Is it okay to wear skinny jeans if you’re in a foreign country?

I’m sure a few of you read the title and thought “it was just a matter of time” Between living in San Francisco and my tendency to order girly drinks (the best was when I visited Vidya in May…the waiter would always switch our drinks…come on, nothing wrong with a guy ordering a lychee martini) people tend to make certain assumptions about me. Plus, I don’t always help my cause because I tend to be a bit too honest and tell people everything. It’s no secret that while I was studying in Hong Kong, I hung out with Europeans…which resulted in me ordering Smirnoff at bars and nearly led me to purchasing a pair of capris.

So back to skinny jeans, I’ll admit it, I love tight jeans…but only when its on a girl. Unfortunately, I recently found myself wearing skinny jeans while on business in Spain. Let’s start from the top.

I spent a week in Madrid because our Company is a participant in CpHI, which is the world’s largest pharmaceutical conference. Usually only people in marketing and business development attend the conference but I was allowed to come so I could learn more about the industry and work in the booth.

I’m used to going to conferences as an attendee not as an exhibitor. I attended several technology conferences while I lived in San Francisco for work. As an attendee, your goal is to eat free food, grab goodies gawk at the hostesses and pick up brochures all without actually talking to people in the booths, unless you really want to. Of course, as an exhibitor, particularly the one working in the front, I have the exact opposite goal. No one should get anything without talking to me. I tended to walk up and down our booth and practically run to anyone who showed a remote interest in the Company.

While our booth was constantly busy due to all the meetings we had, it drew a lot of attention because we had a ridiculous food/drink selection. We’re not talking chips here, we had a great selection of gourmet food, wine and champagne. However, the pièce de résistance was Iberico ham. While I don’t have the photo of it on hand, below is a good replica of the leg we ordered. It took us 3 days but we managed to eat the entire leg throughout the conference.


The food was a magnet and a lot of people drifted towards our booth to get some samples. I could see people mentally calculate whether they wanted to spend 5 minutes talking to me in order to get some food. One guy even made a few walk bys, planned his approach, ducked into the booth, grabbed some food and ran before I could talk to him.

Of course, let’s not forget who else wanted to eat and drink….me. I spent a decent chunk of the day eating ham and salmon. The bartender usually opened up wine at 2 and champagne at 4 but I always had to remind myself that I was at work which is why I limited myself to 1 glass a piece until the day was over. Plus, I’m fairly confident that a glare from my uncle would cause me to melt or at a bare minimum, my head would explode.

A big highlight at the conference was that I got to meet the team in China that I will be working with next year. Four people from the Biocause attended the conference…2 speak good English, 1 speaks a few words and the President doesn’t know a word. I’ll likely see them again in December when I’m headed to China to visit suppliers.

While the conference was very informative and entertaining, there were 2 eventful things that happened after hours.

Spain is the 26th country I’ve visited but the 1st country where I’ve had something stolen. I always chuckle at paranoid first-time travelers who wear money belts under their shirts or don’t take any risks. It always seems so ridiculous to be uptight while traveling and not trusting people because part of the fun of traveling is rolling with the flow and not planning things out. I exercise good caution but I’m not always thinking about people screwing me over.

I was at an outdoor café with family eating dinner. I brought my messenger bag with me since I didn’t have time to stop at the hotel. I put the bag on the ground but mitigated any risk by looping the strap around my leg. However, after a while my leg cramped up so I readjusted and let the strap fall to the ground…parallel to that, some shady guy came up to our table and asked to use a spare chair. After he left, I looked down to put the strap back on…but sadly, my bag was gone.

While it sucked to lose a really expensive bag and my digital camera, I was fairly lucky. A few minutes before my bag was stolen, I had given my dad 400 pounds from my bag. Plus, I had my wallet, passport, blackberry and pen on me and had left my laptop and media player in the hotel. If I had lost those as well, I would have been even more furious. I haven’t been able to find a nice bag so in the interim; I have been using a plastic duty-free bag as my laptop bag. I’m not sure what people in the office think…ghetto is probably an appropriate word, but I’m sure they’re concerned…if the MD’s nephew has resorted to using a plastic bag, what the hell are bonuses going to look like this year?

Now back to what this post is all about…skinny jeans. After the conference finished, a few of us decided to stay in Madrid for 2 days to explore the city. On Friday, I hopped out of the shower and started to put on my jeans…however, I encountered resistance around my quads. I stared and wondered what was going on…I mean, I know I had been eating a lot of ham but who gets fat quads? Then I noticed the jeans were from Express….I haven’t bought something from Express since it was Structure…back in high school.

Apparently, the servant in India while doing laundry gave me my aunt’s jeans. This kind of stuff happens all the time, I get Harsha’s underwear and my uncle’s shirts on occasion but I never thought Ramu would be stupid enough to switch jeans. I had only brought one pair of jeans since I was in Madrid for 2 days….I’m not nearly cool enough to pull off the entire t-shirt/dress pant look so I told Andrew that I needed his jeans. On paper, this shouldn’t have been a problem. Andrew and I are fairly close to the same weight and have the same frame. However, Andrew is Korean. Koreans and Japanese really like a ‘streamlined’ look…so basically, nothing baggy. While I don’t have a picture of Andrew, he kind of dresses like this (including the hair)….


I managed to wear his jeans and I instantly starting squirming. Aside from the denim clinging onto my quads, there was a lot of tightness…everywhere. I honestly have no idea on how guys wear skinny jeans. For 2 days, I kept on moving my legs, readjusting and grimacing. I felt very exposed. Needless to say, the best part of the day is when I got back to the hotel and changed in my pajamas.

Before I wrap up, I continued my tradition of eating nice food while I’m out of India. On our last day, we went to a gourmet grocery store and ordered champagne, caviar, white-truffle infused cheese, black-truffle infused cheese, ham and oysters. It was close to 300 euros but you know what…worth every cent. I thought of the truffles while I was at Subway today and can't decide if I should be thankful Harsha has introduced me to all these amazing things or angry that he's exposed me to the greener grass.