Random Thoughts

I am very used to the idea of a one or two week trip.  Even when I was in Seattle for most of 2009 it was more like a series of one week trips as opposed to a 10 month trip.  Every Friday I would check out of the hotel and head to either Ken and Jamie's or San Francisco.  As a result of that my mind keeps telling me that it is time to check out of the hotel over here and head home.  I'm curious to see how long this lasts.  I can't imagine it will go on for the next 10 weeks, but I suppose I can't be certain.

The hotel I'm staying at is apparently one of the two or three best places to stay in Kolkata.  I only know this because my traveling companion is constantly pointing out celebrities.  We've already seen a couple of members of parliament, the most famous actor in India and Kolkata's entire cricket team.  For perspective that would be like checking into a hotel in Seattle and seeing Patty Murry, Brad Pitt and the entire Seattle Seahawk's roster.  I've been less than enthused by this as I have no idea who these people are, but my colleague has been thrilled.  I'm trying to convince him to get one of those autograph books from Disneyland that you use to get all of the characters signatures shipped over here so he can get autographs from everybody in it.  He doesn't seem thrilled with this plan, but I'm going to keep trying.

One of the most famous politicians in the history of Kolkata passed away yesterday.  He was 95 or 96 years old and served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal (the state containing the city of Kolkata) for over 30 years.  The entire city is shut down today as a result.  Then entire city that is other than our office.  We still managed to fill up most of the building.

Yesterday (Sunday) we visited a Catholic church.  It looked pretty much like a Catholic church in the states.

My stomach spent the second half of last week informing me in no uncertain terms that it had had its fill of intensely flavorful spicy foods.  I ended up not eating a whole lot for a couple of days.  If was an odd sensation.  The closest approximation I can come to for it is when I've had too much to drink and the thought of another beer (or bourbon) makes me flat out nauseous.  It was like that except for with Indian food.  I'm doing better now.  Last night we had a Bengali dinner and for lunch today we had Indian.  In both cases I was able to eat the food with only a mild fight from my stomach.  I figure by later this week my stomach will have given up completely and I'll be eating whole peppers by the handful. 

Bengali food was a lot like Indian, but with more mustard.  We had an appetizer of cauliflower cutlets with mustard sauce that was awesome.

I haven't been in any more traffic accidents, although we did pass another one this morning.  A motorcycle was hit by a car, but at very low speed.  The driver of the motorcycle was standing in the middle of the street screaming at the driver of the car.  I can't imagine driving a motorcycle on the streets here, although tons of people do.  I guess everything moves so slow due to congestion that most accidents involving motorcycles end up like the one we passed rather than like one on I-5 or the 101.

Everybody in the office here is shocked that I'm not eating meat.  I've gotten more of a reaction to that than to anything else in my time here.  I think they are secretly expecting to walk in on me in my office scarfing down a great big steak.

I know I owe a bunch of people phone calls and emails.  I will do my best to catch up this week.

First Weekend

My first weekend was interesting.  I woke up on Friday with a cold.  I went into the office, but by the time I got back to the hotel that evening I was feeling pretty miserable.  I tried sleeping, but my body was still working on Pacific time so I woke up feeling wide awake (yet miserable) at 2 am on Saturday.  Starting from there and going for the next 24 or so hours I was in bed sleeping occasionally and spending the rest of the time catching up on my Indian television.  Turns out I am way behind on my Indian shows.  Guess I'll have to update my TiVo when I get home.

I woke up on Sunday morning for the last time at about 3:30 am.  Obviously miserably early, but I felt pretty good.  I watched a few more hours of TV and then went down for breakfast.  The hotel I'm staying at has a breakfast buffet that is included in the package my company put together.  There is a wide variety of Indian food as well as quite a few American dishes to choose from.  Based on the fact that I was still recovering from the cold I decided to avoid the more interesting options available and stick with fruit and cereal.

The other person from the San Francisco office that is traveling with me arrived in Kolkata late on Saturday night.  He is from India and speaks Hindi so he is doing a lot of speaking for me.  We decided to visit the Victoria Memorial on Sunday afternoon.  I'll post pictures and some more details on that trip later.  Sufficed to say it was an interesting experience.

This morning (Monday) I woke up feeling almost completely healthy.  I also managed to sleep through the night, which was almost a better treat than my cold being gone.  One the way into the office my car was rear ended by a rickshaw.  Nobody was hurt, but there was a good bit of yelling.  I'll post in a bit more detail on the traffic here later.  I want to figure out how to post video before I do so you can get the real experience.

Overall the first weekend was good if for no other reason than I think the jet lag is behind me.  I'll try to get a couple of more posts up here soon with pictures and video soon.

The journey

I am writing this post on Thursday morning from Kolkata.  I arrived in India yesterday (Wednesday) at about 8am local time.  Kolkata is 13.5 hours ahead of Pacific time (when I'm doing to the conversion I just add 1.5 hours to Pacific time and flip the am/pm).

I'll post pictures of my hotel and Kolkata later, for now I'm going to focus on my travel experience.

Flight #1 - SFO to Dubai
As I've mentioned before I took off from the San Francisco airport (SFO) at 3:45pm local time on Monday on a 15 hour flight to Dubai on Emirates airline.  The flight plan took us northeast over Canada and Greenland and then southeast over Iceland, Western Europe and finally into Dubai.  I've created a very rough picture of the flight path below.

First flight in red (I think), second flight in yellow (almost positive)

During the course of the flight I did the following in something similar to the order listed:

1. Prayed fervently that the empty seat next to me would not be filled.
2. Celebrated when the empty seat next to me was not filled.
3. Played New Super Mario on Nate's DS and beat World 3.
4. Watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine
5. Ate penne pasta with what could generously be called red sauce, and more accurately could be called red water.  The folks on the plane eating meat were treated to a lamb curry over rice.  I can't say for certain what the lamb curry tasted like, but I can say with absolute certainty is smelled a heck of a lot better than my dish tasted.
6. Watched Hurt Locker.  In retrospect, not a good choice on a flight to the Middle East.
7. Watched four episodes of Better Off Ted while working.
8. Ate a mini tuna wrap.  Not bad.  Ate a second mini tuna wrap.
9. Cleaned tuna off of my shirt.
10. More Super Mario.  World 5 goes down.
11. Watched two episodes of Chuck.
12. Watched 500 Days of Summer.  No international relations repercussions with this movie.
13. Super Mario.  World 6 is done.
14. Watched two episodes of Pushing Up Daisies while trying to sleep.  Failed pretty miserably at sleeping, managed to see a lot of Pushing Up Daisies.
15. Turned down breakfast.
16. Landed in Dubai.

Overall the flight went much better than I expected.

Intermission - Layover in Dubai

The Dubai airport seemed very large and modern.

This was the terminal that my second flight was initially supposed to take off from.  It ended up getting switched to a terminal that, based on the amount of time it took to walk there, was in Los Angeles.

Every time I walked by this I was gripped by a desire to rake swirling patterns into the sand. Seemed like it would be very relaxing.

This is the English breakfast I ate at 9pm local time.  In my defense my body was convinced that it was 9am.  On plate we've got two eggs, fried mushrooms, baked beans, a roasted tomato and two hashbrown patties.  All in all, quite a good meal.

World 7 was defeated at some point in Dubai.  I also managed to email off some work and hold up the other end of an IM conversation.

My layover in Dubai was about 7 hours.  I took off at 3:30am local time bound for Kolkata.

Flight #2 - Dubai to Kolkata

This was my "short" flight at slightly less than four hours.  Frankly I'm not even sure this flight happened as the whole thing seems like a dream.  I sat next to a very nice lady who was on her way to Kolkata to visit her 98 year old mother.  They airline decided to upgrade me from the vegetarian meal I requested to a vegan meal.  Turns out vegans eat a pupu platter of beans for breakfast.  If I had actually be coherent while eating I would have been very disappointed in the vegan meal, as it was I just tried to avoid getting a bean stain next to the tuna stain on my shirt.  After eating I briefly lost consciousness and then we landed.

Epilogue - The Kolkata Airport

The Kolkata airport was much older than the Dubai airport.  I got off the plane and followed the crowd to the H1N1 interview area.  I had to fill out a questionnaire asking if I was sick, or had been sick recently.  They helpfully suggested that if I was sick I might want to think about canceling my trip.  There were a lot of people here.  I didn't notice anybody who decided to cancel their trip.  I guess everybody was completely healthy.

Lots of healthy people

I picked up my baggage (thanks Isaac and Tien!) from baggage claim and headed outside to find my driver. 
 

Outside the airport

 

Thankfully I was able to find my driver almost immediately and he took me from the airport to the hotel.  I'll talk about the drivers here later.

Summary

It took me about 31 hours to get from my apartment door to my hotel room in Kolkata.  I left San Francisco on Monday afternoon and arrived in India on Wednesday morning.  It was actually much less painful than I had imagined it would be, but still not an experience I'm looking forward to repeating. 

On the ground in Kolkata

Finally.

On the ground in Dubai

At the airport in SF

Packing

I'm not quite sure how to pack for this trip.

Is this enough?  Too much?

Eagle eyed folks in Camano Island will notice a Don't be Crabby tee-shirt in the front row.  I figure that humor will translate well to India.  The Seahawks blanket will not be making the trip, however based on their current performance I may be bringing back a Cricket team (club?) blanket to take its place.