Bangalore Notes - Feb 11th, 2007 - Arrival

Landed in Bangalore shortly after 5 PM. It was an uneventful flight. The highlights of the flight were the touch-screen entertainment systems on the Emirates airlines, and the forward and downward looking cameras mounted on the nose of the aircraft, which transmitted live video to our screens. For the first time in my life, I had some excellent views of the take-off and landing, just as it would appear from the cockpit of the plane! The other thing was that there seemed to be more leg-room in the Emirates flights, compared to Singapore airlines I have flown in the past. Some people had warned me that the flight from Dubai to India could get bad, with lots of labor-class people boarding at Dubai and misbehaving in the flight. Absolutely nothing of the sort happened. The people on the Dubai-Bangalore flight were as well as behaved as any group of airline travelers I have seen. The service on Emirates airlines was alright, and the food was alright too – there was nothing bad nor special about either.

At the Dubai airport, I could not resist buying a bottle of single-malt Scotch at the duty-free store. I have no idea who will drink it here, and I don't know what the reaction of my family will be either. Drinks are a taboo in my family, although (or perhaps because of) my father and his father's drinking habits in the past. Ideally, I would like to open this bottle with the male members of my family, at home, when all the females are out shopping or something. We shall see how that will go. The last time I had come to Bangalore in 2005, I had brought a bottle of tequila - my mom and sisters did not like my doing that very much. I used it to party with my friends and left about 1/3 of the bottle at home when I returned to the US. Wonder what happened to it...

My parents came to the airport to pick me up. They seem to have aged quite a bit since I last saw them in 2005. They certainly have much more gray hair, especially my mom. I can also see signs in her face of struggles with less-than-ideal health. After we returned home, I saw my dad struggle with some digestion problems, which he said were due to all the tea and snacks he was served when visiting people to invite them to my sister's wedding. Makes me feel sad and very concerned for my parents. They don’t even have medical insurance since my dad retired in August 2006!

It took about an hour for us to get home from the airport, in the relatively lesser Sunday evening traffic. I was impressed by the fly-over work on Airport Road near Indiranagar. The last time I was in India, in May-June 2005, the construction on this fly-over had not even started! So, that's some pretty quick work... going by the usual standards of public construction here. The underpass at the Rajajinagar entrance area was also completed providing much relief to that junction. I bet our travel time was cut down by at least 15 minutes, if not more, just because of these two - fly-over on airport road and the under-pass at Rajajinagar entrance.

When I came home, I found my grandmother there along with one of my cousins. I was glad that they were there. If not, I would have felt a little weird and lonely to be in the house with just my parents. We have never really been by ourselves until now - just the three of us! I spoke to my uncles and aunt on my mother side, on the phone and then fell asleep soon after dinner. I was glad to fall asleep at the right local time, although that would have been morning in Phoenix. Sleeping and waking up at the right local time is the best way to beat jetlag.