First belated post this year

I've been in India nearly a week and this is the first blog entry I have made. Sorry about that...I have a few excuses, but I won't bother with them.

I left New Hampshire and home on SUnday in the middle of a flooding rain. In the ride to the airport in Boston, I saw lots of raging rivers, and a few flooded parking lots. (It turns out that my band rehearsal at Souhegan High School on the next Tuesday was cancelled because the roads around the school were all flooded.) Anyway, the flight left and hour+ late because, the captain told us, they had to load the baggage a lot more slowly and carefully to avoid getting it wet. Good idea!

The flight was only notable in that I was able to sleep a little. I don't know if we got to Frankfurt late or not. In fact, I would welcome being late because sitting around in the Frankfurt airport is not much fun. No comfortable seats, not much of anything. The flight to Bangalore was only slightly more interesting. The flight appeared to have only one empty seat, and wonder of wonders it was beside me! So I used half of the seat for stuff, and arm room and the guy on the other side used the other half. They had pretty decent Indian food, I thought.

A new milestone for my trips to India...no one from work came to meet me. I'd actually felt a little guilty the last time or 2, especially since the new airport opened. You may recall my descriptions of the old airport where, when you walked out, you were completely surrounded by humanity shouting, waving, pushing, and beyond them nothing really familiar. The new airport is nice...just what you expect an airport to be. You walk out and sure, there are people with signs and stuff, but not way more people than can fit in the space and beyond there is a plaza to wait for rides and a parking lot. They driver from my hotel was there with a "Burns Fisher" sign. I walked with him to the parking lot where he had me wait for him to go find the car and pick me up. Whooshing off to the hotel (about an hour) in the middle of the night was quite an experience...very little traffic. That does not happen often.

I recognized some of the route...we went by the office, for example, so I had some idea where the hotel was. (I might be able to find it from the office myself...not 100% sure, though.) The hotel was ready to take me despite it being 3 in the morning or whatever, so I signed on the dotted line, went to my room and collapsed on the bed... I just took it easy on Tuesday (the middle day, Monday in this case, just kind of disappears in time-zone limbo on this trip) and went into work on Wednesday. It was nice to see a lot of old friends (well, 4 years max) as well as people hired since last year that I had only heard on the phone.

I've been mostly eating at the hotel for dinner, although one evening I was invited out by a (US) manager several levels above me who was visiting at the time. It turned out to be quite a large gathering...maybe 20 or so...all people a few levels above me and, uh, me. Well they were all very nice. Not much management talk from them nor engineer talk from me. A good time was had by all. We went to a restaurant in a fairly big and fancy hotel near where my apartment was a few years ago. The ride was very long...must have been considerably over an hour. They traffic has not improved in my time away from here :-)

Next (and hopefully more interesting): My visit to Pune.