Arrival In India

Ok, let's try this blog entry again. This time, I'm writing it offline and will copy it to the blog. I think I understand what happened. More about this later.
I left home around 2PM on Thursday. Oddly, the mail had come just as the airport limo did, and in the mail was a power adaptor that I had ordered with no expectation of getting it in time. So now replete with the latest electronic paraphenalia, away we went.
The limo driver had apparent done some working in high tech and even knew something about VMS (the operating system that I work on), so we talked on the way to Logan. He had even transported my friend Chuck (see 2006 blog entry) a few times to the airport on HIS way to India.
My flight is a United Airlines "codeshare". That means that it has a United flight number, but it is really flown by a different airline, in this case Lufthansa. What is really annoying is that NOONE ANYWHERE (other than airline employees) has ever heard of the United flight number, and my itinerary has ONLY the UAL flight number. So the customs forms, the departures board, the limo, etc all needed the actual Lufthansa number which you don't see till you actually get your boarding pass. Not to mention, the Lufthansa web site can't deal with the UAL reservation number and the UAL sight can't show you seat assignments for Lufthansa. I suppose this codeshare stuff is supposed to make some things easier, but it would be a lot better if UAL would just include the Lufthansa number (or even better, use the same one!)
Anyway, the flights themselves were fine. The first flight had a large number of teens; appeared to be a school group from the UK (based on accent). They were no problem. I sat next to one, and she spent most of the flight elsewhere (with her friends, I suppose), which meant I had extra room! The flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore was not too full either; I was on an inside aisle and the center of the row was empty, so I had an extra seat to put stuff on.
The FRA airport was really the hardest part; I was sleepy but I had 6 hours to hang around. There was not much in the way of comfortable seating, and the gate seating is closed except for a couple hours before a flight. Ah well.
We landed at BLR at about 1:30AM, right on time. It was odd watching the altitude on the cabin display. It showed the altitude at 3000 feet, but I could tell from the noises that we were about to land. I guess they were displaying sea-level and had not compensated for the altitude of the airport for the passenger display. We had to wait 15 minutes or so for a plane to leave so we would have a gate to pull into. Then we finally got off. The lines at immigration were pretty short, but I had to wait a very long time for my bags. It looked like mine were in the last group taken off! Luckily I had seen my friend Sandeep waiting for me and we waved at each other, so he knew I was actually there. When I finally got my bags, it was again no trouble going out through customs.
It was great to see Sandeep! It's so much better to meet in person than just on the phone. That's the reason for trips like this; to keep up connections. At least that's my opinion. He took me in a cab to the apartment. It seemed that we went a different route than the way I was used to, so I saw absolutely nothing familiar! The apartment is pretty nice! Two bedrooms, a dining room-cum-kitchen and a living room (or maybe a kitchen and a dining room-cum-living room). The odd thing is that all over the apartment are various kinds of old guns on display. There is a "John Wayne Rifle" in the front hall, and various old pistols of various sorts in the dining room and bedrooms. I put some pictures of them at my web site.
By the time I was settled it was 3 or 3:30 and I had made a breakfast date for 9AM. (Sleeping late: BAD for jetlag!) I was surprisingly unsleepy but managed to sleep a few hours, got up at 8, showered (ahhh!!!) and dressed. Sandeep and Prashanth came right on time and we decided to walk to the chosen restaurant, a hotel about 1km away. They had a buffet which consisted of western omlet (I don't mean western as in non-Asian; I mean with peppers and stuff [no ham]), chapati (a whole wheat flatbread), idly (steamed rice dumplings) and a nice spicy sauce to dip it all in. Also some sweet Indian coffee (which I'm coming to like quite a bit).
P & S also helped me get a SIM card to put in my cellphone. A SIM card is the piece that tells the phone what your phone number is and how to charge you. I got one so I could have an Indian phone number. It is really useful for contacting drivers and for people to contact you. I have a phone from my work, but it has a US phone number. Anyway, getting the card was harder than expected. I needed a letter from work saying that they knew me, a copy of my passport and driver's license, and a passport-style photo! I had everything except the photo. The seller was nice and said I could bring it back (but if I did not, they would cut off service that night!)
We went back to the apartment, and after a while I decided to walk the couple miles to MG Road (MG=Mahatma Ghandi...many roads are abbreviated like that) to a supermarket and a photo store. This apartment is close enough to my old one that I was able to do that; I even managed to find a shortcut across a parking lot to come out right beside the supermarket. Of course I then decided I'd better go to the photo store first and did so. The power had been off for an hour along MG road, and lots of businesses had little honda generators out on the sidewalk roaring away. (Never think that Bangalore is a quiet place!) The photo shop folks had been sitting in the dark, but they pulled out the generator to do my pictures. All HP equipment! They took a digital photo, booted their computer and downloaded it, and printed it out on an HP printer. Then to the supermarket; I'm lousy at grocery shopping. I should have made a better list. Anyway, I got some cheese, milk, yogurt, and cookies. I should have gotten some oil, garlic, vegetables, bread, etc but I was getting weighted down pretty quick and the 2 mile walk back was weighing on me. (ha ha)
I actually decided to take a rickshaw back home. Of course I could have then carried some heavier stuff, but I did not think of all that. It took me about a month the last time to work up my courage to take a rickshaw. This time, the first day! The only problem was that the best way to describe where I wanted to go was "The Coffee Day on Lavelle Road" (Coffee Day is a cafe chain). That was fine, except when I got there I was completely turned around and walked all over heck and gone to fine the apartment. The problem is that there are seldom street signs and the Coffee Day is at a complicated intersection. It turns out that (as I thought, but could not quite find) the apartment is really no more than 100 feet from Coffee Day as long as you know the right direction!
After a brief rest, I took the photo to the phone guy. That was also a bit of an adventure finding the way, but luckily, Pras had made a rough map on paper (I wish I'd had it when I came back from the supermarket!).
Come dinner time, I went across the street from the apartment to a place called Sunny's (which had been recommend by some of my colleagues who had stayed here before). It was a nice bright modern-style place that had a variety of food types, not including Indian. I had some Thai chicken and baked vege crepes, and it was all pretty good.
I slept really well, so I'm hoping that my claim not to get jet lag will prove true this time. I tried to get breakfast this morning, but nothing was open, not even the coffee day! I had some milk, cheese, and some cereal like Coco-Krisps that was in the apartment "mini-bar".
That's it for now...future entries will hopefully be more pithy analysis rather than just hour-by-hour diary. I'm going to see if the Coffee Day is open yet!
By the way, all my India pictures will be at this URL: http://picasaweb.google.com/burnsfisher/India2008