A Journey towards the west

Well this is my first blog and was urged to start one to record this eventful journey towards the west.

For the uninitialised, after my undergrad in BITS, I was bitten by the software bug and was in Bangalore (India) for 3 good years before I set on my journey towards the west for my graduate studies in Carnegie Mellon.

The preparation for this journey was indeed an eventful one and demands a seperate post. Anyhow, I will squeeze in the essentials here... With just 20 odd days after my last day at work to the day I had to fly, I realised that setting out on a journey for 2 years isnt that simple afterall.. I had to run around for my health checkup (and thanks to my root canal treatment to my tooth which ate up a good 2 weeks), collect international driver license, of all things learn cooking and what not... And add to all these the limit imposed by airlines not to carry more than 46 kgs. It is something like, I need to live for 2 years but I can carry just 40 odd kgs.. I spent most of the last hours in india weighing my bags and thinking whether to trust the weighing machine or not...

Well the D-day arrived and it was time for me to bid adieu to my parents in chennai (India) airport and enter for the much-talked about immigration checks. With long queues everywhere, I somehow thought is it that so many people really want to flee the country everyday? ridiculous. But I couldnt be complaining. Afterall even I was one among them. The immigrations happen, I meet a buddy from undergrad school, chat for a while, inform parents that I am about to take off, meet my to-be-roomie etc.. But still the clock didnt strike 1:45 - the departure of my lufthansa.

Finally, it did and I boarded the flight. When it was about to take off, I had all weird feelings about leaving the country etc.. But soon with those thoughts, I had slept. It was about 3:30 and worst of all things, the air hostess wakes me up and serves me dinner. I knew right then, my biological clock is going to go for a toss soon. But didnt bother much. Had the so called dinner and slept again. The sleep wasnt all that comfortable. The pricate travel buses in India had better push backs u know... And of all things i was in the middle seat.

After a 9.5 hrs long journey landed in Frankfurt, met a few of the buddies who were supposed to be travelling to my univ. My connection to philadelphia was 5.5 hrs after that. In that time we talked about everything on earth and at the back of my mind I was worried about just having 3 hrs for my immigration,customs and re-checkin in the connection from philadelphia to pittsburgh. But was just hoping for the best and was quite positive of making it.

It was when the worst thing had happened. The bomb scares in hiterto and other places had delayed my connection to philadelphia by 3 hours. I was wprried that I knew for sure I cannot make it to the next connecting flight - philadelphia to pittsburgh. Thankfully, I had a couple of buddies along with me in the same boat. Some solace u know... We were hungry and were served with a peice of bread and some meat. It yucked. One bite and the rest went directly to recycle bin.

After a 9 hour wait in frankfurt including a mini visa interview and every one around speaking in German, I was more than happy to leave the place. I had also changed the next connection from philadelphia to pittsburgh to a flight that would give me just 1.5 hrs for immigration and customs provided this flight reaches on time. For a change, there was a German (beautiful) lady (read babe) next to me. Thankfully she knew English and had a refreshing talk. It was nice to know about how they lived and how positive she takes a flight delay as. I had lots to learn from her. The chat with her made amends for the yucky flight food.

And by god's grace, the flight landed in philadelphia - the first smell of Uncle Sam's land - on time. With just 1.5 hrs left, I ran around to immigration. The person was sweet enough to complete it asap. And from there to baggage claim and surprisingly I identified my bags soon. Then to customs and then re-checkin. Then came the security check. The bomb scares were apparently tried out of some liquid. So they were very hard on liquids. I had to give away my deo and even my tooth paste. The best thing though was the security officer asking me the prescription for my tooth paste.

After running around all the places, I reached the next terminal to board my connection. The bad luck continued. The flight was again delayed - first by 40 min, then by another 40 and then by another 40 min. Then Finally when I boarded the flight, I thought it would all be fine and I will be in pittsburgh in an hour. It wasnt to be. The flight was stranded in runway for about 1 hr before it took off. All the waits and the long journey had tired me a lot and had a nice nap before I reached pittsburgh finally. The cool thing was it was still Aug 10. I started from India at 1:45 am Aug 10 (IST) and reached pittsburgh on Aug 10 at 11:15 pm (EST). Eventually, it turned out to be the longest August 10 I had.

Would blog the life out here in my next blog. Till then =;