Sunday, January 3, 2010

Muru to US - Part 1:

Muru to US - Part 1:

After a loooooonnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggg struggle of 4 years, and each struggle is backed by an interesting story worth for an interesting screen play, finally I received an onsite opportunity to Northbrook, a village 25 miles away from Chicago.

After succesfully checking in the luggages, I called my parents, standing inside Chennai international airport. I asked them buy airport tickets and asked them come in. After waiting for 0.5 hour, they came inside. My sister's daughter and son were literally sleeping. The time was 12:00 midnight. I am happy that nobody is emotional so far and I am sure they wouldn't till I board. I spoke with them for 0.5 hour and asked them to leave.

I came back with my carry bag and found to my surprise there is an immigration counter. I thought this will be the last queue. The immigration officer checked my passport details and asked me to walk straight. I strolled down and took an elevator. Ooops, there is another long queue and I have only 0.5 hour to my flight.

I waited in the queue and there were 2 counters to x-ray carry bag and body. While there is 20 more minutes to flight, I took my laptop out from carry bag , put it in a tray and passed it behind by carry bag in to x-ray machine. I was asked to stand in another queue for body check. After the body check, I quickly grabbed my bag and speeded towards the gate. I was imaging of steps to the plane but to my surprise, there is no steps and I walked down straight in to the plane.

Meanwhile I realised that my body is cool and bag is of less weight. I ran behing informing the plane crew that I missed to take my laptop and ran to the counter. I took my laptop and crossed a police officer and was about to say thank you the plane crew. That time ! shit! I realised that I have not taken my jerkin.My 2200 rupees jerkin. May be my single largest investment in a single attire so far. I ran behind saying sorry to the police officers and crew.
They were kind enough to take my time and reach flight. While I was wearing my jerkin, I stopped my mind for few seconds and thought whether I missed anything else. I checked my purse, cellphone. Ok Done.

I am amazed by the Lufthansa flight. It was very spacious and cooool !. I looked for my seat number, thrown by carry bag in the dock, sat and relaxed.
Sometimes, when we look for somethings for years, that thing will cross the life in just few moments. Some times we fail to even notice that. One more important thing here, the flight was A340, which means AIRBUS A340, for naives, this is the flight to which I worked for in my first project in Wipro. I assumed that AIRBUS would have done rigorous testing on the software than what I did !


I noticed that the seats are alternatively occupied. There is a one seat gap between two. One lady on the window seat, uncovered all her extra clothes, shoes and used both seats for her body and started sleeping horizontally. Unluckily, I did not window seat. Yeh, now the monkey mind has come, if one thing has come, it will look for next!. yeh. whats wrong in that. I was not sure whether I can also sleep like her. But there is another person who started sleeping vertically on the seat itself. I decided to stay awake sometime and observe. After 5 minutes, the flight crew started announcing in the common TV about safety precautions.

To my next surprise I noticed that, there is a small TV infront of every seat. Hate my first manager. He told me that this IFE (Inflight Entertainment) system will be present only for First class passengers. But he is wrong. I can right now see that IFE is for every passenger even in economy class.
Ok, lets forgive him. I just tried to operate it but was wondering how people can simply watch without sound. I decided to read Mahabharata book in the morning. Because the first flight journey will be for 15 hours.

After few seconds, I noticed that the airhostess with the thick blue skirt started giving some white thin sheets to every one. Before I analyze what is it, she came near to me. Believe me!, at first I thought its a freshly baked white Cheese. When I received it in my palms. Oh.oouuch..its hot. Again believe me, I thought how can people eat with so much hot.

Then the person next-next to me started wiping his hands and face with this. I came back from my imagination and realizing it to be a neat thin white cloth. I did the same and dozed off. When I woke up after few minutes, I could see the people finishing off their dinner. Oh Shit!.. mommy, I missed the dinner food in plane. :(

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2 comments:

Roks said...

hey u did not mention about seat belts in LFH :)

Roks said...

hey u did not mention about seat belts in LFH :)