Thursday, September 16, 2010

My Kismat Kumar in NY on 09/09/10

Well.... I had just started as a Developer - Consultant. All we have in the IT team is two Indian Aunties calling their children in the afternoon scolding them :o. This was my third week and I had a flight to catch at 6) Pm at La Guardia Airport (in the heart of NY). I planned for the traffic and left office at 3:30 changed and went to the parking lot to find my rental car with its bumper with a slight crack. As usual I got tensed and called my office admin asst for the insurance coverage on the car and he did not know. Now I did not take insurance on the car and was worried that I had to pay for the damage (god knows how much may be $3000).

I called up people informed the hotel security and they called the cops . The cop comes and lodges a report and asks me for an insurance number of the car. I do not know. He does not find it in the rental agreement.. Now it was getting really tense as I thought my license could be suspended for driving an uninsured car. But then I said I had to go to the airport and by the time I left the hotel parking lot it was 4:40 Pm. All my planning in the dumps now.

I go through these f***in streets with weird traffic diversions in NYC and miss the route as I could not understand the GPS. I am on the phone talking to my bro who tries to calm me down and I reach the Dollar rental office at the airport at 5:22 PM. They say “u aint got no coverage MAN, gonna cost u a lot”  I thought I was screwed (still don’t now whether I am)……
They make me fill out a form and then have to wait for the freaking shuttle which arrives and the old chinku driver refuses to drop me off first even though the passengers were ok with it and starts giving me naseeyat :o I reach the Delta airlines check-in kiosk at 5:38 pM and swipe my card and the boarding pass does not print out. I go talk to an white lady who says “Can’t print out the boarding pass Sir since u r flight is leaving in less than half an hour”. She was being slightly racist and tells me with a heavy voice ”I don’t know how else to put it but the next flight is gonna be next morning and I have to pay $150”. I start “charchalu” with my office guy (Egyptian), he says “the hotels for tonight are really expensive BROOO … “Now I approach a Caribbean girl at another counter and she calls a black lady who finds a flight in the night direct to Houston (with $150 surcharge ) at JFK airport. Now I take a bus and rush to JFK and get on the flight and listen to music (to calm myself down) for 3 hours until I reach Houston.

Till today I don’t know whats up with the car insurance thing and do not want to find out…… Well I may look like a stupid writing down all this but then everyone will do things like these… Who cares…. Don’t give a DAMN.

Chao

Friday, June 25, 2010

A drive back home from work

I know its been more than 6 months since my previous post.. I had told my friend that I would be a regular at this as him....

Well.. its been a rough ride from feb '10 till now but then I've BEEN THERE.. DONE THAT....
I was driving back home from work today in the evening and as lazy as I am I put my car in cruise mode on the freeway and was browsing through my mp3 player for an album.. I saw Happy Days and I started playing it.. I generally refrain from playing this as mode --> emotional and surprise surprise I went in to mode == emotional and the Cognizant journey started unwinding in my mind from 7/7/7.

Maybe because my friend just put up our pics from those days on facebook which made me nostalgic or maybe I had just talked to my friend the night before after many months which MADE my day or may be I inadvertently remembered those golden days. Whatever it was it was great.....

Life does not give us a chance to go back in time but it does give us a chance to polish those memories scribed in our hearts... Life also allows us to maintain those relationships if we want to!
Great to have made such friends and may we remain so for the rest of our lives

P.S: The other day I was looking on our parent company's website and saw Cognizant as one of the Systems Integrator-partners and thought I should join back cognizant after some time at this company though logically for a Non Resident Alien like me in the US to work for an offshoring giant would be the worst thing to do. Such is myFlutter... :o

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Journey----- Courtesy Lufthansa

I was all excited to come to Hyderabad as this vacation is much needed to revive myself and come out of my shell.

Well my journey was good and bad as well with me and my friend finding seats in the middle row of the Boeing and that too the middle two out of the 4 :( (as we did not check in online) I was pushed by a stout german in to my friend and we happened to be a little stout and tall for the seats. What added to the 9 hr flight from Houston to Frankfurt was that there were no personal screens on that Boeing.... We cursed Lufthansa and then agreed that a Volvo bus journey from Hyderabad to Bangalore would have been more comfortable than the Economy class of Lufthansa.

Then after some dinner my friend dozed off for 6 hrs leaving me bored as I could sleep only for 2 hrs. My German neighbor never stopped drinking and he drank each peg of Dewars White Label on the rocks in 10 sec and what was amazing was that he dint sleep and watched the two movies and the documentary back to back.

At Frankfurt we had to do duty free shopping and the prices there were more than in Houston. Confused at whether we could buy booze at hyderabad or not as a very WISE man told us that we cant as Hyd was our destination. We later realized that it was total bull shit and we happen to spend $40 more than what we had if we had brought Black Label at Hyderabad. This is quite common to me.(I always think of saving and finally end up spending more :( )

The next flight though was ok as we had personal entertainment screens and the funny thing was that there were announcements in German, English and then in Hindi. I had elderly Italian people as my neighbors. I had good Indian food on this flight with Paneer Gobi, Palak and mango pickle served with rice My friend and I were hoping to find some hot girls as neighbors. This is also common to us all that we never find them.