Random Rants & Raves

Since I've been traveling for work almost continuously since March and have been extremely busy otherwise as well, I thought a small family vacation to my home town (Palghat, Kerala) would be a great respite. I packed up the wife and kid and went to Bangalore first where I had a 3-day SQL Server 2008 BI session to conduct. After that I sent them off to Palghat while I went to Pune to conduct an architecture design session for a client. Finally on Saturday I took a flight from Pune to Coimbatore and landed up home completely beat.

I was supposed to attend a cousin's engagement at Calicut on Monday, but I bailed - not really out of choice but because first my son, Akshat fell ill with an upset tummy and soon after so did I. My parents went off to Calicut and returned the same day.

I then planned to at least get some rejuvenating Ayurvedic massages done - but not only did it start raining like mad - making travel well nigh impossible - but my dad came down with a flu. The worst was yet to come - Neeta (my wife) suddenly developed an extreme case of pollen allergy due to the thick vegetation around. We were then constantly on phone with her doctor here and getting new medicines to give her. Since she was completely breathless and in pain, I had to take two decisions quickly - one, move out of my parents' house and into a hotel room with air conditioning and two, to cut short our vacation and reach back home in Gurgaon. So I had to cancel my non-refundable tickets and buy new ones for the next day and fly back.

So, in the end not only did I not get a vacation (which I still think is very well deserved/required), but instead got a whole bunch of tension and a good amount of money spent. What a waste!

Tags: rant, personal, travel
Categories: Personal | Rant | Travel

I've just landed back from my trip to the Microsoft HQ over at Redmond. This was my second trip to the US and back this month - the first being to Las Vegas for Mix '08. And as was expected (but fervently hoping wouldn't), my international travel jinx made my trips a little less than stellar.

1. On my trip to Vegas, Continental started from New Delhi about an hour late. Which meant that I had less than 1.5 hours for my connection at Newark to Vegas. Immigration took an extremely long time. I also needed to pick up my checked in bag and re-check in it again for the Vegas section. After that I had to run through customs, security and the extremely long terminal. I reached panting and probably close to a heart attack at the gate 3 minutes before gate closing time and was the last in the plane. My experience was not ended though. At Vegas I kept waiting for my bag, but it didn't turn up. Continental informed me that my bag was unable to make it on the flight that I had run and made in the same airport through security and all the long corridors and throngs of people! Anyway, they got the address of my hotel and promised to deliver by the late evening. Thankfully they did do that and that adventure ended there.
2. My trip to Redmond stared off with a pleasant surprise - I got upgraded to Premium economy in British Airways from Delhi to London. The flight however was extremely bumpy with a Boeing 777 being thrown about like a feather. Being a fan of Lost, thoughts of hatches, EMPs, mysterious islands and smoke monsters started running a little amok in my head. However, we made it to London and then to Seattle without too much more trouble. Of course, it was when I landed in Seattle and was waiting for US Immigration that my adventure started again. When waiting in the line, I suddenly hear my name being called out over the PA system asking me to come to the customs desk as soon as I clear immigration. That's not a very pleasant thing to hear - especially when entering the US, especially having heard of even Indian Union Ministers undergoing strip searches! After clearing customs I reach the Customs desk and tell the lady there that I'm the Vinod Unny that they've been paging. She then asks me how many bags had I checked in. I reply "Two". She tells me then: "Well, only one of your bags made it here!" UGH! I ask her which one (the one with my clothes or the one that had some very unimportant stuff considering I needed fresh clothes for my meetings the next day.) She didn't know and asked me to pickup whichever one comes off the carousel and give her the bag number of the one that didn't make it. Considering my luck I did expect it to be the unimportant one - but somehow fate wasn't that cruel. I got my clothes and the other bag was delivered the next day.

If these aren't enough to convince you that I have an international travel jinx, here are a few more examples:

• On a trip to Japan, my flight from Delhi got delayed by 10 hours due to heavy fog. On reaching Tokyo, I was quickly carted off to a hotel and put up and had missed all my meetings and had no way of contacting anyone (this was at a time prior to cell phones being available in India)
• During another trip to San Francisco, I again missed my connection from Bangkok. Thai Air refused hotel accommodations and I had to sleep at the airport in a chair till they figured out what to do with me!
• Trying to open a bag packed by airport security, I sliced open an artery in my finger in the middle of night in the US and almost bled to death (OK, that's an exaggeration, but it really did bleed copiously and a handkerchief that I tied around it and went to sleep since I was so tired was completely blood soaked and clotted by morning)
• On yet another trip to Japan, I had to carry a server class machine to do a demo at a client's place. This was before the days of laptops in India (at least at an affordable price). I had no luggage in carry on other than this packed server - as I couldn't check in a live server and expect it to live through the journey. After the usual flight arrival delays, talking my way through customs, running through the crowds in Tokyo's underground stations and getting rude stares from otherwise extremely polite people, I end up at my contact's place, plug in the plug and get no power. We realize that the Indian made server accepts only 220 V or above and Japan provides only 100 V. It was then a full fledged panic to get the machine working by ripping out the SMPS of a Japanese machine, and performing a transplant in the crowded train on the way to the client's office. We had no idea whether what we did would work or not. In fact, it didn't! when we tried power in the conference room, it simply didn't work yet again - till we realized that the Japanese SMPS had a small switch at the back that somehow had gotten reset. Imagine our sigh of relief when it all worked after turning that on. Another impact of this crazy trip was getting a slip disk of the 3rd and 4th lumbar  - something that still results in chronic back pain often.

If you've got any stories like these, feel free to post them below.

Tags: travel, rant
Categories: Travel

I've not had the opportunity to go over the newly opened Delhi - Gurgaon Expressway till today morning. I've heard a bunch of horror stories about the trip - especially the toll gates at the border of the two cities. Traffic jams of over an hour have been common ever since it opened. The road itself is great - 8 lanes each way.

Today I finally had to use this road - luckily at around 4:30am - to catch a flight to Banglore. I didn't hit the traffic snarls, but did see a reason why it must be happening.

By some weird logic, someone decided to have toll rates for different vehicles in strange values. Cars are Rs. 16 each way, buses are Rs. 49. There's something else for Rs. 37, and so on. This itself can cause an undue amount of delay per vehicle that crosses the toll since paying this amount exactly is difficult for anyone. And giving the change back from a standard currency note would take additional time for the toll gate operator as well.

For instance, when in my car I need to cross the toll gate, I might either fumble for exact change (Rs. 10 + 5 + 1 in the simplest combination) or give a higher note to the operator - say Rs. 100. The operator is going to calculate the amount to be returned (Rs. 84) and pick it up form his cash register (Rs. 50 + 20 + 10 + 2 + 2, again in the simplest combination). There is an additional 1 step here per vehicle that comes in. Taking more complex combinations increases the steps even further (For example, Rs. 50 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 2 + 1 + 1).

I can't imagine why they couldn't have kept the rates in multiple of 10's - or at the very least, 5's - so that it is simpler on both the commuter as well as the operator and leads to a bit more efficiency and bit less snarls on a newly, opened and otherwise very well made highway.

Tags: rant
Categories: Rant | Travel