September 17, 2003
 

Personal

I got back home on Saturday midnight. The journey back began with some hectic packing on Thursday night and Friday morning. Friday morning was essentially ctrl-z [that's undo, for the windoze users] of the previous night's packing. I arrived in the US of A with a suitcase and a travel bag, I was returning with 3 checked-in pieces and 2 cabin baggage pieces. Thats due to some shopping and some gifts received. I got dropped off at the airport around 11 am by my manager [again! THANKS A LOT!], well in time for the 230 pm flight. I checked in without any problems about the extra pieces of baggage (the weight was never going to be an issue). I did some chocolates shopping at the airport duty free shops and then boarded the flight. Thankfullty this time around, the movies were better than the ones shown on my way to SFO. From San Francisco to Frankfurt it was the Rowan Atkinson wacky spoofy comedy Johnny English. I had seen the movie earlier, so I slept through some of it. We landed at Frankfurt around 10 am local time. Since I wanted to get hold of some euros, I bought some chocolates. The problem was that there're no 1 euro notes. So I ended up carrying a fair number of euro coins, which would no doubt add to the weight of the aircraft. At Frankfurt, there was a ridiculous charade of asking all passengers [including those who had boarding passes] to stand in a line for a boarding pass verification. If the airline was so unsure about its boarding pass issuing processes, then why make the customers uncomfortable?

Bruce Almighty was the English movie on the Frankfurt - Bangalore flight. I'd not seen it before, so I tried to see all of it. It was funny in parts but it really did remind me of two recent Tamil movies - Baba and Anbe Sivam. The parts where Bruce questions the existence of God and then God manifests himself, gives him the boon to be God for as long as he wanted as long as he made agreed to some conditions, Bruce testing out his newly acquired powers and then realising that it was true and using those powers to make things better for himself, for others around him etc. ... these reminded me of Baba. The parts of the movie where God tells Bruce that there's a God in everyone, some of them know and most others dont realise it. Doing good deeds is one of the best ways to experience God etc. ... they reminded me of Anbe Sivam. The makers of the movie seem to have been "inspired" by these two Tamil movies. The other thing I noticed was that the movie also bore a strong resemblance to an earlier Jim Carrey movie - Liar Liar. The other movie on the flight was a pathetic Hindi movie, which I'd never heard about, so I chose to skip it and caught some sleep, anxiously waiting for the landing around midnight.

We landed just around midnight on Friday-Saturday. I managed to get through the immigration queue fairly quickly (I noticed that there were quite a few counters open, good to note that) and then went to the baggage claim. I waited for nearly 45 minutes for my 3 pieces of baggage. It seemed like a combination of Wordsworth and cricket. I was either saying 'Stop here or gently pass' or screaming to myself 'Not mine, yours'. Finally, at close to 1 am, my bags arrived - as the adage goes, when it rains, it pours. I got home around 130 am after failing to wend past an army of pre-paid taxi drivers, each promising the same rate. I wondered 'Guys, where's the competitive advantage? What about pricing strategy?!'. After some chitchat, I slept at around 230 am.

Got into work on Monday, found that my desk hadn't been setup yet [we're in the process of moving premises] and that just gave me another excuse to go home in the afternoon.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

Rambled @ 1:37 PM

Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

0 comment(s)

I'd prefer if you posted comments with your real name to add more credibility to your opinions. Obviously comments containing offensive and unsuitable language will be deleted. The opinions in the comments are your own views. You are welcome to provide a URL to your own blog, especially if it discusses issues you find here.

Post a Comment