Here I am sitting down at the airport with my flight getting more and more delayed…. First they had no crew. Then they managed to grab one crew member. That started the search for a second crew member. Thirty minutes later we located her too. Then we got one co-pilot twenty minutes later. Now we are just one pilot short of taking off!!! Accessories! Accessories!! Accessories!!!
Every fifteen minutes Delta kept sending me text messages helping me know of a further delay. Their latest one informed me that I can now go ahead and check in to my return flight!
And I am like, a few more helpful text messages from you and I might not have any need for your return flight altogether 🙂

Learnt something knew while reading “Descartes Error” at the bar in the hotel (the guy at the bar showed no interest in making friends with me 🙂 – so I was reduced to reading a book from my book list 🙂 )
I always thought that the origin of “I think, therefore I am” was the Latin phrase “Cogito ergo sum”. Evidently, that is the popular version for English speaking people. The original words he wrote were “Ego cogito, ergo sum” [“Principles of Philosophy” (1644)]. And that is not even the original original!!! And that is what surprised me.
Did you know he actually came up with it seven years before this in a treatise written in French [“Discourse on the Method” (1637)]. Evidently, he first penned it as “je pense, donc je suis”.

BTW, if any one of know my parents or have a parent in India, you will probably relate to my sentiment that given their constant propensity to worry about silly things and think of problems and challenges that they can do nothing about, (“sobsomoy chinta hoy”) that this whole “I think, therefore I am” thing was something Descartes conjured up specifically for them.

Or so I think 🙂

Traveling weekly out of Atlanta airport has taught me some lessons. One of them is from June thru September, avoid flying out or into the airport in the evenings. There will inevitably be some showers or lightning or weather issue and flights will get delayed. The maxim has not failed me for 5 years.
It caught me early this year. It is May 22 today and already my flight to Boston this evening has been delayed thrice 🙁 And all that after I had to fight some heavy traffic to get to the airport barely on time. Of course, the fact that I am staying off wine as much as is possible for a few days to get my weight down by a couple of pounds is not helping the situation at all 🙂

As big an airport as SFO and no TSA Pre, no Skyclub and no Starbucks! That makes little sense.