Flight arrived on time at LAX. Plenty of time left to catch the 12:50 pm flight to Dallas, TX. Hopefully it reaches on time. There is only 55 minutes of connection time at DFW for the RIC flight. Can't wait to get home.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Back in the USA
I planned on going out in Tokyo, but Sahaj was in deep sleep so had to ditch that idea. Simply waited out at the Narita airport to catch the flight to LAX.
Sahaj passing time with the Nook tablet at LAX
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
A Day in Kaula Lumpur
In Hyderabad from 8/16 to 8/25, time was spent in visiting cousins, shopping, health check ups for parents and attending a few work meetings.
Towers during the dusk hour
Arrived in Kaula Lumpur the morning of 8/26. Rented a SIM card that works in Malaysia at the Hyderabad airport itself. Exchanged some currency and took the trains from KLIA to KL Sentral and then from there to the KLCC station which is in the basement of Petronas towers. Appointments to go upto 86th floor are available only for the evening. Took the 18:15 appt.
My B.E., classmate from Pondicherry, Sunil, is the head of Pepsico for Southeast Asia based in KL. Took a cab from KLCC to the Sunway Pyramid mall where I met him at an Indian restaurant for lunch. Sahaj was in deep sleep. :-( We met after 25 years! It was nice to catch up with him after such a long time.
I planned on doing some sight seeing via hop on hop off buses after lunch but, with Sahaj in deep sleep, Sunil was gracious enough to ask his driver to take us to his home so that we could relax for a few hours. So we got a chance to meet his family as well. He even arranged to drop us back at KLCC in the evening.
KL is a wonderful city. Infrastructure is good. Roads are clean and the traffic is orderly. Population is diverse.
Petronas towers are fantastic. Very robust construction. Views from the top were awesome.
Took the trains back to KLIA to catch the 11:30 pm flight to Tokyo.
Reaching my Native place
After spending a night in Bangalore with family, took a flight to Visakhapatnam the morning of 8/1. One of my middle/high school classmates, Ramesh, picked us up at the airport to take us to the train station to catch a train to my native place, Tadepalligudem. We stopped at a restaurant on the way to get some light lunch. It was nice to see him in person after over 30 years.
It is a four hour train ride from here. You certainly get a coming home feeling after seeing the familiar sights of coconut trees, and the rice fields along the train route.
Rooster being raised for fighting
We all left the same night by train to Hyderabad.
My dad and uncle came to the train station to pick us up. Finally reached home for dinner. Spent the next two weeks meeting my high school friends and traveling to the near by villages to visit family. In this part of the world, during the harvest festival, betting on cock fighting is a common place. The bets are typically in thousands of dollars!
Not too long ago, there used to be a lot of boat traffic, transporting goods, in the canals. There is hardly any such traffic now a days.
Disappearing transportation boats
My dad was also in the process of closing the tractor spare parts store after running it for 44 years, which was named after me. The doors were finally closed on 8/14. Donated some sports equipment to the elementary school behind our house. Participated in the Independence Day celebration function at the school on 8/15.
Stay in Mysore
The train arrived in Mysore on 7/28 a few minutes late. Checked into the hotel for a four day stay. The room has a view of the St. Philomena church.
The main purpose of visiting Mysore was to introduce Sahaj to play Indian classical music on a keyboard with pitch bender. Sahaj's music teacher in Richmond who is 86 years old, takes violin lessons from this teacher, Mr. Amba Prasad, in Mysore via Skype! In between lessons, we fit in some sight seeing.
We took a horse buggy ride from the palace to the hotel. This buggy has a built in DVD player in the ceiling!
One of the days we visited Sri Rangapatnam, Tippu Sultan's capital and the famous Brindavan Gardens.
Tippu Sultan's fort occupied the whole town but pretty much only the ruins remain now. One of his captains betrayed him and as a result died in a battle with British.
Caught a train to Bangalore on the 7/31 evening.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Silver Jubilee Reunion
This event happened on July 26th. A bus picked us up from the resort to take us to the Pondicherry Engineering College for the 9:30 am reunion function. Balloons, floral arrangements and the friendly reunion committe members welcomed us.
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
St. James Court resort
It was so hot and humid outside. I have no idea how I survived four years in this weather. It was a big relief once we were inside the auditorium. The chairman of the college is a political appointee. So they had to invite him and certain protocol had to be followed. He spoke for a while in Tamil which half of us couldn't understand!
It was good to meet several of my classmates and the professors after so many years. After the function, we planted some trees and headed to the hostel cafeteria for lunch. I could hardly recognize the campus. Many new buildings have sprung up in the last 25 years. College has added several new offerings including P.G. and Ph.D courses since then. After lunch, we toured the hostels and rest of the campus. Lack of funds is pretty apparent. Politicians have waived tuitions in order to get votes and the college is suffering as a result of that policy. Pondicherry used to be a Union territory under central govt control with lots of funds. It now became a state with only the state revenue to depend on hence all the politics interfering with the college administration.
Water Lilly near the admin building
The bus took us on a city tour in the evening on the way to the Le Ponde resort for dinner.
Mahatma Gandhi statue at the beach
Sahaj with the Manakula Vinayagar temple elephant
The Le Ponde resort impressed me a great deal. Grounds and the facilities are world class but, it was far away from the city. I never knew Pondicherry was that big! I wish we arrived there during the day to soak in the beautiful surroundings. The dinner was supposed to be outdoors but, it started raining. So, it was moved indoors. It was another opportunity to rekindle our friendships. Headed back to the St. James court in the rain for another night stay.
After spending some time on the beach and in the pool in the morning, headed back to Chennai to catch a train to Mysore in the evening.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Taxi ride to Pondicherry
It is about a three hour ride from Chennai to Pondicherry. We stopped at Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) on the way to see the monolithic rock sculptures that were carved during the Pallava dynasty in the 7th century.
This is a UNESCO world heritage site. We resumed our journey to Pondicherry. The salt fields along the way are still there. Road tolls are new!
There is another party (two other PECites from Bombay) heading in our direction. They stopped at the crocodile park along the way. Both of us reached the St. James Court resort across from PEC pretty much at the same time for check-in. We spent the evening collecting sea shells at the beach (Bay of Bengal) and eating dinner at the roof top seaside restaurant within the resort. It was nice to catch up with others after so long.
A night stay in Chennai
The deplaning at Chennai airport was very quick. The simultaneous exit from the front door was through the terminal bridge and the back door via a ramp and then onto a waiting bus which took us to the terminal.
The Chennai airport is showing its age. Took a prepaid taxi to the IITM (Indian Institute of Technology - Madras) campus.
I had reserved a room at the Taramani guest house within the IITM campus through the alumni association. I did my M.Tech (1990-92) in Industrial Management from here. They don't offer this degree here anymore. It got converted to a MBA program.
My first impression of Chennai after coming back more than two decades later is that, there are flyovers every where. The Metro is going to be operational in the next two years which should give relief to the traffic congestion. I could hardly recognize the IITM area. There is a flyover in front of the IN/OUT gates and there was so much traffic. It used to be a wide open road.
The IITM campus hasn't changed much except for a few new buildings. The shuttle bus that runs between main gate and hostels used to be Brown in color but, is Yellow now. The over 600 acre campus is beautiful as usual. The difference in the atmosphere between inside the campus vs outside the campus is very stark. The free roaming deer and monkeys are still there. I never been to the guest house while I studied there. It really has very nice accommodations and a nice dining hall with good food.
View outside the room.
The Cauvery hostel which is close by was my home during my M.Tech. We used to play volleyball pretty much every day after the classes and ball badminton on some days. There used to be a movie screened at the open air theater every Saturday evening. All the students would head there after a scrumptuous dinner. Those 18 months were the best days of my life.
We went to see the Cauvery hostel. Looks like an additional wing was added. Sahaj got a chance to see the deer roaming on the hostel grounds.
Children of two of my cousins work in Chennai. They came by to see Sahaj in the evening. One of them did bachelors at my alma mater, PEC (Pondicherry Engineering College) and working at the same company (TCS) as I did! We all went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. Then back to the guest house for a good night's sleep.
In the morning, one of my M.Tech classmates who was also one of my TCS colleagues stopped by to meet. It was nice catching up after a long time. IIT opened a research park next to its campus to tie up with private industry. My B.E., project guide who later did his PhD from IITM is heading a Cognizant unit in there. We went to see him.
We also stopped by the house where I used to live while working at TCS after I got married. The owners are still there. Bindu was months old when we lived there. We used to take her out on scooter to zoo and other sight seeing places. The house owners used to be very worried about Bindu because we were taking her out at such young age. They would eagerly wait for us to return home. The house lady was also a big help for Lakshmi while raising Bindu.
Returned to the guest house after meeting them to eat lunch and check out. Asked the auto guy to wait for us to finish lunch so that he could drop us at the IIT main gate which was a rendezvous point for two of my PECites, one coming from Delhi and one coming from Hyderabad for the Silver Jubilee Reunion. We all headed to Pondicherry, which used to be a French colony, on a taxi.
Trip to Chennai (Madras)
I didn't get a chance to blog the last few days. Catching up now. The trip from Hyderabad to Chennai on July 24th was very pleasant. This was my first true domestic flight in India. HYD airport was superb. It was very clean and way better than several other international airports in the world. Check-in and security clearance was a breeze too. The IndiGo airlines was very efficient and business like. We could buy snacks from the inflight menu. The one hour flight treated us with fantastic views.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Finally in India
I got some sleep on the 4 hour flight from KUL to HYD. Hyderabad city from the air in the night:
The new airport is very efficient. After completing immigration, the two bags we checked in at LAX were waiting for us.
Out of the airport under 30 minutes after going through customs. Vasu (my brother-in-law) picked us up at the airport. Because it is shortly after midnight, roads were empty. Even the freeway speed limits are at impressive 120 kms/hr. i.e. ~75 mph.
I will be working Tuesday and Wednesday. So, I will resume blogging once we leave for Chennai on Thursday.
Kuala Lumpur Airport
The airport is full of middle school students from near by south East Asian countries. There must have been some kind of competition and they are returning to their home countries. There is a jungle area in the middle of the airport which was closed for walks when we were there. It is seen behind the pillar in the photo below.
Exchanged $20 into Ringgits and had dinner. Aerotrain took us to the terminal G to catch flight to HYD.
Landed in Kuala Lumpur
Take off from Narita-Tokyo was into the clouds but, the view on top of the clouds was mesmerizing.
Any way, looks like Malaysia is pushing tourism in a big way this year. There were banners even at the Narita-Tokyo airport. There was an inflight video promoting tourism too.
We have only 4-5 hour lay over at KUL. So not planning on leaving the airport. Sahaj is fast asleep too. Looking forward to reaching Hyderabad tonight.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Headed back to Narita Airport
Walked back to the train station. There was no ticket office, only the ticket machines. You got to figure out the fare from the route map on the wall and buy the tickets accordingly. Luckily there was a button to display text in English.
Train arriving at the station:
Below are some pictures taken on the way to the airport:
Center Hotel Narita
I really liked the Center Hotel Narita. They provide slippers and robes to wear, Free WiFi, Free Breakfast. Surprisingly, you don't hear any noise from outside in the room even though we were next to the elivators. Below is the view from the window.
The green in the back are rice fields. Haven't adjusted to the time difference yet. Both of us woke up at 1:30 a.m. Sunrise was very early around 4 a.m. I planned on going to a Bhuddist temple close by but, it is not going to open till 8 a.m. We need to be at the airport by then. Breakfast was good: boiled eggs, fresh bread rolls, croissants, miso soup, etc...
A night stay in Tokyo
Took a short train ride on the Keisei Mainline from airport to the Narita train station.
The Center Hotel Narita is in walking distance from the station.
We could hardly sleep on the over 10 hour flight from LAX because the sun never set. Once checked into the hotel, ordered pizza from Pizza Hut with the help of the hotel staff and decided to rest for the night. The room is small but, very comfortable. The space is utilized very well.
The bathroom is the same way. The toilet even sprays your bottom!
Here is a house close to the hotel:
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