Outrageously Horrendous Ordeal

It was time for me to leave my promised land and head to the supposedly "land of opportunities". It all happened in no time, I got my visa stamping done on tuesday the 17th and had to travel to seattle in less than 3 days, the notice was too short for comfort. There was this flurry of activity around me that I felt like I would never be able to catch up with the time which had a huge head start. Something was tying and slowing me down. It was perhaps the trepidation of leaving a place like India, chennai, the promised land that I am so used to and accustomed to live in. Though this was not the first time that I was leaving for the US, the fact that I had to leave the place was so disconcerting for I knew what life has to offer in a place like the US. First time when I travelled to the US, I went into a shock after reaching the place and did not have a problem before travelling because I was unaware of the perils and virtues. It was my choice after all ! does that make me feel any better ? not at all.

Another day passed in office without much ado, treated parul and ramesh at Fruit Shop, there was actually no meaning behind it, I was not exactly celebrating my departure I hope neither did they. These kind of gestures are rather a formality that every guy that leaves for an onsite needs to contend with. I was more than happy to treat them simply because they were the only folks that asked for one :-) With just 2 more days to go, took thursday off and whole of the day didn't feel like doing anything, my pop was not in town with mom struggling in the background trying to get my clothes ready for the travel. I was watching TV....sunTV, SCV, KTV,vijayTV to my heart's content for I knew once I get to the US it will be only NBC,CBS, FOX and a bunch other stupid channels. I had this long list of Items that I had to buy, completed the list and double, triple checked them to make sure that I had not left anything, we had a plan cut out to finish off the shopping that evening. At around 3pm Parul called me and said that I'd have to give him a ride till Landmark to collect the photographs of the contest; yep this was the one: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/vathswrn/www/Pics/landmark/landmark.jpg

I also had to go to TeeSeeYes HP center to collect my tickets. So, I picked up Parul from Tidel and we hit Landmark, collected the pics, Parul was on his own way back and myself and mom we continued with our shopping plan. Went to T-Nagar, I had to wait for nearly 3 hours to get the tickets for as usuall the Forex folks had a tough time with Ultimatix (that's a misnomer, they should have called it screwOmatix). From there we head straight to mylapore did the shopping at Homeopathy drug store, Ambika Appalam, Giri Traders and dinner at Karpagambal Mess, I had some kichaddi and a ghee onion rost dosa, again made sure that I will have fond memories of eating at karpagambal mess for, the next one year or more I will have to tolerate the burgers,pizzas and subs. We came home late after all the shopping, had almost covered all the items in my list by then and with no more energy left to watch TV I crashed.

Friday morning, really felt like the earth was spinning at twice it's regular speed, once again started watching TV, the longing for tamil TV content continued till mid day, that's when my mom shouted... "tv paakartha niruthittu bags'a pack' pannu", reluctantly I started to pack my bags, finished packing and once again watched TV till mindnight, one more day had gone by and the last 3 days felt like 3 hours. Saturday morning, had to make the important phone calls to few important folks. Called my paatti who lives now in sriperambudur and told her that I was leaving that evening, she didn't sound very amused. I had not taken my music classes for nearly 3 weeks before that and she was really upset about the fact that I am having to leave the place without making any kind of progress in this regard. I told her that I'd play the recorded lessons and keep practising regularly, wanted to call my cousin Ranga before leaving but for some reasons didn't happen. Even before I could reallise it was evening, called a cab and we left for the airport, fairly simple process, checked my luguage at the Jet Airways counter insisted on a window seat for the entire travel and the representative obliged me with 3 boarding passes. I came back to meet my mom in the lobby, still had about 2 hours for the departure, so we found a place to sit and talk, I was quitely listening to an array travel tips from my mom...and really didn't feel like talking, I was expecting to see selva but he didn't turn up. It was time to leave, they announced the security check and said goodbye to mom, within about 30 mins I was on board a 747 800 made myself comformtable at the window seat it was like just behind the wings obscuring most of the stuff down below, told myself that next I should ask for a windows seat not next to the wings.

It took us an hour and 45 minutes to reach Mumbai. I had to go from the domestic to international terminal to take my next flight to Amsterdam. I never thought it would be so difficult, There were some airport authorities just hastening the transit passengers to board a shuttle that was supposed to take us to the internation terminal. It was totally unorganised, they simple grabbed our baggages and tossed it into the bus. We got into the bus and in about 10 minutes reached the internation terminal. After that it was totall chaos, as usuall all the passengers crowding near the luguage storage of the bus and pushing and panting to claim each one's luguage, they were no trolleys to ease the process, we had to drag the suitcases into the airport to get it on a trolley. Luckily mine had wheells some of them really struggled. Another annoying aspect was that the officials refusing to speak in english, the guy I spoke to repeatedly answered in Hindi and I refused to understand Hindi.

Quickly I reached the KLM counter, I was shocked to see my boarding passes being reissued, the representative at the counter turned a deaf ear as I requested for a window seat. After rechecking my baggage and completing the security check, I looked at the boading pass and it said E23...I had this bad feeling that I would landup in the middle, it was a 777-300 and the seating was 2-5-2 and guess what my seat was right in the center. It was terrible, a huge dutch guy to the left and a golti on my right side both chewing the chicken as if it was the first time they are having it in their life. I was sandwiched between these two hunks and pretty much didn't have an iota of space on the sides. I had the meal that was served and pretty much lived on the orange juices that they served in regular intervals. To add to the woes my RCA mp3 player refused to play, had to struggle with it, it played some cd but not the ones that I wanted, always happens. Then decided to listen to whatever it played. 8 hours of horror wit no room to stretch, the golti started sleeping 10 minutes after the take off and was snoring away to glory. The dutch man beside me was reading some strange book with really graphic images on the cover :-) really couldn't get the name of the book. I pulled out "The HitchHikers guide to the Galaxy" and started reading. Atlast we reached Amsterdam, I knew I had a lot of time(5 hours) to catch the next flight to seattle. So, I got off the plane and within few minutes didn't find any of the indians that were travelling with me in the lobby. Quickly went to the KLM counter and double checked the gate#, and this time I asked her about my seating, she confirmed that it was an ailse seat, phew ! what an air of relief. Went to the rest room and guess what, all the indians on board the previous flight were there ! brushing, cleaning...one guys literally bathed there, I finished of the work that I came in for and walked around the airport. It was a beautiful airport, museums, lots of shop, casino... one thing that was missing was a strip club :-) I was browsing through books at a book shop, particularly this one "Lonely Planet - Amsterdam" I almost ended up reading the entire book, it had real good info. about the place and particularly really really interesting stuff about the night life.

5 hours flew past rather quickly, boarded my next flight to seattle, it was again a 777-300 with the same 2-5-2 seatting. This time though was sorry for all those that happened to get the middle seat, A word of advise, if u happen to fly a 777-300 first thing that you would want to make sure is that are not in the middle seat. There are so many problems, getting in and getting out, there are lots of chances of your stomach going for a toss with the kind of food you take. Also we get to drink a lot which mean frequent visits to the toilet, inturn means you have to disturb atleast two people to get in and out. There is more probability for one in that four to be a snob. Also, the size problem that I had. The captain said that the actuall flight time is 10 hours but depending on the air traffic and clearance from ATC it would be like +/- 30 minutes. Everything was fine until the first meal, it was something like pasta and spinach, after the meal I felt like a ruminant regurgitating some semi-digested food. I was fine for sometime but after about an hour I started shivering and felt feverish, in about 3 hours I was down with a fever. I was running temparature and covering myself with two layers of the blanket that they provided. I was just drinking warm water for the next 1 hour, none of them bothered to ask me if I was alright, I was worried for if I disclose to them that I was having a fever they would quarantine me at the immigration and create more problems. Eventually, I could not take the fever anymore and asked the steward for some tylenol(non aspirin), he got me some; I took a tablet and went off to sleep, when I got up the temperature was down but was still feeling feverish, I was happy that I was able to get back on my foot. It took us 10hrs and 30 minutes to reach seattle. Quickly got off the plane and headed for Immigration/Customs, both went fine without any hickups. Came to the baggage claim section and saw Suresh waiting for me.

Suresh dropped me at Phani's place in Bellevue for Ramaseshan and in fact other TeeSeeYes'ers were out having fun at a TeeSeeYes picnic organised on that sunday. I took some more paracethamol and crashed. Later in the day Phani dropped at Ramseshan's place. I was still not back to normalcy, had dinner and went to bed early. Nextday morning was feeling little better, @#$*&^$@ promptly called me in the morning and offered me a ride to office, after all, I am #$^#$*#$ him and he would do all these butt kissing stuff until his job gets done. I realised that my stomach had got screwed big time for I visited the toilet 3 times since morning. I came back home by afternoon for I was close to getting dehydrated. Next 2 days was miserable, until I got some medicines from vasu, it really worked and controlled the loose motion. This was when I was cursing the american toilet habits and the use of toilet papers. Just imagine scratching your bottom with a paper 20 times a day..!! that was what I had to go through ! Though my stomach problem got resolved I had new problems...! guess what I could not sit for the next couple of days :-) my bottom hurt badly !

The next big hurdle was finding a room/roommate. After a lot of contemplation I decided to take an apartment myself, I was insisting on a vegetarian room mate and it's really hard to find one. Setting up an apartment from scratch is yet another pain in the wrong place which is already hurting. Anyways, today Sep 03, I am in my new apartment all setup with minimum paraphernalias needed for survival. And it took me two weeks to complete this post, I am really missing my notebook !