The Trip I Thought I Would Never Make

I retired in 2012 and thought that I would never again go on a business trip to India (although I did not rule out a personal visit).  But you never know what the future will bring.  In August, I started working part-time for a startup company (VSI) which intends to continue development of the product (VMS) that I worked on for most of my 30+ years at the previous company.   And one of my first jobs?  Go to India to work with my friends and former colleagues to make the transition.

As usual, I will not talk much about the actual work...more about my experiences outside of work.

Sunday Aug 17 2014

I started off to India with Doug, a former VMS engineer who was laid off several years ago, but has now been rehired by VSI, my new company.  Doug and I have been in India before (in 2006 I think…he is probably mentioned in my blog).  We got a ride to Logan from Doug’s wife Katie and proceeded to go through security and hang around and eat dinner near the gate.  This time we were traveling on Air France through Paris.  The big advantage to AF (besides it being cheapest at the time of booking) is that there is only 1 hour layover at CDG so that means the whole trip takes “only” 17 hours rather than the normal 25.  The timing is also good in that we arrive in India around midnight which means we go to bed at the normal time.  Bingo…no jet lag.

I decided to upgrade my ticket to Business Class.  It was surprisingly cheap compared to buying b-class to begin with, but somehow they only offered it on the BOS-CDG leg, not CDG-BLR.  Anyway, I was seated in B-class beside a huge (tall) black man dressed in exercise clothes with basketball logos who walked in at the last minute.  I kind of figured him for a basketball player, but did not want to make any assumptions.  It seems that the AF stewards had no problems making assumptions.  No sooner had he sat down than they came by, paused, spoken in French to each other for a bit, and then asked him for his boarding pass to verify his seat.  We looked at each other; I said, “Are they giving you a better seat?”  He asked me if I spoke French.  I told him only a little…not well enough to translate a conversation.  He told me he was fluent, but they did not know and he was not going to tell them.  Seems that the stewards were saying to each other “I wonder if they put him in b-class because he is so big”.  I rolled my eyes.  He gave me a big grin, and we started talking.  It seems he is from Gabon, a former French colony, so French is actually his native language.  He came to the US to go to UMass Amherst on a full scholarship. He met his wife there, they now live in Marlboro.  He is a pro basketball player, but not in the US.  Apparently he gets one-year contracts all over the place.  This year he is going to Turkey to play.  He also has played some for the Gabon national team.  I said “Olympics?”  He said that was his dream, but he was getting old (32 or something!) so he probably had only one more chance.

Although b-class seats are roomy, somewhere in the process, we spilled a drink of his on my side.  I did not get wet, but my Kindle did.  I think this may be its last trip.  I also brought my iPad on which I can read, but most of my books were not loaded, so I only had a small choice.

At CDG, we found out why a 1-hour layover is not ideal.  It was a LONG walk in from the incoming gate, then through a huge terminal trying to follow the “transfers” sign in French, and then through ANOTHER security check and finally walking back out to the gate.  When I got there it already said “Final Call”, although there was really plenty of time.

The CDG->BLR leg in economy was predictably miserable, made better by the fact that Doug was my seat mate, and it was only two wide, but much worse by the fact that the couple in front put their seats back full.  It was REALLY DIFFICULT even to get out of the seat, say nothing of impossible to put my head down on the tray table or nearly anything else.  I did ask her after dinner to wait until my tray had been taken before she put her seat back.  After it was taken, I told her it was gone, but she did not take any possible hint, and just put it back full again.  Ah well.  I’ve decided to be more annoyed at the airline for making such a miserable arrangement possible than at the person, who is doing what is allowed.

My quick “I’m ok” message home said “everything went smoothly”.  But everything is relative.  The long story:  At the BLR airport, all the immigration desks were open, so while there was a longish line, it moved reasonably fast.  There was (as I was promised but still worried about) no problem at all having my valid visa in an expired passport (and of course an unexpired passport as well).  Then into another line to have hand baggage x-rayed (presumably for import violations???) and then to the baggage claim.  I waited 10 minutes feeling more and more dismayed at not having a bag arrive until I realized I was at the wrong carousel.  Then going to the correct one (invisible from where I was) another 10 minutes before Doug noticed that my suitcase had been removed by someone and was just sitting on the floor. .  Then out to the curb to look for someone from the hotel with our names.  Nope.  No such thing.  Tried to call the hotel on my India mobile phone.  No…”not a valid number” no matter how many combos of digits I used.  Finally someone asked Doug what we were looking for.  This guy turned out to be a Zuri Hotel rep.  He had to call the hotel and do a lot of talking before he told us to follow him.  Oddly, he hailed (well chose from a line) a cab and put us in it.  (“The hotel is paying, right?”   “Right!”—we did not yet have much money).  It was a bit unnerving that the taxi driver did not seem to know where the hotel was; the hotel rep had to explain a number of times.  Luckily, I felt that I could probably find it if I needed to, but even more luckily, I did not have to.  The trip back was probably another hour (45 min?) but we finally arrived.  I checked again at the desk to be sure they were paying the driver.  We did not want to stiff him!

At the desk they apologized; apparently because the flight was arriving so close to midnight, and also because they were unsure of the flight (it was a codeshare, and they were given the Delta number) they did not have one of their own drivers there.  Thus the long conversation with the rep about what to do.

Today so far we have eaten and rested and walked to the ATM (quite an experience too; the neighborhood does not look like the standard place to put a Citibank office).  I also figured out why I was unable to call the hotel.  There is a “0” required before the number when calling from a mobile to a landline.  Before you scoff think about the US phone system that requires a leading “1” under some arcane circumstances.

Small transition added in November 2014

During the week I spent every day at the offices (of my previous company) that I knew so well from previous trips, even though the group had moved to a different section of the building (I guess big companies are the same everywhere).  As usual it was wonderful to see my friends and former co-workers.   However it was very strange to be a "visitor" rather than an "employee".  We had to wait to be escorted in from the lobby; we did not have the run of the building since we nominally were supposed to be escorted.  Rather than an office in the middle of everything, they put us in a conference room (since we are not employees, they need to use care to avoid us overhearing inappropriate things).  All very strange.  

We spend some enjoyable non-work moments during the days and evenings:  We went out to lunch with colleagues several times, as well as eating in the company cafeteria (at my usual haunt getting cheese sandwiches).  We often ate dinner at the Zuri hotel where we were staying.  But one afternoon we were invited to watch an intramural cricket match on the tennis court outside the office.  That was a lot of fun!

We were also invited to visit Clarete, Alol, and their new baby Lianne...I think that was on Saturday evening.  They sent a cab to pick us up and take us to their location.  See the comment below about getting places and taxis.  We had an enjoyable evening, and also met Clarete's Mom who is staying with them to help with the baby!  Clarete and Alol are mentioned prominently in my previous post about Sandeep's wedding, but in August, neither of them were working for my former company.

Sunday August 24

I'm writing only two posts this time.  One from last Sunday and one from this Sunday.  Unfortunately this was a very short trip.  Doug is staying another week, but I had to get home for a previous commitment.

This is the day I am leaving for home.  It’s a long trip with THREE flights; Bangalore to Mumbai, then Mumbai to Amsterdam, and finally Amsterdam to Boston.  That means instead of the normal “Leave Bangalore at 1AM or 5AM” drill, it is “Leave Bangalore at 7PM and wait in Mumbai for a few hours and leave at 1AM.”

But first a few more friends to meet:  I had told former co-worker Vaishalli (whom you last heard from giving me a ride ‘home’ from Sandeep’s wedding reception) that I would be in town, but because of my ‘visitor’ status at the company, I was not able to wander around to see her (as well as others).  She called to say that she would come over to the hotel to visit, and that she did.  We had coffee in the hotel “coffee shop” (actually big buffet that also serves coffee) and just caught up.  She is no longer working in the same group, which is why I had not seen her during the week.  I’m so pleased that she went out of her way to see me!

I had earlier sent an email to an acquaintence, Mani, who is ham radio operator and a member of AMSAT-India.  I know him almost entirely through his postings on the AMSAT bulletin board, and a couple of mail exchanges, but I thought it was be really cool to meet him; he was involved in one of the most successful ham radio satellites, “Hamsat-1” also known as VO-52 or OSCAR 52.  I say “was” because unfortunately, the satellite died just a few weeks ago, after something like 9 years of service.  In any case, I got an email toward the end of the week suggesting that I meet with him and another AMSAT-India guy, Nitin (also known via the AMSAT BB) and proposing that I stop by on the way to the airport since it is right on the way. I was a bit unclear about how this would work, so I checked with the hotel.  Oh, yes, their driver could stop there and wait for me.  They would just have to charge me for the wait time (normally airport transfers are part of the package).  I was very happy about that because while I’m not “afraid” of stepping out of the well-worn path, I have to constantly remember that my expectations as an American are not always the same expectations that someone from another culture has.  So going into a situation that is new to me I like to have a way out.  Usually the way out is that I can always phone the hotel or a friend.  In this case, my phone had run out of prepaid rupees and I did not have time to recharge it. So the hotel driver was my way out.

As an aside, directions are an interesting phenomenon in India (and many other places in the world!).  The common way of giving directions is to say “It’s in Indrinagar [a section of Bangalore] .  Call me when you get near.” And then the taxi driver calls and gets more specific directions based on where he says he is.  That happened both today and last night when Doug and I visited Clarete and Alol.

When we reached the right location, Nitin was on the curb waiting, and suddenly no more worries.  It was as though we had known each other for years.  On top of everything else, Nitin had googled me and had seen my previous blog entries.  (Hi Nitin! You are probably reading this!)  But mainly ham radio is a world-wide fraternity; we immediately have something in common.  (Darned English; I’m not sure there is a gender-neutral word for Fraternity and Sorority.  There ARE women ham radio operators!)  In any case, Nitin had invited Mani as well as several other AMSAT-India folks over so we could meet.  Nitin’s son Arjun was also there a lot of the time.  We talked about Fox-1 (the satellite project I am on) as well as Hamsat-1, some of their future plans, what we each have for “rigs” (that is radio setups).  It is disappointing that I had to be very careful about what I said about Fox-1.  Because of US law, no one is allowed to talk about satellite technology with a non-US-citizen unless what they are saying has been published in the open literature.  So I had to be sure I was only talking about things that had been published.  It was lucky that Nitin had found a paper I wrote for the AMSAT-NA symposium a couple years ago.  That was certainly published, so we talked some about that as well as other stuff that I was very well aware had been published in the AMSAT Space Symposium journal.

Nitin had originally proposed that I stay till 5.  The taxi driver wanted to leave at 4.  I decided I would “start leaving” around 4:15.  I’ve left BLR plenty of times in the middle of the night on international flights, but that was a while ago, and this is a domestic flight.  So I figured I’d better play it safe being a bit unfamiliar with how things worked.  Nitin wanted to show me his antenna farm on the roof of his apartment building, and they also were nice enough to present me with an AMSAT-India coffee much.  Many pictures were taken, and I took my leave around 4:30 or 4:45 after a great time meeting some fellow hams and fellow space enthusiasts.

It was a good thing I left early.  For the first of many times I got bollixed up in my paperwork.  This is very unusual for me...I’ve never had so much trouble before!  I guess I was getting two casual about it.   You need to show your boarding pass to even get into the airport.  I walked up to the door, handed my pass to the soldier guarding the door.  Oops!  Sorry, sir this is your boarding pass for Mumbai to Amsterdam.  You need a Bangaluru boarding pass.  .  Well, I had it electrically, but my phone would not make a connection at the airport  And the hotel had printed it, but either they did not print both pages (and I did not notice) or I had somehow lost it.  So they sent me to a little outside office for my airline, Jet Airways.  Except there were a zillion such offices for different airlines.  The Jet Airways one did not stand out, and I made several passes back and forth before finding it.  They got me the proper docs and finally I got in.  Then to the baggage checkin.  Oh, we have to give you a new boarding pass, but we can only give it to you for BLR->BOM (Mumbai) and BOM->AMS (Amsterdam), not AMS->BOS (Boston).  You’ll have to get that from Delta in Mumbai.

Then through security.  Drat!  I once again forgot (reference previous blog article; I should have!) that you need the little name tag that you are proffered at checkin even though you already have one.  (The security check people put a stamp on it).  Luckily the guy at the desk came running to me with it when I left it behind; I still did not remember, though.  I stuffed it in my pocket.  Luckily I found it for the security guy.  BTW, I think I gave security the wrong boarding pass too.  I really don’t know why I was having so much trouble with this, except that I was rushing since it had taken all that time to get into the airport.

In the end I had 45 minutes or so to wait.  I don’t think anything else untoward happened unless I gave the gate people the wrong boarding pass.  I don’t remember.  There was plenty of excitement to come, it turns out.

In Mumbai, I had plenty of time (OOOOOHHHHH, did I, it turns out), so I was not really rushing around.  But I did know that there is a separate international terminal.  Not like LGA and JFK; it is still BOM; just you have to get to this place 4km away.  Well there was a big line with a sign for “international passengers”.  Sounds good.  I got in the relatively slow-moving line.  At some point a woman in official airport uniform came along and took people from the end of the line and said “do you want to join the coach to international terminal?  No security”  Uh.  Well, ok.  It looked like everyone was doing it, so I followed her.  Well, she sort of disappeared, but the crowd of 40 or so kept moving.  Hmm.  I followed the crowd out through the in door, past guards and other security people and barriers onto a bus.  The bus took off into the streets of Mumbai.  Now it seems to me that the last time I was feeling quite so lost on the streets of Mumbai was in 1985, when I was riding on the back of a motor scooter with the driver being a guide I only sort of knew.  It wasn’t that bad.  But I still wondered whether I was really going to the international terminal; we meandered through various and sundry streets that did not especially look like parts of an airport.  But eventually we did pull up to what was clearly a brand new, very beautiful, international terminal.  But no security?  Show boarding pass to get in.  (Did I have the right one?  Hmm…I don’t remember).  Then despite having no baggage (it was checked through from BLR) I got in the Delta line.  Here I got the bad news:  The flight is delayed by something like 3 hours!  They were not even checking in very fast.  Eventually I did get to the podium, and they knew exactly what I needed, took the old BPs gave me new ones (and a ticket to the business class lounge!) and sent me on my way.  Through security.

So let’s see; I was supposed to have a 4 hour wait.  But the flight is 3 hours late.  So I guess I must have hung around the lounge for 6 hours and then went out to the gate.  OH WAIT!  We have to go through another security.  This one requires shoes removed but no belt.  Then on to the plane.  OH WAIT!  The surprise security check had me less organized than normal.  I had THE WRONG BOARDING PASS to give the impatient armed guard.  Ok, I found it….

Delta is all apologetic but obviously nothing the crew can do about being late.  (It turns out I found later that the issue was crew rest...there are regulations about how much a crew person can fly in an a 24-hour period.  Of course there are not that many Delta crew people in Mumbai, so we had to wait for the crew that was available to be legal.  Delta also added something like 20K miles to my frequent flier account to compensate...not bad!). And they claim I’ll still make my flight in to Boston.  But then there is a delay pushing back.  20 or 30 minutes later, we are finally in the air.  Amazingly, I slept 4+ hours and probably dozed even more. No jet lag here!

As we approach AMS, I figure out the local time and the time of my next flight.  Ooch.  1/2 hour to spare.  When we landed and they let us turn on our devices, I check the outgoing flight.  YES!  It’s late.  But then the taxi-ing took forever.  I got in line to leave first, but the first person to come aboard was a local Delta person who announced “everyone with a flight leaving before noon (mine was 11:10 or something) has been rebooked.”    “Except people on the flight to Boston.  We are holding that plane for you.” YAY! “Go to gate E8”.  No, it’s not close.  Yes, we had to hurry.  I got there, and they are trying to rush the latecomers on, but guess what?  A SPECIAL SECURITY CHECK after you show your boarding pass.  This one you leave your shoes on but take your belt off.  And then rush the jetway and show your boarding pass again!  You guessed it.  I couldn’t find it.  The helpful armed guard suggested I look with my passport, and there it was.  You show those to the gate agent together, and apparently many people put them back together quickly when they have to suddenly prepare for another security check.

I’m writing this on the plane to Boston (110V AC, USB connector, very nice!)  I don’t think there will be any more security checks or showing of my boarding pass.  Thank goodness!  And for US citizens, no customers declaration.  They say that you use the electronic kiosk.  We’ll see how that goes, but I can’t imagine there is any real issue.  If there is no more written in this blog, assume that all went well!