Travel bummers

While returning to India this week I had high hopes of a smooth and speedy process upon my arrival into Bombay. I was seated right near the door of the plane and my bags were ‘Priority” tagged (I am discovering this is like a ‘kiss of death’ for luggage) which in theory is supposed to make them arrive among the first of the bags on the carousel. Immigration went fine and I then walked over to the baggage claim area. I waited . . . . and waited . . . . . and waited some more. Finally my bag appeared out from behind the flap door and the luggage belt immediately stopped, followed by a young man poking his head through the door letting us that was the end of the luggage. My bag was THE last one out. There were now only six people standing there out of the nearly 350 that had been on my flight. So much for making a speedy process.

I then went to get my domestic ticket re-endorsed (I had pre-poned my trip by two days), and had to wait in line behind several ‘problem cases’ that seemed to take forever. I proceeded to the check-in counter to hand over my luggage and get my boarding pass before heading to the hotel for some much needed sleep. While waiting in the line I began wondering if the driver from the hotel would still be waiting for me outside after my lengthy delay. I stood in line for nearly twenty minutes only to be told (while second in line) that the system had gone down and I needed to move to another line. I waited another twenty minutes in that line before finally getting things taken care of. I was now becoming rather annoyed at the amount of lost sleep as a result of all these factors.

I headed out the door to look for the hotel driver, who of course, was not there. I hired a taxi to drive me to the hotel. This taxi was more like a shoe box than a taxi, and after folding myself into it we began to drive off. The driver was somehow able to see through the darkness in spite of the almost totally useless headlight on the car. It had to have been something in the neighborhood of about three candle-power. The fact that the car had to be push started also did not encourage me too much.

Upon arriving at the hotel I asked why no one had been there to pick me up, and was told they had not received my arrival details. However, while filling out the form with my passport details, the desk clerk put “Amsterdam” under the field for “Arrived from”. I asked him how he knew I had arrived from Amsterdam, to which he said “That is where you came from.” I asked how he knew that. He explained that my travel agent had told them I was coming from Amsterdam. I then asked him how many flight per day go to/from Amsterdam via Bombay on any airline. He replied that there was only one flight per day to/from Amsterdam. I then asked him why, if he knew there was only one flight per day on any airline, and he knew that that is where I was coming from, did he not put two and two together to arrive at the conclusion that if I was coming from Amsterdam I MUST be on that one flight. Apparently that thought was completely new to him.

I headed to my room, frustrated at the amount of shut-eye lost to silly, uncalled for delays and hassles in the last three hours. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day, and upon my arrival at home these frustrations would soon melt away. They did.

You want what?

While on my recent trip back to India, I sat next to a young Indian girl who could not have weighed more than about 60 pounds, soaking wet, with a brick in her hand. When the first beverage service was offered, she asked if alcohol was served on the flight. After receiving an affirmative answer, she then asked for a “Wodka”. This did not compute with the flight attendant. A brief volley of “What?”s soon followed as each party tried to understand each other. Finally I explained that she wanted a vodka. This was followed with the question “How do you want that?”, which was met with a look of complete confusion. Several options were offered (on the rocks, with soda, with a twist, etc.) all of which were not what the girl expected. She then asked if they had a “limebase”, which once again, did not compute with the flight attendant. Another volley of “What?”s followed. I then explained that she wanted a lime base, not knowing what that meant. Finally, a glass with ice cubes was handed over along with a lemon wedge and a small bottle of vodka. This apparently was at least satisfactory to the young girl who then commenced to wring the life right out of that lemon wedge and mix that with the ‘wodka’. The funny thing about this whole thing is that both people were speaking English, just different versions of it, and yet they could not seem to really understand each other without someone translating from English to English for them.

The Pope's Lake House

Spent a few days in Detroit this weekend for some meetings. The people I was meeting with had arranged for me to stay at the lake house of some friends, whose last name is Pope. So I got to stay at the Pope's Lake House. :)

The lake house turned out to be a one bedroom lake front house right behind their main house. It sat about 100 yards away from the big house, and only 10 feet from the lake. What a beautiful place. I loved it there. Ended up having my meetings there in the house.

One of the funny parts of that whole thing was when I arrived at the house. There was a man outside pressure washing the patios and walkways. I called out to him several times, but he did not hear me. I tried to stand where he could see me out of his peripheral vision, but when he did finally see me apparently my 6’2” large frame startled him significantly. He jumped and turned toward me, trying not to act too startled, but not succeeding. I apologized for scaring him and went inside, laughing to myself at the sight of him jumping like that. Things like that are always good for a laugh.

A day spent fishing

Spent the day today fishing with my Uncle. Had a day or two of break in between meetings, so I had made plans to go visit him and his family. We both have fond memories of fishing with his dad, my grandfather when we were younger.

We got a reasonable start to the day, and were on the water by about 8 or 8:30 am. We began getting all kinds of bites on our lines soon afterwards, sometimes losing our bait before our bobbers had stood up, with sinkers at only 4-5 feet. Mostly we caught little bluegills and sunfish. My Uncle landed a couple nice bass as well, but they were just shy of the legal requirement for ‘keepers’. He also landed himself a sizeable turtle that put up an extraordinary fight which to our amazement did not break his 8 lb test line or his pole either.

End of the day we had landed about 30-35 fish, but only about 10 were big enough to keep and those were not enough to feed us and my Aunt and cousin, so we decided to let them all go free. We came back empty handed, but full-hearted, having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves for the day.

Never normal (Part 2)

After all of the excitement surrounding getting my mom to India, our attention quickly turned to now getting my wife and I out of India to go for our meetings (my mom had basically come to take care of her grandkids while we are out of the country). We made all kinds of contingency plans for this as well.

End of the day, everything worked out just fine, and we had no trouble at all. In fact, I even got upgraded to World Business Class on the flight from Bombay to Amsterdam. One of the perks of being a Platinum Elite member. That is not a normal experience either, though. Out of the literally dozens of times I have flown on that exact same flight, I have only been upgraded 3 times. But it is sure nice when it does happen.

This trip did not involve any crazy people on the flights or people being declared dead on the flights (yes those have both happened to me) or any other such incidents taking place, but the ‘not normal’ part of this trip was the worry about the airport in Bombay being under so much water that we would not be able to get out.

Computers for all

Had a fun day yesterday. Some may not share the joy in this with me, but it was fun for me. Fulfillment of months of thinking and planning. I got to buy 45 computer systems and help assemble them all in preparation for handing them over to the managers from some schools in various parts of India.

When the truck (yes, it was literally a truck load of parts) arrived I began to ask myself “What have you done?” In no time the guys had carried all of it upstairs to the conference room and the inventorying began. 45 cabinets? Check. 45 Intel original motherboards? Check. 45 Intel original processors? Check. 45 HP printer/scanner/copier all-in ones? Check. 45 APC UPS battery back ups? Check. 45 LG color monitors? Check. And so on down the list it went. There were also 45 copies of Windows XP Professional and 45 copies of MS Office 2003 Professional. All in all it was nearly $45,000 worth of stuff, and all of it is brand new and current, not outdated or second-hand.

And then . . . the assembling began. In a flurry of activity and remarkable order, 6 people set about putting all of these pieces into something that will one day soon change the way these schools function. In 7 hours all the machines were put together, and now ready to begin loading software, etc.

Throughout the day various people stopped in to see what all the buzz was about in the office that day. There was a mix of responses. Some jealous. “I want one.” Some wondering how we could afford it all. “I thought we have no money. How did we buy all of these?” Some just so glad to see that day had arrived. “We had heard that this was planned, but we never thought it would really happen.” I even had one person say “As soon as I came down the hall I knew it must be Kevin doing this because it is so organized and happening on time.” The best reaction all day was one who said “I am so glad to see that we are giving these schools the best stuff available, not giving them our old systems and keeping the new ones for ourselves like normally happens.”

That is what it is all about. Giving the best to allow them to do their best.

Can't get through to the call center

During one of my moments of anxiety during the “All the worrying for nothing” incident, I had to call the airline to ask about possible flight delays. It struck me as terribly ironic that in India, the land of call centers and BPO offices, I could not get through to the airline. This is a country that has become a specialist of sorts in this kind of service, and yet, no answer. Of course, I must admit that if this call center were located in Bombay, the place was likely under water, and so who can fault the people for not answering. It is really hard to talk on the phone under water (if you have never tried it maybe you should).

All the worrying for nothing

My mom has been planning to come to see us for about 3-4 months now. We had booked her ticket a long time ago. And then the rain began to fall in Bombay, one of the cities she would transit through on her way here. And the rain kept coming, and coming and coming. More than 3 feet of rain in one 24 hour period. The airport was effectively shut down for almost a week, with all indicators the day before she was to arrive that no domestic flights would go to/from Bombay. International flights were mostly ok, but not the domestic ones.

We began making all kinds of contingency plans. Hotel reservations, airport pickups, alternate routings for her flights, cars to drive her to a nearby city where she could possibly get a flight, etc. We spent nearly the whole day tracking her inbound progress and working out all the possible solutions to the situation. We had a veritable hotline to the travel agent here in town.

When I went to bed at about midnight the night before she was to arrive, we had no idea what would happen, and knew we just had to wait for her to call and see what can be done. My instructions to her had been clear. “If for any reason you get delayed or re-routed, just do your best to let me know. If I do not hear from you I will be waiting for you at the scheduled time.”

I got up at about 4 am and decided to check with the airline just to see if maybe something had been worked out. I was informed that her flight had already left Bombay and would be arriving here as per the schedule. I got dressed and headed off to the airport. Sure enough, a few minutes later she arrived, right on time.

I had been so anxious and done my best, and spent all that time worrying over nothing. She was just fine, and made it here with no troubles. One of these days I just might learn to relax a bit and let things happen.