19th October was the date identified by the Tamil Nadu state government to inaugurate the fly-over (bridge in local parlance) in front of the airport at Chennai. The time was set as 5:30 PM. I had decided to fly out to Hyderabad that same Sunday evening. My boss also got her ticket in the same plane.
So, in order to avoid the traffic jam expected in front of the airport (after all it was the Chief Minister who was inaugurating it!), we decided to leave quite early from home. We reached well ahead of time and got our boarding pass issued by 4:45 PM.
That’s when my boss said “Why are they boarding us in at 6 PM?”. I too was equally bewildered. Domestic flights usually board some 15-20 minutes before the departure time and this looked like a lead time of almost 90 minutes. After flipping over the boarding pass a couple of more times, we then looked up our e-Ticket. And it was printed in a very clear font that the flight was scheduled to leave at 18:20 hours and reach Hyderabad at 19:20 hours.
You see, I’d originally been booked on another flight at 19:30 hours. But since it was an ATR flight, I asked my agent to book me on another flight leaving at around the same time. He got me this new one, but I happily assumed that the flight was only at 19:30.
If there was no inauguration function that day, I’d have started at least an hour later that day. And I’d have reached the airport just around the boarding time. I’d have had the ground staff of Air India (nearing their retirement date) come look for me!
Anyways, I called up my parents after the Security clearance was done and told them that I was all set to fly out and would call them after reaching Hyderabad. I then made a resolution not to tell my parents about this near goof-up and decided to call them around 20:30 hours when the flight (per my schedule) was presumed to land there.
But the minute we left the Hyderabad airport by cab, by force of my good nature and habit, I called up home and informed them that I’d reached Hyderabad and was in the cab headed towards my office. It was around 20:00 hours and so my mother was shocked. She wondered out loud as to how come I’d reached there so soon. At that point, the cat was clearly letting itself out of the bag and since I don’t lie (about such trivial things) I told her about my mistake.
I got my second reminder dose of the Hari incident in 2 months. I could only sheepish grins and rest the issue.
On a side note, the flight to Hyderabad was really empty. I would put the occupancy at only around 70%. Agreed this was Air India and was a bigger Airbus plane, but still it was quite surprising to see so many empty seats on this sector. Perhaps the business travelers mostly prefer flying out really early on Monday mornings and with the evident increase in prices of air tickets, those travelling on personal reasons had perhaps stayed away from the flight.
After dinner, I went back to our Guest House complex and before I hit the bed, I met the Program Manager for my project. I didn’t want to have any surprises and guesses to be done in front of the client as to who was who. After a quick chat, I returned to my room. The TV was not working in my room at that time and I didn’t want to connect my laptop to the internet anyway. Also factoring the long day ahead, I decided to sleep early and so I hit the sack by 11 PM.
Showing posts with label aeroplane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aeroplane. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
What a coincidence!!!
As mentioned in my previous post, I was in Hyderabad on the 11th and 12th to spend some time with my team there.
Believe it or not, the following coincidences happened on my return trip:
1. The cab that took me from the office campus to the airport on Friday evening, was the same cab that brought me from the airport to office on Thursday morning. I remembered the cab number because I found out that on my onward trip, I had paid an excess fare and was following up with the cab company to get it adjusted. It was indeed my good luck that I got the same cab for my return trip, though the drivers were different for both trips. Then again, since the cab company was tracking their income based on each cab, I was able to get my fare adjusted easily.
2. After I boarded the flight, I found that one of the air-hostess who was on board, was the same person who was there on my flight from Chennai to Hyderabad.
3. I scanned the passengers in my vision field and found one Iyengar executive who had sat next to me on my flight from Chennai to Hyderabad.
I didn't note down the registration/serial number of the plane, else I think there would have been a coincidence there as well!!!
Believe it or not, the following coincidences happened on my return trip:
1. The cab that took me from the office campus to the airport on Friday evening, was the same cab that brought me from the airport to office on Thursday morning. I remembered the cab number because I found out that on my onward trip, I had paid an excess fare and was following up with the cab company to get it adjusted. It was indeed my good luck that I got the same cab for my return trip, though the drivers were different for both trips. Then again, since the cab company was tracking their income based on each cab, I was able to get my fare adjusted easily.
2. After I boarded the flight, I found that one of the air-hostess who was on board, was the same person who was there on my flight from Chennai to Hyderabad.
3. I scanned the passengers in my vision field and found one Iyengar executive who had sat next to me on my flight from Chennai to Hyderabad.
I didn't note down the registration/serial number of the plane, else I think there would have been a coincidence there as well!!!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A quick visit to Bangalore
I went to Bangalore on a one-day official visit, yesterday. Actually, it was for a lunch meeting with our unit head as part of the package for "winning" the MVP award in Q3 for the Recruitment initiative.
Even though it was only a lunch meeting, we (3 of us from Chennai) still had to report there in the BLR office on time. We took a Jet Airways flight at 6 AM and returned by a Jet Lite flight that reached Chennai at 10 PM. A quick note on Jet Lite - I have experienced quite a few bad landings, but this one beats the shit out of everything else.
As I anticipated, the lunch meeting turned out to be quite pointless - an exercise in futility. If there were junior folks, they would have probably enjoyed being in the presence of Unit heads et al. As someone who has had direct interactions with him on a couple of occasions, I lost that attraction. I am also not impressed by one of the persons in the next rung, so my expectations out of the meeting was quite low already.
And what transpired during the meeting was a classic case of people talking in the air, with the sole purpose of exhibiting their talking skills. Unfortunately, the food that was served was quite bad and all in all, I would rate this luncheon meeting as one of my low points for the year.
The only good thing was that while in Bangalore, I got to meet a couple of people with whom I've been speaking over the phone for a year-year-and-a-half. Otherwise, I would have been happier if I had been given gift vouchers for even half the amount it cost them to fly us to Bangalore for that lunch!
Even though it was only a lunch meeting, we (3 of us from Chennai) still had to report there in the BLR office on time. We took a Jet Airways flight at 6 AM and returned by a Jet Lite flight that reached Chennai at 10 PM. A quick note on Jet Lite - I have experienced quite a few bad landings, but this one beats the shit out of everything else.
As I anticipated, the lunch meeting turned out to be quite pointless - an exercise in futility. If there were junior folks, they would have probably enjoyed being in the presence of Unit heads et al. As someone who has had direct interactions with him on a couple of occasions, I lost that attraction. I am also not impressed by one of the persons in the next rung, so my expectations out of the meeting was quite low already.
And what transpired during the meeting was a classic case of people talking in the air, with the sole purpose of exhibiting their talking skills. Unfortunately, the food that was served was quite bad and all in all, I would rate this luncheon meeting as one of my low points for the year.
The only good thing was that while in Bangalore, I got to meet a couple of people with whom I've been speaking over the phone for a year-year-and-a-half. Otherwise, I would have been happier if I had been given gift vouchers for even half the amount it cost them to fly us to Bangalore for that lunch!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Trip to Madurai
As part of the campus recruitment initiative mentioned in my previous post, I visited Madurai on Saturday, the 22nd of December 2007.
Actually, a bunch of us from work went for that initiative, so we all had a pretty interesting time, especially sharing all the oddities observed during the interviews.
Originally, we all wanted to travel by Paramount Airways, but unfortunately, our Travel Department refused to procure tickets on that airline quoting a significant difference in cost. We couldn't refute it either and neither could we use the ploy of flight timings, since all morning flights out of Chennai to Madurai are barely 10 minutes apart. Same holds good for the last flights out.
So, we had to make do with the Jet Airways ATR flight. Man, that morning flight was one big torture. The pilot, a Caucasian btw, was navigating it like the ubiquitous share auto driver in Chennai. The way he landed in Madurai would have converted all atheists into die-hard religious fanatics! I must actually appreciate him for having the talent to remind all of us that there 3 wheels in the plane. He also showed us how long the runway at Madurai was, coz he practically went to the edge of the tarmac before turning back!
We hired a cab and reached the venue and got on with the proceedings. We broke for lunch and found that the food arranged by the College was almost unpalatable. It was toooo spicy for our comfort and didn't look hygienic at all. After making enquiries with the watchman, we headed out to a "hotel", where after much waiting, we managed to get a table. Unfortunately, my bad luck continued there as well, since the food served was not really tasty. In fact, the curd rice I ordered seemed to have been prepared using stale rice.
Anyways, after our interview sessions got over ahead of time, thankfully due to the no-show from almost 100 candidates, we proceeded to the Meenakshi Amman temple. Ramadurai had called up his contacts and the basic understanding was that we had to stand in front of the Co-optex shop opposite the South entrance. Apparently the coded message was if anyone approached us and asked us "vellai kaaka enna color muttai podum?", we were supposed to respond by saying "karuppu muttai" whereby we would have established our credentials.
We waited for a short while before Ramadurai's contact showed up. We obviously didn't have to use the coded greetings and were taken inside the temple. Once inside, the "guide" explained to us about some of the landmark spots and escorted us along the special path to the sanctum sanctorum in a matter of a minute or so. After some deliberation with the authorities there, our contact took us inside the special darshan area. There we had a really good darshan of the Amman. Even when we had our heart's fill and started moving out, the contact kept sending us back for some more additional darshan.
The same was repeated at all other important sannidhis and all in all we had a fantastic darshan. I was so ecstatic, that while returning to the airport, I told Ramadurai that he finally gave me something useful for being his friend!
We even had a great visit in the "1000 kaal mandapam" and I was really amazed with some of the statues. There is a statue of Rathi Devi, carved in stone. Our contact asked us to feel the hand and boy, it was so smooth that one can easily be fooled into thinking that it was wood. Then there were a couple of stone statues of Lord Shiva, where one could hit certain portions of the stone and hear a good metallic sound. Then there was this giant wooden door made of Burma Teak wood. It was like 9.38 metres long and some 2.2 metres wide. Really awesome stuff.
By the time we were out of the temple, we were quite famished. Thankfully our guide took us to a restaurant called Modern Cafe. It was a quaint little joint and as we found quite soon, it served great food. I had Adai Avial and Plain Dosa. All of them were excellent. Special mention must be made of their Coconut chutney. We topped it up with one of the best coffees I have had in recent times at any restaurant.
It was getting quite late, but thankfully, the airline had issued us the boarding pass for the return journey in the morning itself. So we had enough buffer time to reach the airport. And to make thing more comfortable, one of our friends who had reached there earlier, told us that the flight was delayed by 30 minutes.
The return flight was more peaceful and the pilot ensured a really smooth landing. However, he was allotted a parking bay right at the end of the runway and to reach the terminal, we actually had a 5 minute ride on the airport bus.
All of us went our separate ways after that and I reached home at 11 PM. Since my day started at 4.30 AM, I was quite exhausted and crashed on the bed quite soon. But for some of the annoying interviews, this trip was quite a good one. I had a really good darshan at all sannidhis in the Meenakshi Amman temple, unlike my trip in Feb this year, where it was a really abridged visit.
So much so that, I have prayed to the lady of the temple that I would visit her temple once I get married - the third wedding vaendudhal I have made, the first one being a hike up the seven hills to say hi to Venky and the second one to my kula dheiyvam temple.
Actually, a bunch of us from work went for that initiative, so we all had a pretty interesting time, especially sharing all the oddities observed during the interviews.
Originally, we all wanted to travel by Paramount Airways, but unfortunately, our Travel Department refused to procure tickets on that airline quoting a significant difference in cost. We couldn't refute it either and neither could we use the ploy of flight timings, since all morning flights out of Chennai to Madurai are barely 10 minutes apart. Same holds good for the last flights out.
So, we had to make do with the Jet Airways ATR flight. Man, that morning flight was one big torture. The pilot, a Caucasian btw, was navigating it like the ubiquitous share auto driver in Chennai. The way he landed in Madurai would have converted all atheists into die-hard religious fanatics! I must actually appreciate him for having the talent to remind all of us that there 3 wheels in the plane. He also showed us how long the runway at Madurai was, coz he practically went to the edge of the tarmac before turning back!
We hired a cab and reached the venue and got on with the proceedings. We broke for lunch and found that the food arranged by the College was almost unpalatable. It was toooo spicy for our comfort and didn't look hygienic at all. After making enquiries with the watchman, we headed out to a "hotel", where after much waiting, we managed to get a table. Unfortunately, my bad luck continued there as well, since the food served was not really tasty. In fact, the curd rice I ordered seemed to have been prepared using stale rice.
Anyways, after our interview sessions got over ahead of time, thankfully due to the no-show from almost 100 candidates, we proceeded to the Meenakshi Amman temple. Ramadurai had called up his contacts and the basic understanding was that we had to stand in front of the Co-optex shop opposite the South entrance. Apparently the coded message was if anyone approached us and asked us "vellai kaaka enna color muttai podum?", we were supposed to respond by saying "karuppu muttai" whereby we would have established our credentials.
We waited for a short while before Ramadurai's contact showed up. We obviously didn't have to use the coded greetings and were taken inside the temple. Once inside, the "guide" explained to us about some of the landmark spots and escorted us along the special path to the sanctum sanctorum in a matter of a minute or so. After some deliberation with the authorities there, our contact took us inside the special darshan area. There we had a really good darshan of the Amman. Even when we had our heart's fill and started moving out, the contact kept sending us back for some more additional darshan.
The same was repeated at all other important sannidhis and all in all we had a fantastic darshan. I was so ecstatic, that while returning to the airport, I told Ramadurai that he finally gave me something useful for being his friend!
We even had a great visit in the "1000 kaal mandapam" and I was really amazed with some of the statues. There is a statue of Rathi Devi, carved in stone. Our contact asked us to feel the hand and boy, it was so smooth that one can easily be fooled into thinking that it was wood. Then there were a couple of stone statues of Lord Shiva, where one could hit certain portions of the stone and hear a good metallic sound. Then there was this giant wooden door made of Burma Teak wood. It was like 9.38 metres long and some 2.2 metres wide. Really awesome stuff.
By the time we were out of the temple, we were quite famished. Thankfully our guide took us to a restaurant called Modern Cafe. It was a quaint little joint and as we found quite soon, it served great food. I had Adai Avial and Plain Dosa. All of them were excellent. Special mention must be made of their Coconut chutney. We topped it up with one of the best coffees I have had in recent times at any restaurant.
It was getting quite late, but thankfully, the airline had issued us the boarding pass for the return journey in the morning itself. So we had enough buffer time to reach the airport. And to make thing more comfortable, one of our friends who had reached there earlier, told us that the flight was delayed by 30 minutes.
The return flight was more peaceful and the pilot ensured a really smooth landing. However, he was allotted a parking bay right at the end of the runway and to reach the terminal, we actually had a 5 minute ride on the airport bus.
All of us went our separate ways after that and I reached home at 11 PM. Since my day started at 4.30 AM, I was quite exhausted and crashed on the bed quite soon. But for some of the annoying interviews, this trip was quite a good one. I had a really good darshan at all sannidhis in the Meenakshi Amman temple, unlike my trip in Feb this year, where it was a really abridged visit.
So much so that, I have prayed to the lady of the temple that I would visit her temple once I get married - the third wedding vaendudhal I have made, the first one being a hike up the seven hills to say hi to Venky and the second one to my kula dheiyvam temple.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Life's small pleasures
Not many might know this, but till date, I am thrilled while watching a plane land. More than the take off, I am somehow enchanted by the landing.
One of the best things I like about my drive to work, is that I get to go by the airport everyday. So invariably, I tend to see a lot of flights taking off or landing - that depends on the season or the way the wind blows. Around this time of the year, the planes land from east to west and take off from east to west. After a few months, they land from west to east and take off along that direction.
Anyways, during my return trip to home, I always look for a flight that is landing. Sometimes, if I can spot one in the air some distance away, I even slow down, move to the left lane and ensure that I somehow see it within the airport's boundaries.
But I am always not that lucky. The way Chennai airport works, it has a lot of flight movement during certain phases in the day. For that short period of say an hour or so, the number of flights that land and take off, its quite comparable to any foreign country.
Once again, with me having to spend quite a lot of time in the office these days, I am usually near the airport well after 9.30 PM. That usually means that the probability of me spotting a plane landing is very high. And for that fleeting minute or two when I watch the planes approach the runway and land, I forget all troubles that are in my life.
Last week, I was near the airport around 12.15 AM and got to see a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 land. Gave me immense satisfaction.
Ah, life's small pleasures....
One of the best things I like about my drive to work, is that I get to go by the airport everyday. So invariably, I tend to see a lot of flights taking off or landing - that depends on the season or the way the wind blows. Around this time of the year, the planes land from east to west and take off from east to west. After a few months, they land from west to east and take off along that direction.
Anyways, during my return trip to home, I always look for a flight that is landing. Sometimes, if I can spot one in the air some distance away, I even slow down, move to the left lane and ensure that I somehow see it within the airport's boundaries.
But I am always not that lucky. The way Chennai airport works, it has a lot of flight movement during certain phases in the day. For that short period of say an hour or so, the number of flights that land and take off, its quite comparable to any foreign country.
Once again, with me having to spend quite a lot of time in the office these days, I am usually near the airport well after 9.30 PM. That usually means that the probability of me spotting a plane landing is very high. And for that fleeting minute or two when I watch the planes approach the runway and land, I forget all troubles that are in my life.
Last week, I was near the airport around 12.15 AM and got to see a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 land. Gave me immense satisfaction.
Ah, life's small pleasures....
Sunday, August 19, 2007
From a jet to an ATR
My Baleno's battery conked off on Friday and I had to drive to office in my 800.
I have seen 800s whiz past me while driving on GST road. Obviously I am not a fast and furious kinda driver (furious maybe, but not really fast) and my 800 has not really gone very long distances at a stretch - probably a 25 km distance would be its longest.
So clearly, having to chug along on an empty GST road at a speed of 70 Kmph, after being used to doing high-80s to 90s on my Baleno, made me relate to all those Deccan Air pilots who do this short segment flights on the ubiquitous ATR planes. Think about it. They would have been flying boeings and airbuses in Indian Airlines and then they get lured to Deccan with higher pay and what not. But they end up chauffeuring an ATR!
A classic case of "eppadi irundha naan, ippadi aayittaen".
I have seen 800s whiz past me while driving on GST road. Obviously I am not a fast and furious kinda driver (furious maybe, but not really fast) and my 800 has not really gone very long distances at a stretch - probably a 25 km distance would be its longest.
So clearly, having to chug along on an empty GST road at a speed of 70 Kmph, after being used to doing high-80s to 90s on my Baleno, made me relate to all those Deccan Air pilots who do this short segment flights on the ubiquitous ATR planes. Think about it. They would have been flying boeings and airbuses in Indian Airlines and then they get lured to Deccan with higher pay and what not. But they end up chauffeuring an ATR!
A classic case of "eppadi irundha naan, ippadi aayittaen".
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