Clarete and Alol picked me up Sunday late afternoon and off we went to dinner with Rishi and his wife Neha. A few others too: I think Neha's brother and his wife, and maybe Rishi's brother and his girl friend. (I may not have this completely right). Rishi and Neha live alone; I believe Rishi's parents are in Delhi. They have a nice apartment on the top floor of an apartment building. The roof is right above them, and they can go out there to cool off, or take in the view, or whatever. The apartment that we saw had a kitchen, a dining room (with a table set up as a buffet) and the living room where we sat and talked and ate.

We had a lot of interesting conversations; one of the men was a marketing guy who (I think I have this right) sells space in airports for companies who want to have stores there. I expect this business has increased a lot since the new Bangalore airport opened a couple years ago. The old one barely had space for passengers, say nothing of retail spaces. It was pretty interesting. We also talked about real estate. As I think I said last year, it reminded me of people in the US who had utter faith that real estate would keep going up forever. Owning a house has treated us well, but I think it was luck. We did not happen to be at the wrong place when the market crashed a couple years ago. I hope it works out for my friends in India as well.

We stayed a while, then people started leaving and so did we. Alol and Clarete took me back to the hotel. Now it is time to think seriously about packing. Well, maybe I'll sleep on it. Actually, I think I did some organizing and packing of some things I knew I would not need again. Monday, I went into work and had a whole bunch of meetings. A couple with people from my new work group whom I was meeting for the first time; several from my old group trying to help with some problems or just generally talk about the product, work, life, the universe, and everything. I think I ended up staying until 6:30 working on a problem, but finally decided I needed to call it quits, get back, eat dinner, finish packing, sleep a bit and get ready to head out. Narayan was again nice enough to take me back to the hotel.

One slightly embarrassing thing that I found out at the last minute. How long have I been coming to India? 6 years? And when did I discover that the outlets at the office (and in the hotel at least this time) actually accept US-style plugs? The final day of my last trip. Unbelievable! So all this time I have had plugs hanging in poorly-fitting adapters, when in fact they would plug right in.

I ate at the hotel, finished packing, set the alarm for and tried to sleep a bit. I got up before the alarm, dressed, and was ready to head down when the string holding the reading glasses around my neck broke! (Actually the little rubber do-dad that you hook the string to the glasses with). The desk clerk and the bellhop and a zillion others actually managed to repair it with some tape somehow…well enough that it is still holding together…and off we went to the airport. As Rafiq had predicted to me earlier, I was there WAY early and sat around by the gate for an hour or 2. That's ok…better bored than panic-stricken.

Again, the flight from Bangalore to London was not completely full, and was very comfortable. I had an aisle seat, but there was no one beside me; I took over both seats so I could look out the window. The flight again went between Iran and Iraq and across some of Azerbaijan and/or Armenia and/or Georgia before crossing the Black Sea. The mountains below (Caucusus?) were absolutely stunning! Just snow as far as you could see with a single road connecting a few communities which must have been dozens of miles apart. I can just imagine being on the road…just white all around. The flight from the UK to the US was not quite as nice. Very full and on a 777 which seemed not as big as the 747 that the other flights had used…at least it appeared that there was less space. The overhead bins were full, so my stuff was actually in a different cabin. A rather un-talkative seat-mate. Oh well…it's short and I'm coming home!

In Boston, I just missed the Flightline van, so I had to wait 20 or 30 minutes for the next one. The driver did not exactly inspire confidence with her knowledge of the Nashua area, but hey…we got to the Park and Ride ("I don't know where it is, but they ALWAYS have signs"). Got to the P&R, and there was my wife waiting! Yay! Home, to bed at 11PM, and woke up the next morning with no jet lag and ready to work! The end of another adventure. (Well, ok, I got sleepy a couple hours early for a couple days…but that's ALL I'm admitting to)

That's all for now...I may end up coming back and embellishing this with some pictures. Or you can start with burnsfisher.com and follow the links to find pictures online.