When in Los Angeles

• You hear Spanish, Chinese, Hindi and a lot of other languages except English.

• It is perfectly alright to speak to a stranger in Spanish and expect him to understand it, even if he doesn’t look Mexican.

• Freeways have more traffic than regular surfaced streets.

• Traffic can come to a standstill on freeways. (Reminds me of Mumbai minus the honking.)

• You always complain about the traffic and high taxes.

• You can get mugged on the main road in downtown.

• If the Metro bus coin collecting machine doesn’t work, you ride for free.

• It is common to see beggars begging inside fast food restaurants.

• The most dangerous areas are the most expensive to live in.

• An Indian driving license can be used for driving, but not a license from another state in US.

• You refer to every place east of LA as the “east coast”.

• You complain about how conservative East Coast people are.

• The Bay Area is “way up north” and has “terrible” weather.

• You love wearing summer clothing in winter.

• Santa Monica is your favourite beach just because Baywatch was shot there.



PS- this post is an original copyrighted piece of work. Any resemblance to a similar article is purely coincidential.

The Great Wizards Trip

This post should have come up a long time ago. But due to time constraints and ill health of my computer, that could not happen.

After the mad chase in Delhi, I’m writing about the other awesome events that happened during the trip to Uttaranchal…oops…Uttarakhand.

• India TV: Gaur se dekhiye isse…. Anoop turned the boring news report into something really funny by muting the channel and giving out commentary like “yeh aapke bathroom mein bhi ho sakte hain”.

• The virus attack: Mundu was attacked by an unknown virus which led to a system crash. The effects were no response to any input and a blank screen. The system also refused to process any food input and expelled it immediately. We suspected that the cause of failure was placing the system in its natural habitat, amidst other similar systems. We were extremely disappointed when the Mundu refused to execute Jhingalala.exe as the executable code was overwritten by the virus. The attack was probably because the other systems were threatened by the presence of the high speed advanced Mundu system. After several attempts to reboot the system, we finally got it working in safe mode, where the system started performing its regular actions at 1/10^th of the regular speed. “Sleep mode” was the only message on the screen at that time. The system then suddenly started functioning at super high speeds, leading to magnificent download rates.

• Shilpa’s zoozoo voice: Exertion due to singing activities left Shilpa’s voice in a zoozoo state. The sound output was in very high frequency sounds. Mimicry of the zoozoo voice led to physical fights nearly throwing Ron into the pool.

• Ron and his chicken: Ron eats chicken for lunch, chicken for dinner, and chicken for breakfast if given the option. He eats so much chicken that all the chicken-type birds at the zoo started schreeching when he went near their cage. The tiger also consumes less chicken than Ron. We’ve decided to arrange his wedding at a poultry farm followed by reception at KFC (where beep will proudly say “I did my MS here”.)

• Gul explaining PJs: This can’t get any better. Gul explained the Sher-lekar joke to me when I asked Anoop where the tiger was. “Let’s keep the windows open at night. The insects would be asleep anyway” was another masterpiece.

• The boozing: The girls’vodka party, followed by crazy dancing, middlewear tossing, jumping on the bed. No more to be said about this. *Wink wink*

• The boating: We made a 6 seater Indian boat out of the 3 little duckies, and were the center of attraction in the lake. I have lost track of how many people photographed us. Something gives me a feeling that we were on the local front page the next day.

• Dumb charades: Crazy games at Corbett park on the first night. Mundu acting out words like mitochondria. “Bhaagte hue bhoot ki udti hui lungi” was another favourite.

• The other side of Jyot: We saw a completely new side of Jyot during the trip. Jyot saying “what yaar” all the time, giving out gaalis Dilli style “b***********”, wearing Hawaiian shorts and trying to look firangi, buying a 20 rs yellow ball and getting people to touch and autograph it.

• Weird accents: Hindi in all new forms- haryanvi, Punjabi and bhojpuri.

• Crazy bus driver: Nanaji, our eccentric bus driver, who cooked chicken and rotis in the open, drove the bus like a plane, leading to people praying and calling up home, possibly for the last time.

• Ice cream cutting: The farewell at India Gate. VJ Wiz ice cream. Which I missed thanks to Jet Airways.

• Beeped words: A set of strictly banned words like paper, exam, Pandit, wumpus, elly, which led to interesting conversations like “Hey look at the beep family”. “The baby beep is sooooo cute.”

• Unpalatable food at Corbett: Tomato soup with no tomato, gutter water for drinking.

I know this list isn’t exhaustive, so people please keep adding!!

Bhaagam Bhag in Delhi

I just got back from an awesome 10 day trip to Uttaranchal with my class. It’s undoubtedly one of the best trips of my life and I’m gonna cherish it forever. There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happened on the trip, which will have a separate post dedicated to it. This post is about the very last part of the trip. I would have written about this at the end, but this was such a huge event, that I decided to blog about it first.

On the last day, we took a bus from Nainital to Delhi. The journey took about 10 hours. At Delhi, two others and I were to go to the airport and return to Mumbai by flight, while the others were to take a train back. My flight was by Jet Air at 10.30 pm and the other two had a Go Air 10.40 pm flight. Hence check in time for all of us was not before 9 pm.

As per schedule, we reached Delhi by 6 pm and headed towards India Gate. It had just rained and the weather was very pleasant. After the usual photo-session-wizards-ishtyle, we decided to celebrate the wizards spirit by cutting…wait for it….ice cream. While the ice cream was being arranged for, I decided to do a tele check-in. By then it was about 7.40 pm.

I gave the call center guy my flight details, PNR no, name, etc. while he hunted for it in their database. After a long time, he calmly said “Madam, your flight has been cancelled for the day. It has been combined with our other flight to Mumbai 9W *** which departs at 8.30 pm.”

I think the blood in my veins just stopped flowing for a second. “My flight is preponed???? I have not been informed about this. Don’t you inform your passengers?” “Madam, we sent you an SMS but it did not go through”.

Without wasting time on why the message was delayed and such minutiae, I got straight to the point. “Is there any other Jet or Jet Lite flight later today that I can take?” “Sorry Mam, 8.30 is our last Jet flight and Jet Lite is full for today. Is there anything else I can help you with?” (Yea rite, first you tell me that I can’t get home tonight and then you have the cheek to ask me if you can help me.) I mentally abused the guy (I was in Delhi after all) and immediately got my things to the car. Fighting my way through the teary huggy crowd, I managed to get the other 2 and the driver into the car and start for the airport.

I called up Go Air to see if I could get a seat on the flight my friends were going to take. There were just 2 seats available at a price of Rs 6000+. This was a price I was not about to pay for a low cost airline that didn’t even provide snacks, especially after giving up a full service airline seat.

In the meanwhile I also called up my parents in Mumbai to inform them about the situation. They got psyched at the thought of me getting stranded alone, that too in Delhi. They immediately started calling up all their friends in Delhi. I was cool with taking a flight early next morning without paying any extra money, even if that meant spending the night at the airport. I have been traveling alone since the age of 11 and am used to airport environments. The only problem was that I was exhausted after the trip and the sudden change in temperature (15 at Nainital- 40 in Delhi) had taken a toll on my health, leading to a sore throat.

Luckily, we didn’t face any traffic on the way to the airport and managed to reach in about 30 mins, and reached at about 8.10, just 20 minutes before my proponed flight was to depart. My plan was as follows: Go to Jet Air, see what next flight I could get. Then go to all other airlines and see if I could get a flight out on the same night and take one if the price was acceptable. The terminal of Jet Air as per my e-ticket was 1A, which is where the car dropped me. Incidentally, the Go Air terminal was also 1A.

As soon as I got off the car, I observed that all the doors of the terminal were shut. It had some repair work going on and a notice was put up for the temporary terminals for the airlines. Jet Air was at 1D, while Go Air was at another. I should mention here, that the new and renovated Indira Gandhi International airport is HUGE and spread out. 1A and 1D were pretty far apart. Not only that, 1D was one level higher. I left my suitcase with my friends and took off like a rocket. Since their flight was at 10.40, they could wait out till 9.10 at least. The marathon from 1A to 1D took about 7 minutes, during which I nearly knocked over a policeman. I finally found 1D, showed my identity docs to the guard and ran to the Jet Air counter.

Bad news. The check-in for the Mumbai flight had closed. The lady at the counter was a typical Delhite snob, who didn’t care for courtesies or even smiles. I explained my situation to her and she told me that there was no other Jet or Jet Lite flight that night. However, she did assure me that I could get a seat on another Jet flight at no extra cost. I asked her about the flights the next day and she said that a seat was available on a 6.30 am flight. At that point, I took a proper look at the airport terminal, which is brand new and looked more like a mall. I could have easily spent days here without getting bored. There was also a KFC and Pizza Hut, a bookstore and other such places. If only I weren’t sick. The marathon without water had made my throat even worse. Anyway, I decided then that I certainly would not shell out 6000 rs to take a “budget ” flight back home and waste my precious full service flight ticket. I mentally pictured my parents jumping around at the idea.

I was still not willing to give up that easily. I reminded the Delhi snob that my ticket was booked as a points redemption, indirectly hinting that I am their faithful customer and they couldn’t afford to give me stupid excuses like SMS not going and then not caring about it. But the Delhi lady couldn’t care less. As a last chance, I asked her if she could put me on another airline that night. I was sure there would be some extra cost, but it would at least save me the trouble of running to every other airline asking them for tickets back home. (And the thought of running all the way back to the 1A terminal was just too much).

To my surprise, the Delhi snob said that she could put me on a Kingfisher flight if there was a seat available, at no extra cost. I couldn’t believe my ears and thanked the lady. Without a smile or any expression, she waddled her way slowly to the Kingfisher counter, and waddled back while I waited to hear what was in store for me. “There is a seat available on the 9.30 Kingfisher Red flight.” Yay! I was going to be home that night, without having to pay extra. I heaved a sigh of relief. I immediately called up my friends, who brought my luggage for me. I thanked them and proceeded towards the Kingfisher counter for a check-in. I also called up home and almost saw my parents grin from ear to ear. I realized at that point that I had been given a Red flight, which was a low-cost flight. Though they did provide snacks, it would not beat the service given by Jet or Kingfisher. I never miss out on an opportunity to give up free stuff (more importantly, free food). Fortunately, the Kingfisher guy was friendlier than the Jet lady. I asked him if there was a Kingfisher flight that I could take. Luckily, there was one at 10 pm and a seat was available! I couldn’t believe my luck. I finally got a chance to fly Kingfisher without paying for it!

I completed the check-in formalities and took a seat. I didn’t realize how tired I was and how dry my throat had become. Three days of uphill climbing at Nainital had left an impact on my leg muscles. Not to forget the airport marathon. I took a glass of water and then explored the whole airport. If only I weren’t tired, I would have happily spent a few hours there and taken the morning flight.

The flight turned out to be pretty good. Kingfisher is the only domestic airline to provide in-flight entertainment. I watched Tom and Jerry all through until I fell asleep. I woke up just as we landed in Mumbai. Being the only flight at the 1A arrival terminal, I was out in just 10 minutes, at 12.45 am.

At the end of the day, I realised what I had achieved. A chance to fly Kingfisher using a Jet miles ticket.

Lekin raat ke baad hi to andhera hota hai!

_______________________________________________________________________

Added on 14th July:

Even though I got a chance to travel by Kingfisher, I was not going to spare Jet Airways for what they did. They ought to learn how to treat their faithful customers. I called up the Jet Privilege and narrated the entire incident to them. They gave me silly explanations, for which I gave them even better solutions. Finally, they were convinced that they were indeed at fault. I was already dreaming about free tickets. They simply kept on apologising and promising that this would never happen again. My father even threatened them that he would report this case to Mr. Goyal. (Too bad they didn't know that we don't really know him).

At the end of it, I am now a Jet Privilege member with 2500 bonus miles. What a shame, I'm getting this at the time when I'm leaving India and chances of flying Jet Air are lowering by the day

Happy Birthday hotmail!

So it’s the 10th birthday of my hotmail account, which was my first email account. That also marks the 10th anniversary of my access to the internet. I still love hotmail, in spite of having a gmail account. Hotmail was the first web based free email, developed by Sabeer Bhatia in 1996, who then sold it to Microsoft. The initial space given per email account was 2 MB (yea, that’s right). Today it is 5 GB.

I still maintain that hotmail is superior to gmail in many aspects. Here’s why:

1. The spam policy is pretty clear. Whatever is not known to the address book goes straight to the junk folder. Sure, you have to keep checking the junk folder for mails from new senders. But you certainly won’t have annoying mails from wayn and Hi5 going to your inbox, and large attachments from your friends going to your spam. Gmail is supposed to learn from the “reported spam”, but unfortunately, it hasn’t learnt so far.

2. The inbox contains ONLY incoming messages and sent items contain only sent messages. Nothing sent by you or replies from other people. Every item contains only one message.

3. Hotmail does not save annoyingly long orkut headers as “names” in the address book.

I do wish Hotmail would learn some things from gmail:

1. Allow you to download all attachments at once, rather than download each one at a time.

2. Allow use of colours and filters to make your inbox organized.