Tale Of A Long Travel….

If you are a traveler, you must be aware about a saying, “this world is a book and if you haven’t traveled , you have just read one page” . But how about when you are doing a little too much of reading :-) ? Well, your eyes would start to get hurt ;-). Okay, a not so good joke, never mind, let’s come back to the post. I was going to post this post when I had just reached Banglore but thanks to being tired like dead and a task to complete the book review of my friend’s book, I just couldn’t do it. Anyways, its better late than never, isn’t it! So, I have finally managed to reach Banglore in one piece, without missing any flight and with a smile and satisfaction because I was able to finish my work properly. There is nothing which makes one more happy than seeing his hard work appreciated and seeing a smile on other’s face showing that they were happy and the time that they spent, was worth spending! That’s what I guess I was able to achieve with my last session and not to forget, relived some of the old memories as well! Thanks so much once again to all whom I met there, both the new people and my old mentors!

The toughest part in a travel, if you ask me, is to wait for the flight to arrive sitting in the waiting lounges and if you have to do it, in a single day for 3 times, its just useless to say that it would be tiring! Heck, its VERY tiring actually! And that’s the same happened with me when I was returning back from Singapore this time. The flight of mine was not a direct flight but had a stopover  at Mumbai and from there, after 3 hours, I had a connecting flight to Delhi. Normally, there is a relief that’s there in the mind when I am taking  a return flight that I shall be able to get some rest at the end of the flight but this time, I had , almost about 3 hours of wait to do to catch the next flight of mine to Banglore(where I am right now). And to make matters more worse, my first flight from Singapore was going to start at 7pm but my hotel had the check-out time at 12pm noon. So this means, I had to spend 7 hours some where, anywhere but not in the hotel room of mine. Since I didn’t want to go anywhere, I just decided to come to the airport in a hope that I may get and would be able to catch an early flight. But unfortunately, there wasn’t any other flight and the counter was going to open only at 3pm. So I had nothing else to do except to sit and wait, a tough thing to do especially, when you are all alone. Luckily, my iPod came for my rescue whom I played for all the time. Thanks Steve(Jobs) :-) .

When finally the counter did get open, I thought at least I shall be able to get free from my luggage and would be able to eat something(I was starving). But its highly unlikely that when I wish for me something, it actually does get happen. And the same proved to be true this time too, courtesy to the Chinese gal who was managing the airline counter which was saying “Early Check-in”. But seems that that gal was upset over this that she was sent all alone to handle some really eager early-bird passengers to take care and she just decided to take a revenge on all of them by being superb slow, by talking over her cell phone all the time even when she was dealing with the passengers and thus making sure that the others do stand for long time in the queue. You can imagine that how efficient she was from this that  she once torn up the boarding pass of a couple three times. All were getting upset but she seemed to have a deaf ear towards everyone’s hue and cry. Finally, after standing in the queue for about an hour, I got my boarding pass and again,I was now going to wait for the flight to arrive. I had a lot of time to kill and I did that by checking out laptops, finding something to eat(I don’t eat non-veg neither I drink so its tough to find veg food but not so much at Singapore fortunately) and just roaming around. Fortunately, the flight was on time so I didn’t have to wait for any extra time than the required one. The flight was okay and so was the food. I wanted to sleep but there wasn’t any sleep in the eyes. So all I could do was to watch the in-flight entertainment program which was showing movies. And since I was going to use the same airline all the while,I had a good a chance to see almost all the movies which I wanted to see :) . I saw Unknown, Shaolin, Aakrosh, Band Baaja Baarat. I don’t watch movies too often but I guess, it was a good collection and it would had been just great if they could show Kung-Fu Panda 2 as well ;-) . But still, it was not so bad!

Finally, after about 5 hours, I was at Mumbai airport. I am not sure that I do like this place (or may be just the airport of this city) or not. I don’t hate it but its still not one of my first preferences kind of city in any manner. Good thing was, I didn’t have to be there for a long time since after about 3 hours, I was going to Delhi. I did try to change my flight and to go directly from there to Banglore but it didn’t work out. There was no seat in the other flight. So I just had to sit and wait. At about 2:30am, I took my flight from Mumbai to Delhi which did reach at about 4:30 there. And now, I had to take another flight at 7:30am from Delhi to Banglore. If you are still with me, I had been traveling since 12am (means about 9:30am IST) and had already traveled about 8hours in the air. And still, I had almost 3 hours of waiting time and equal amount of air travel ahead before I could finally get some rest. When I was at the check-in counter, the gal at the counter was amazed looking at so many tags on my luggage and when she was about to ask me(possibly) that why so many, I just smiled and said, “there is one more to go”, took my boarding pass and moved towards the departure hall. The good thing was, I was at the 4th best airport in the world and that means, I could get some really good coffee to keep me awake, walk around and take my flight. If you haven’t been to Delhi’s airport, you certainly have missed to see something really good piece of work done, trust me!

Finally, at about 10am IST, I was at Banglore and was praying that I would get the room at the hotel where I stay all the time since they told me that there is no room free. I wasn’t really having any strength and mood to look for another hotel at that time. Fortunately, they did manage to get a room for me and I was just on bed after checking in the room because it was complete 24 hours since I was traveling and I was awake even long before than that. It was really needed otherwise I was going to have a very tough time the next morning since I had a session to start the next day.

Its the 4th day(or night, to be precise) which is almost over now and tomorrow, this session would be over. The delegates are superb, very friendly, very experienced and eager to learn the technology. In short, a perfect mix of all the attributes which make a session transit from a good one to a great one. Hope the last day goes well and I would be able to close it with a smile on my face as well as by bringing it on the face of the delegates too(which is more important). I should now try to get some sleep but I have to still pack my luggage before I can do so though! And I really am not so good in packing luggage if you ask me. Why not somethings are as easy as oracle database, I just wonder some times :-) .