dominguez, Finance Secretary of the Philippines in Manila to discuss the cyber heist, said two senior central bank officials close to the issue.

—Sources: The Independent, Reuters & IANS