Flight to The Apple

The below post is an account of my flight to New York. Its quite long and is a reproductin of what I wrote during the flight..Its just a rambling journal with no preambles and fullstops...

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Well here Iam on the way to New York..the Big Apple. I was plucked away from the bustling, crowded and dirty Chennai Metropolis, and frankly speaking it did not require much of an effort :) !!

I had to come to the airport alone, as there was only my roomie and he would have to go back alone.


All the close friends I have made in TCS are great people, characters with their pluses outweighing their minuses. We were not able to do things together as often as we would have liked when we had the opportunity and now since we don't have the opportunity, its a bit fustrating. Distance does have its good points :) !! Each of us is discovering the others again. And its a nice feeling.....

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The flight from Chennai to Bombay is over and the flight was not pleasant at all. We ran into numerous in flight turbulence. There were instances(when I was half asleep) when I thought we were travelling on road. The shaking of the plane only served to make me lose my sleep.
And worse I had a woman, who must have thought she was travelling on a bullock cart, as my co-passenger. Half the flight we were fighting The Battle for Armrest and the other half The Battle of the Legspace.

Just got into the AirIndia plane that is going to take me fom Mumbai to London and then New York. Theres a medieval air to the plane and worse the air hostess are a mistake. They blow away the myth about airhostess being glamorous. At least the Chennai-Mumbai flight had an airhostess whom you keep ogling at, for air india they give you cineblitz and filmstar :( !!

Hope this darned fligh goes well. My acco at New York is in a limbo at the moment. I thought I could move in with some guys, but that didnt work out. So not sure where my
stay is going to be. Hopeful that cabbie with a TATA sign does show up at JFK.

Man when is this flight going to start. Me feeling a bit let down coz I didnt get a side seat :| ! Maybe I should have specified this when I got the ticket booked by TCS :) ! Another time I guess...

Unbelievable !! The air hostess is fighting with one of the passengers, practically yelling at him. Unthinkable in any other airlines. But then in a Govt owned/run airlines, their job is not going to be on line whatever they do, short of bombing the plane. And moreover the average age of the airhostess makes them susceptible to assert their authority the smallest chance they get..hmpf...must miss their kitchen I guess. Wonder when AI will grow up. I guess not till the Indian public does. When will they ever equate quality with money and not economy. And when wil they ever stop allowing every other person to walk over them. I guess I would have to grow for them to change.

We have reached Delhi. Its morning out here and as far as the windows show, the legendary Delhi fog is in full form. Visibility, though is not very bad, but it would be scary to ride in such a weather. Do miss the bike :( ! Wonder when I will see it again and in what condition it would be in.

Feeling tired and hungry, guess the journey is going to be tiring. Maybe if I got some sleep it would be better.

We are on our way to London now. Right now we are flying above the clouds. To those who do no see this often, the site is amazing, its akin to travelling the antartic, minus the freezing temperatures. The suns out. I guess when you fly above the clouds the suns always out (of course if its day). Yesterday we had experienced certain inflight turbulences. Wonder how it would be today.

Just got some refreshments so settling down with that.

Shucks a girl on the flight would have been nice. Well good things in life are a bit hard to come by. Hmmmmm...good things ?? moot point :D !!

Hey I can see a medley of land designs now. The farms demarcated by hedges or surface variations. They look beautiful like the drawing in a childs drawing book. Wonder which country are we over. I dont think the middle east would have such waterways and adjoining farms as I am seeing, so I guess we must be over some European country. Wow, I see whole plots of blackish rock like structures, which must be fields with some sort of crops. It makes an excellent contrast to the rest of the light brown and green hues.

Theres smoke coming up from some place down there. Wonder whether they are spraying pesticides or if theres something on fire down there !!

I was right about the European country. We have been travelling over some eastern bloc states, places called, Lubov, Radom and we are going to pass Berlin on the way too. We are flying at an altitude of 38,000 ft (Wow!!), air temp outside is -61C (brrrr..) and speed of the plane is 884 kmph.

Finished lunch and boy it was bland. But guess you cant expect anything better in a flight.

Londons 466km away. We are going at 883kmph and we are at 12,200mt . We hve crossed Berlin and now we are passing through the Swiss countryside. We will be flying just south of Amsterdam and guess we should soon be in London. Am having a bad throat problem and I hope it doesnt get worse.

We are crossing the English channel and into England. We should be landing soon. . I saw a couple of ships moving aroun in the channel.

In case you are wondering about how I know so much about the route and schedule of the plane, its because Air India shows a graphic description of the route we are taking and current position .

We are landing now and my first glimpse of UK is a complex flyover, a sure sign of a developed nation. I can see glimpses of the famed English countryside and boy isnt it beautiful :). There is always an added charm of seeing the countryside from so high up !!

The plane is banking to the left now and god that a behemoth like this can turn at such speeds by simple twirl of knos and switches is scary..hmm... what if the guy sets a wrong knob or fogets to turn a swithc ?? I guess my fears are unfounded...:D !!

We are in the clouds now, at least on one side. The other side has got clear blue skies.

And lo behold London !! I can see a river bisecting the sprawling mass of concrete structures. Is it the Thames ?
This is my first sight of a developed nation and isnt it a wonderful sight !!

I see a park with a bunch of trees at the periphery and a large pond in the center. Hey I just saw a football stadium with an advertisment of Qatar Airways printed across the stadium. This is the first time Iam seeing an advertisment for the people who are flying. Man isnt there any privacy in this damn world anymore ? :)) !! I had also seen vast tracts of land which were football fields and cricket fields ! You wouldnt find something like that in the whole of India. Any wonder why we dont have world beaters in football. What is the use of skill and talent if you dont have the faciilites and opportunity to hone and refine it :| !!

We have landed safely at heathrow. Not sure whether they will ask us deplane or not! But all the preparations seem to point to that :( !! Shucks I just hope that this does not mean another set of security checks and (shucks) another long wait in the lobby.

Right now Iam in the transit lounge in Heathrow Airport. Hmm..now this is called an international airport and a busy one at that. Iam not sure of the statistics, but I think Heathrow is up there in terms of number of flights and traffic.

People over here seem hardnosed and exude a sense of efficiency. What is surprising over here is the ethnic diversity. There seems to be all sorts of colors here :). Hmm..this just makes the bombing in UK a bit harder to take.

The airport is huge and it has got 55 (that i know of) gates. I wonder how much mumbai and chennai has :D !!

Suddenly I get bitten by the travel bug. Hmm...travelling would indeed be nice, but you need to be quite comfortably settled for that :)) !! Wonder when my flight is going to start.

Ok boarded the flight and as usual the air hostess are a big let down :(( !! We should be taking of shortly and this time managed to finagle a windows seat. Since this is a weekday the flight is quite empty :D !!

All right, we are on the move. The distance to new york is 5555km and estimated time to cover it is 7hrs..Hmmm lets c !
Havent seen any airhostess till now, damn dont tell me my aisle is going to have a male stewart :(( ! Thats worse than an old airhostess :((( !!!

Was watching Miss Congeniality on the airplane movie screen. Ok movie.

Right now we were asked to fasten our seatbelts as we are going to experience turbulent weather. I just checked the window, and its beautiful. We are flying over the Land Of Clouds !! As you keep on viewing this, you can clear picture of the spherical contour of earth.
This is like fairy land. The only thing missing are fairies, elfs and pixies, but you do have humans though :) !!

Suddenly a feeling of helplessness flows through me. I just wonder about where Iam going, the land I have to get used to and the foreign culture I would have to imbibe. And after all my assignment is of a short duration, and so have to come and get used to India again :) !!

We are going to land I guess. Cant see anything except that we have descended into the clouds !! Ok I have my first glimpse of America and the first things that strikes me are orderliness and planning. Right now I just saw a huge tract of land in which numerous cars are parked side by side.

And finally Iam in New York :) !! Thankfully the Taxi Person was there holding up a placard with TATA on it !! And after a weary and long ride, I reach Homestead, Secaucus. I just have a shower,fall down on the bed and pop off to sleep, a commodity I have had little of for two days !!!