Shamshabad, new airport....
Today I flew from Hyderabad's new airport to Banglore and posting my experience in this blog.
To start with, I have booked a easy cab a day before. I have chosen easy cab because theres not much choice of cabs to airport and need to chose between easy cab and meru. After booking the cab I was given a booking reference number which I noted down and wished that I will never have to use it. The cab is supposed to come at 7:00 and I waited till 7:05 and called the EasyCabs number and they gave the number of driver and asked me to contact the driver directly. Thinking that the driver would have lost some where in finding my address, I called and to my surprise got the "not accessible" tone. After few minutes I tried again and got the same response. I was getting panicky as this is the first time I am travelling to Samshabad airport and heard of horrible travel times, traffic jams to airport and do not want to miss the flight. The call center people informed that the driver is at Hitec city and will be reaching soon. Again I tried to contact the driver and the driver informed me that he is at balanagar and is on the way to my place to pick me up. I scolded the guy to come quickly and finally he reached my place at 7:40 and to my surprise theres another cab also that has come. The driver from the another cab started arguing that he is waiting from 7:00 AM and he doesnt have enough balance to call me. I scolded him for coming late and got into the cab asking the driver to take me fast to the airport. The journey of 44kms took around 40 mins and costed me 640 rs. The first impression I got about the airport is that, its very clean, modren looking and reminded me of singapore changi airport. There are enough checkin points for kingfisher and the whole checkin process took few mins. Unlike the previous airport and other domestic airports, we do not have to do the screening for the checkin baggage and instead can check in the luggage, thus reducing one big line, effort and saves enough time. Security checkin was also quite fast with many points. Then comes the boarding point, the shops are of international standard, with a quick bite food shop that serves dishes from samosas, masala dosas to hyderabad biryanis., theres a landmark book shop and there are around 7 "aero bridges" that leads you to board the flight directly. I guess these aero bridges should be enough that allows the passengers to avoid the dangerous buses.....I counted the "aero bridges" in bangalore and found that there are just 2.
How I wish I had carried a camera with me, I could have posted some good photos of the new airport. Will do that in my next trip.
Labels: GMR, Samshabad airport
Lots and lots of changes in life
Its been a year since I have published a post to this blog. In this year lot of changes have happened. Few prominent ones are :
-> Swapna got job in Oracle Bangalore and along with shloka moved there
-> I used to visit Bangalore often once a month and miss shloka and swapan
-> Ravi got engaged in June and got married in September
-> We celebrated shlokas first birthday in Bangalore
-> I am struck in Singapore till November first week and finally came back to India for good
-> Oracle Applications went live in November and with this I have witnessed the complete end to end implementation of ERP
->Got Oracle Apps DBA certification
->Swapna took transfer to Hyderabad
-> We did house warming to our flat in Rain Treepark and moved in there
->Shloka is now 1year and 4months and is very active
Shloka is now 3 weeks
Its already three weeks since Shloka is born. Looks like she has grown a lot in these three weeks. Intially she used to be a small little one bundled and wrapped in a towel. Now she wants to be out of the bundle and wants attention, keeps us awake in the night, makes me sing llullabies, smiles while sleeping, suddenly shakes her whole body to frighthen her mother, yawns and all. She learned so many things in these few days.
Happy New Year 2006
It was quite a busy start to 2006. With our ERP system going live and one of our DBA on leave to India, I had to work on almost all the holidays of New year. In Japan we get 7 continuous holidays for new year (and dont know why japan is called the land of workholics), but........ thats a big but.... I worked on 5 days and no energy to match up with my wife in shopping malls on the other 2 days. Life is full of contradictions, I guess.. Last year I was all alone in Japan as my wife was in India and it was so boring spending holidays at home all alone. Now when I have a companion with me, I had to work and slog on all those days... ummmm
Today I am working full night, I guess this is my first full night shift in many many years. I dont even remember when I worked like this. The last I can think of is during Ultimatix rollout in Mumbai with Somal. Thats way back in 2002.
Krishna Kari
10-Jan-2005
I am staying in japan since a year and would like to record my experiences here through this BLOG.
We (with my wife) came to Japan in Feb, 2004. Leaving my story, I would like share the story of Japan.
Japan, the first thing that comes to our mind is the one we learned in school, Japan, the land of rising sun. Yes indeed it it, in Japanese Japan is called "NIHON" which means the "root of sun". But I am sorry to tell that I have seen less sun here than in india. Its mostly due to the work and the weather. We landed in a city called Osaka and this is the city where I spent my days in Japan. It was cold night when we landed in Kansai International Airport, which was build on land that was created on sea. This information didnt surprise me as we all know that Japan is the most densly populated country and hence they have invented minatures like BONSAI and Laptops.
Well we have the printouts of the accomodation and seeing the printouts we thought that our trouble has started. As theres not a single alphabet which we could make out from that leave alone the meaning of it. Except a hand symbol pointing a finger towards a building. We were told to show that to the taxi driver and he will understand. Suddenly we felt we are handicapped, the languages which we know till now are useless. Its like losing an organ in our body. Any way thats just the begining and there are lot of surprises in store for us. After completing the immigration check we walked towards the information counter and showed the address where we have to go. And the lady at the counter told us the platform number where we can catch the bus. 90% of this conversation is through actions only. Then with our luggage we went towards the bus platform. Then we need to buy ticket, we were asking people standing there about the ticket and surprised that no body can understand the word ticket here. Then we removed the biggest weapon we carried with us, "A guide to basic Japanese conversation" and hurridely searched for the word "Ticket" and found out that its called as "kippu" and loudly uttered the word kippu. That made lot of sense to the people around and took me to the vending machine and explained me, (ofcourse through actions as i have suddenly become deaf) about how to use vending machine to buy the ticket. Later the bus came and we are in. Got the first glimpse of Japan in the Neon lights. After an hour or so we got down at Moriguchi station and took a taxi, showed him the map and he dropped us at the "Shanpia Moriguchi Mansion" . I was told the flat number, that the door will be open and key will be inside the refrigirator. Happy that things are well organized I took the lift and opened the flat door, surprised that the room is very small and the fridge is of the size of a shoe rack. I couldnt believe my eyes, started cursing my luck for taking up this japan offer and shocked at the way the japanese have miniatured things. Came down took the luggage and with swapna entered into the first day of japanese life.
The story continues.......................................................
