Instead of trying to impress foreign investors and glorifying their meetings with prospective investors as an achievement, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah chose to remain practical on the issue on Monday while briefing presspersons on his recent official visit to China to woo investors.
When he had to mention the names of the leaders he met in China, he said: “I met the Chinese Premier among others. Neither can I remember his name, nor can I pronounce it.” He then turned to the officials and asked them to say their names.
“Oh, it is really difficult for me to read it,” he said, when the officials passed on a piece of paper with the names of the Chinese leaders whom he met. “You see, it is difficult for us to pronounce their names. It is equally difficult for them to pronounce our names. In fact, they struggled to pronounce my name, and never got it right. They could only say Sidda…Rama ...,” he said in a lighter vein.
When asked how much investment may materialise from his Chinese visit, he said: “Let us be practical. I have met the industrialists and asked them to invest in the State and participate in our Global Investors’ Meet in October 2014. Though they have agreed, we have to wait for them to actually participate in the meet and enter into agreements regarding investments. Till then, it is not proper to guess.” To a query, he said he had requested the head of the World Economic Forum to hold its summit in Bangalore. “I can claim that I am trying to convince him to hold the prestigious meeting of the forum in Bangalore. But then it will not be correct as I could make out that he was not positive on that due to other commitments,” the Chief Minister said.
Home food
He said a chef who had worked in Bangalore earlier and later transferred to China had helped him during his China stay by cooking food that would suit his taste.
