The girls were fascinated by the old style boarding. First, a bus took us in and then drove us about 50 yards – maybe less – to our plane. Then we stood in a queue waiting to climb up the boarding ladder. As we stood there, planes were taking off from the live runway a few hundred yards away. The kids were thrilled!!!
Checking into an Indian hotel (or for that matter any Asian hotel) is always a reminder of what great service can look like. It is the same Marriott brand I sleep in some 120 nights a year – but even a Marriott Courtyard in Bombay gives me better service than some JWs elsewhere in the world.
Very very helpful and taking care of the kids and us in every possible way. Even asked us to consume whatever we wanted from the minibar free since it is so late at night and I give Marriott so much business!!
I guess that is the plus side of having a great supply of labor in a country.
On another note, I do think offering to help lock the bathroom door might be a little too much 🙂
The girls at Mumbai airport waiting for our ride. Nearly thirty hours since we left home. We still have another flight to take and then a three hour car ride….
I understand Atlanta is hitting the twenties tonight. It is a hot 77 and humid here…
We checked into a hotel for a few hours to freshen up. Tasha checked in simply to get free WiFi. We can’t separate her from her phone now 🙂
The girls have settled down. Off to India to check on the ailing parents. My fourth one this year. This time the family is coming too!
I have a few more goals other than being with my parents for a couple of days. You will see them in my blogs…
Btw, the lower picture is inside the International terminal in Atlanta.
“There is a glass of wine with your name written on it here”, read the text message from Rupak. It was 9:30 at night. I had just finished up my work for the day. I was wondering what to do for the last thirty minutes before I hit the sack. I was certainly feeling bad that I had skipped the party Rupak and Jasmine had thrown to celebrate Rupak’s brother-in-law Swarup’s (who was visiting from Melbourne, Australia) 40th birthday. But I am too stuck up in my ways to eat late and sleep late. Plus Sharmila and the daughters were there in full force anyways.
However, Rupak – may his tribe increase – hit me at the right time. I was wondering what to do and I realized once I saw his text message that I had not had any wine that evening. So, off I went, throwing caution to the winds.
I was introduced to his sister Rupa and brother-in-law Swarup and their really really cute small daughters. I had spent most of the time with their 16 month old when Rupa showed us a special video she had made for Swarup’s birthday. She had done, what I thought, was a fantastic job in stitching together a lot of old memories of Swarup – right from his birth all the way to birthday greeting videos from his friends all over the world. I was really surprised by how well she had done it – especially while keeping it a secret from Swarup.
Finally, I spent some time with Swarup. As always, I tried to see if I can find some “intersection points”. Of course, I had learnt a lot about his past from the video.
My opening shot was “Which DPS in Delhi?” (DPS is the school he went to; there are multiple branches)
Swarup: “The oldest one . Mathura Road”
Dead end 🙁 All the ones I know are from RK Puram.
I remembered from the video that his first job was in Hind Motor.
Me: “So, do you know Mr. I.R. Sharma?” (He was my high school classmate’s father; high up in Hind Motor management and I had met him a couple of times)
I again struck out. The timelines did not match.
And so the discussions went.
And then I remembered his engineering college.
So I asked him: “Which batch?”
Swarup: “1995”
Me: “I see. By the way, would you know a Chiradeep Roy from your batch?”
Swarup (excitedly): “Of course. We were great friends. We used to eat together.. hang out together… how do you know him?”
Instead of answering his question directly, I told him “Wait”. Then I fished out my iPhone photos and picked out an old scanned black and white picture. Zoomed in on one face and asked “Did he look like this?”
Swarup – after a few seconds – “Yes. But he had glasses”.
Me: “I know. This picture is 12 years younger than when you knew him”.
And then I panned to another face in the photo and zoomed in.
Me: “Do you recognize this face?”
Swarup kept thinking.
I helped him a little. “Imagine the hair is gone”.
Swarup recognized!! “Is this you?”
“Indeed!”, I said and then panned to the rest two faces in the photo and added “and those are our parents!!”
“CHIRADEEP IS YOUR OWN BROTHER”????? Swarup was just floored.
For the next few minutes, he kept on asking if he was my “own” brother. A distant cousin, a relative… was more believable. But meeting the elder brother of your close friend from college twenty years later on the other end of the world from where you live… now that was an unbelievable coincidence.
See, this is why I believe in “intersection points”.
Rupak, thank you for saving that glass of wine for me. I got to know my dearest brother’s dear friend from twenty years back!!! It went down very well with that fine wine!!!
After the stress of the prospect of having to cancel our India trip (visa issues for Natasha) and the scramble to end the year at office, meeting Amitesh for a few late hours was the perfect antidote that the doctor had prescribed. Nothing can take my mind off than sitting with Amitesh at a very quiet bar nearly into midnight discussing topics that few would think of as “bar topics” 🙂
Today, we spent a lot of time discussing (and researching on internet)
(*) the effect of Calcium level in heart by high level of LDL in blood. (don’t ask me how we got started)
(*) the importance of understanding why we do what we do (especially in professional life)
(*) the relativity of the definition of happiness (this is an effect of a prior FB post)
(*) the plight of gays in India (recently, India has taken a Russia-like position on gays)
While the topics can be mundane, the discussions are always lively !!
A few days back, I called up an old friend Anamika to wish her happy birthday and she told me that she was out having lunch with her neighbor who also has the exact same birthday!! That got me thinking about what is the probability of such a coincidence happening. Here is a puzzle from that thought process.
If you are mathematically oriented, try solving it. If not, take a guess and see how it compares with the right answer. My guess is that the guess is going to be much larger than the actual number.
Simply put, what is the minimum size of a class where the probability that there is at least one birthday that is shared by two students is more than 50%?
Put in details, if you have two students in a class, the chance they will have the exact some birthday is 1/365. If a third student comes in, there is a higher probability of two of them having the same birthday. If a fourth student comes in, the probability increases further. At what size of the class do you have a 50-50 chance of a birthday being repeated?
While reading a book that delves into understanding happiness (more importantly how we prevent ourselves from being happy) – more on that book later, I learnt about two 50+ year old conjoined twins -Lori and Reba (now George). If you get a chance, read up about them in http://www.keepmywords.com/2011/01/11/lori-george-schappell/
Now here is the crazy thing….
They are very very happy!!! Look at their picture and tell me honestly how many of us can place ourselves in that situation and say we are happy? But they are.
When asked about separating them, their response” “Our point of view is no, straight out no. Why would you want to do that? For all the money in China, why? You’d be ruining two lives in the process”.
Lori added “Don’t assume our life is difficult till we tell you it is so”
This befuddles all psychologists. And gives a lie to all current medical opinion from doctors (none of whom have been born conjoined twins) that all such twins should be separated out at birth.
Oh! How we project our own definition and concept of happiness onto hapless others!!!
Just watch how we behave with our kids, spouses, friends, colleagues….
