Day 68 - A First

OK.  This is a first.  A post on my blog for the first time from an airline lounge.  My first post from a location outside of India as well!  Posting this from Doha, Qatar, while I wait for my connecting flight back home.

This week has been a week of new experiences.  Very hectic with long haul flights within the space of 3 days to and back from New York.  Was at work on Monday on Holi.  Had to catch up on a lot before I travelled to New York on Tuesday.

The journey to JFK from Mumbai is a long and tiring one...and my head was buzzing by the time I got to NYC on Tuesday.  I spent the next three days of the week meeting colleagues in the NY office and participating in workshops.  The evenings were fun too.

I caught up with Niraj on Thursday night.  We were meeting after close to 15 years and it was great to catch up with him.  We went down the memory lane talking about the GLS days, while bar hopping in downtown NY.  On Friday, Prakash, my cousin and his family picked me up after work.  We did a bus tour of New York in the night, had dinner at Utsav, an Indian restaurant (very good food!) and drove down to New Jersey.  Stayed with them for a day before I took the flight back home tonight. (tonight??....today??)  Pakku and Aparna have a beautiful place in the countryside in NJ.  I quite liked it, especially with the snow from last week still not melted and the sun shining in full glory on Saturday.  The best part of the trip was reserved for the last, though, when Jyoti and her family came over to see me before I started from NY.  Again, was meeting Mots after 10 years!  I must say, the rapid progress in information technology has also played a great role in bringing people together and closer, even though, the normal accusation actually is that it is making humans less creative and move away from human contact in flesh and bones.  I find it very useful to stay in touch and connect with family, friends and acquaintences across the globe.

The one big observation, though, out of the NY visit, is that Americans, like everything extra large. XXXL.  From the coffee that they drink to the cars that they drive.  From the bridges that they build to the people who build them.  All XXXL.  A lot of it, especially in NYC, is glitzy and over the top.  Vegas is even worse.  This obsessiveness with all things big only causes a huge amount of energy and gas consunption and a detrimental effect on the environment.  No wonder the developing nations first want the developed nations like the US to commit on cuts on emissions.  But more on this on a separate post.

As I sit in the lounge waiting to get home, I become aware that I am landing on a Monday morning, and will have to go to work in a few hours after I land.  Missing family...maybe I should take it easy on Monday.

Take care.