Getting There

Its been about 20 years since I regularly flew Business class on International flights and there really is a difference. Apart from the use of the airport lounges the seats are much bigger, more leg room and more service. Both Qantas (QF) to Singapore and Singapore Airlines (SQ) had movies on demand and I watched Brokeback Mountain and an hour of Matador on the first leg. I finished the second movie, watched Memoirs of a Geisha and most of Casanova on the second.

On the QF Airbus they have the new Skybed seats, which actually allow you to lay flat and sleep. Not overly useful when you fly out late morning. After landing, I crossed to the other terminal to the Singapore Air lounge and had a quick wash before going back to the duty free shops. I was looking at cameras in the second shop I went into and turned around and run into the guy who sat next to me on the flight. There must be some law or other that guarantees this will happen when there is only 1 other person in the whole country that you know. Again, it’s been over 20 years since I was in Singapore so I was impressed by the “new” airport which was celebrating its 25^th Anniversary. The second leg to Delhi on a 777 was also comfortable although the seating was a different style.

It was 37 deg C and muggy when we landed at 10pm. I found the Hotel driver very easily and had an interesting lesson in driving on the way to the hotel. It seems the lines on the road are only vague suggestions as to where the cars should travel and beeping the horn is an absolute necessity. He even cut across a construction site to save maybe 20 seconds. I have resolved not to drive myself while here.

The room at the Fortune Select Global Hotel is quite comfortable as expected. It has a 66cm LCD TV with over 80 channels available. The power conversion plug I bought in Perth didn’t fit, so Room service bought me a multi plug. This turned out to have a broken fuse. The electrician arrived soon after and shorted out the fuse with what appeared to be a piece of wire. I now have power to a multi board and my phone, PC and MP3 players are all getting charged up. It was after 3am Perth time when I finally got to sleep.

How it started

My Indian Adventure started in March 2006 with an email from an oil company about to start production there. One of their people had seen a system I had developed for a UK oil field in the 90's and had recently converted from a DOS program to a Windows system. After sending them a trial version I heard nothing for several months and so it was a surprise when I received an email late in June saying they wished to go ahead and wanted me to spend 2 weeks in their Delhi office.

Since I had been selected to play Hockey for Western Australia in the Veterans Championship at the end of July, I suggested an August visit with an early July one as a possibility. They choose the July option and after a frantic few days I had organised tickets, a visa, bought a new camera, arranged for my cat to be boarded, had injections and am now ready to get on the plane on Saturday.

By a strange co-incidence, our book club had read two books related to India this year. Shantaram is a semi autobiographical (ie the names have been changed to protect the guilty) novel about an Australian, ex drug addict, bank robber and jail escapee who finishes up in Bombay. He mixes criminal connections and Bollywood stars with running a free clinic for thousands of slum dwellers. A fascinating book that really captured the flavour of India (or at least Bombay). The other was The Satanic Verses. Next year I'm going to find some books on Hawaii and hope they lead to a job there instead.