Infinite Improbability in North Carolina : flying into the Cuckoo's nest

Mine is the seat just after the Window EXIT seats; 23F. The Flight steward comes over to the four unsuspecting gentleman sitting on the seats, bends over and says in a loud voice. “Gentleman, do you realize that you are sitting on the Emergency EXIT windows seat? Do you understand the duties that come with sitting on the Emergency WINDOWS EXIT seat”. The four guys nod in silent acquiescence. In the most made up Arnold Schwarzenegger baritone the steward speaks out - “Are you able and willing” The guys nod again. “I now pronounce you man and door, you may kiss the door”.

I am on the second rung of my journey from Tampa to Raleigh Durham and my flight has just taken over from Atlanta towards Raleigh. It was Tampa – Atlanta – Raleigh and the pilot was the worst pilot I have ever seen. (I realized that he was the worst Pilot even before I saw him, and as expected the remark simply alluded to his flying skills). The way he flew is almost like the way we drive. He honked in mid air thrice (I have no idea to what or whome), he braked, turned, picked up speed, braked again, press the accelerator, shook the plane, and made the heart leap out of my able and willing Window seat passengers.

10:35 p.m Thursday, the flight landed at Raleigh Durham. A pretty noticeable thing on the flight was that everybody waits for the ones in front on them to disembark before getting down. So anybody on seat 23 would wait for everybody till seat 22 to disembark from the flight and only after that would they move. Not quite like apnee desi flight, kill the guy infront, mow the old lady if she doesn’t yield the way for you but be the first one out of the flight

Bhaiya, Bhabhi and Varun were there waiting for me at the Baggage claim and I don’t remember much of the airport except that I had bent down and had been embraced by Varun in the most beautiful hug. With Bhaiya on the wheel of a white colored Honda CRV, we made it through the curvy, twisty, bending, rising, falling ways of Raleigh Durham towards 1007 Ashley Downs (read home).

Raleigh and Durham are twin cities which closely resembles a hill station by any Indian standard. The ways are decked with long, deodhar resembling trees on each side, and not just a single line of trees but small woods of sort. Its winter, so the trees aren’t green but that doesn’t take the beauty off. In fact it just adds to the hill station aura. The temperatures are sub zero but you don’t notice that in the heated car. The roads are narrower compared to Tampa but the traffic flows smoothly. Tampa is more of a commercial area, with four line pathways within the city too and lots of malls or shops along those streets. Raleigh is a narrow two – three line pathways with the malls separated from the residential areas. As you move around in Tampa, all you’ll find is Shops, Walmart, this mart that mart; Raleigh you’ll found woods, and huts within those woods and lots of maple tree leaves which have fallen from the trees around those huts. Told ya – it’s like a hill station, only it isn’t.

Bhaiya’s place is also like most other houses out there – Hut shaped, with a garage. Its white in color, has a facade set in stone, has those sloping roofs and windows out of those sloping roofs, a lawn in front, small woods separating it from the road on the back, and houses on left and right which are identical to it. There is narrow concrete path from within the lawn that takes you to the garage and the main door. A flight of stairs (2 -3 stairs) takes you to the main door which opens into the drawing room. However if you chose to enter through the garage door and that’s the one which is more frequently used, it takes you into the kitchen and dining room. Its an open kitchen as is prevalent in this country with an L shaped front panel, with the Microwave and the cooking range forming the bottom of the L. The dining table is towards the left, the bathroom as you move further inside from the kitchen and next to the store. The door to the back lawn come is right behind the dining table and a small desk of sorts in front houses the cordless which is where we were calling all of you from.

There is a flight of stairs from at the end of the drawing room which takes you to the rooms upstairs. We have two bedrooms and Varun’s toy room and that’s all the description that features in this blog. I have specified it all so that you can picture us there and it’d be convenient for the rest of this blog.

With 40 minutes left for Raleigh Durham to enter into Friday 28^th January 2005 (EST), we started on with our dinner. Boondi rayta, paneer ki sabzi, Rajma chawal, paranthaey and Varun Kochar jumping and playing around you makes for the perfect Dinner setting. And then to top it all, a steaming hot cup of tea served in the living room and all of us laughing it over after dinner while comfortably snuggled in the couch and the fireplace breathing out an even blue flame.

It was close to 2:30 when I finally went off to sleep and it was good Morning Raleigh at 10:30 a.m next day.

Infinite Improbability in Florida : 12/31/2004......

They come in different shapes and sizes though only slightly variations of colour. Are popularly refferred to as Shyamsundar, Champak aur babubhaiya among other names in the desi diallect. Voh issliye ki unko abb kalua and kaalu samajh maen aata hai. They have the strangest dressing sense in the history of mankind ... that is if we dont consider the Chinese, Malyalis, Hippies, British judges, Scottish Bagpipers, Tommy Hilfiger connosieurs and most of french fashion circle patrons.And according to Manish Komerwar, Global Issue Resolution Team, Gold PLUS, they have a recurrent history of shooting down people whenever someone makes a slightest passe at their girlfriends.

And if you are wondering why did I get into the their history, Its just that they were about the most decent and civilised junta that I encountered on my New Year Celebrations at Ybor Strip, Florida.

Flashback...December 31st 2004 7:30 p.m...The 907 junta doesnt seem too interested in going out anywhere. They are all veterans out here, most of em have been here for more than 6 months. There plan of a New year bash is more inclined towards sitting at home with a glass of Canadian whiskey and therefore I am generally asked to accompany them to a quick visit to apnaa nukadd ka liquor shop. Now, its not like Walmart doesnt store liquour. However I have been told them that there is very little variety. I would have contested the exact connotations of the word variety when it comes to Walmart but then the visit to the liquor shop does quench your desire to argue about lack of variety at Walmart. Its like a reasonably big shop with different aisles storing racks of different kinds of liquours. There is Russian Rum and Dutch Vodka (after effects of Cold War?), Jack Daniels, Johnie Walkers - Black, Blue, Green, Red, Gold Labels and with a price tag varrying between $26 (Black) and $140 (Blue). There are wines, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blancs. Refridgerators full of Corona Lite, BudWiesers and Heineken. Already prepared cocktails - Screwdrivers, Pinacolladas et al. The shop is owned by a Malyali guy who generally acknowledges all of us with a hand-shake (Turning customers to repeaters or is it the other way round.) The shop is generally filled with other customers and post a queue of 8 guys and 13 minutes of drive to home, I am back into the environs of 907, Balaye Run Drive. Now for the benifit of all, let me express my credence in my belief of not ever going in for any sort of drinking binge. I have for good, decided to keep off liquour for 1. its not something that I enjoy except for probably Red Wine Sangria 2. No real big reason, its just like I dont prefer eating Crabs and in a similar note I dont like drinking Beer or Vodka or Rum (I havent tried Whisky but the real reason I havent ried Whisky is because I never thought I'll like it). So staying there with the 907 junta was out of the question.

It was then that Cherian came in and updated me on the plans of 919-302 junta planning to go off to Ybor Strip. Ybor Strip is to Tampa what Connaught Place is to Delhi but it may be around 10% in size. Its just a road which goeas for around 3-4 blocks, each block may be housing something like 15 shops. So its 30 shops (15 on each side) before you come to a small intersection of roads and 4 such blocks is all of Ybor Strip. For the New Year festivities, the police had barricaded all the intersections. So it was strictly no vehicles in Ybor Strip and all of it lay open for the revellers. At each intersection you would find close to 11 policemen leaning against their barricades and a police car at the end of the cross street (not on the main street). There are various discotheques in Ybor and each one of em was playing the loudest music to entice the revellers in. Some of em even had girls walking around with banners asking everyone to step int their party.

As I (its the four of us being referred to as I) had walked past one of em, there was this girl who came across me, said something of a "Hey come to Amphitheatre (name of a dance club)" and even before I could decline, accept, comment, return the look she was gone. It was as if she had given up hope that I'd ever realy be coming in to the club, but then by some stroke of real bad luck saw herself infront of me, spoke out what she had been speaking out of sheer habit for the day and while she was saying it realised her mistake that it was me whom she was speaking out too and hence quickly went off. Now from my perspective, when she had asked me, I had decided to courteously decline. Now for a guy, with a single minded dedicated prime time goal of being considerate to every single american lady who asks him to go into a dance club, and yet not being able to do just that, is a blow, most of you would not be able to fathom the impact of. It leaves you with such a bad distaste in your mouth that after that the world looks a deep shade of violet mixed with yellow added to a discoloured shade of flourescent pinky blue. Okie, for the benifit of those of you who are probably under the impression that the RGB scheme I just spoke about is probably just some strange concoction of colours, thats just the colour of the air and environs in a Ybor strip dance club when you see it from its glass windows while standing outside the door. If you take away the blue from the flourescent pink blue part, its about the average decour code of a traditional gujju Indian joint in Tampa. Said that, I shall return to the topic of traditional Gujju Indian joints at tampa but maybe in some other mail.

Gopala was interested in going to a dance club (He went to amphitheatre), VIraj had no plans but he chose to follow Gopala, I wanted to be out on the streets and Cherian wanted to drink beer somewhere (somplace which doesnt have a cover charge). The cover charge BTW for most of these dance clubs on a New year night is $25. This is FYI only. No other implications except for just that posterity might at some point look at this and then with those yearning eyes, proclaim - "Those were the days". Its another thing that at that very precise moment, it is very likely that I'll also be saying the same thing :). Gopala proceeded towards amphitheatre, Viraj close on his heels whearas I and Cherian just started back towards the rest of the four blocks that lay behind us. We were to meet at 1:00 a.m. on 1st of January 2005, only that we didn't quite. So heres how the rest of those 3-4 hours were spent by me while I walked and rewalked the pathways and roads of Ybor Strip.

If theres one word to describe it, its diversity. Colour - Blacks, whites, browns, Yellow, and thats not the skin, thats pretty much the hair too. Red Jackets and redder hair, Blue denims and violet lipsticks, Green eyes and golden nails, these guys just show it off under those blazing neons. They were of all ages, old ones on their wheelchairs, new borns in their prams and rest of em on thier own two feet. There were Europeans, Chinese, Indians. Infact at a point where on my way I had met several other guys from kanbay and while we were just standing there, a group of Indian yougsters (8 odd in number 20 odd in age ) passed us by and then all of a sudden one of em - came to all of us and bent to touch our feet. In the most broken hindi he said - "mere ko aap sabbka aashirvaad dou" and then bent again to touch another guys feet. He was someone born and brought up here, and then I realised, they were all born and brought up here. The guy just hugged each one of us wished us a happy new year and went ahead with his NRI junta. Cherian, by that time had found himself a beer bar just which was flocked by people. It was basically a open verrandah of sorts, with a small counter at one of the corners serving Beer and as you move ahead you come into the open part of the veranndah with a band infront playing out some numbers. When the band shuts off after some time (to get some drinks for them selves) the DJ on the side of the stage picks up. The whole place is just that - a helluva lot of people getting jiggy more on the beers and less on the music. I was there inside that place for like 20 odd minutes before I moved out into the open. Cherian had bought himself a beer so he chose to remain inside.

We were still around an hour from the 12'o clock chime but the people on the streets had grown significantly in number in the last hour or so. Moreover, there were now more yougsters, guys and gals who had come on their cycle rickshaws ferrying people off to the dance club that had paid them to do so. There were others who just sat down on the benches while watching around and still other like me who did not sit down while watching around. Guys would walk past me with their arms held out and fist closed and I'll just punch their fist back in a sign of whats it called "give me five point three nine two". Ladies dancng out on the streets would just pass by and scream a happy new year to anyone they see. One of those percussion artists would put down his hat and then start playing on the street itself churning out some really good beats. There are other junta who just walk out there with some techno gadgets attached to their feet and then they start jumping all over the place. double summersaults, triple summersaults and then jumping over some bent old lady whose real reason for bending is that she just wants to throw up after having drunk all that she might have.

Coming to which, by around 1:30 in the night the entire place has every Tom, Dick and mostly timmothy, Anne and Victorias, all throwing up. Okay, I am exaggerating and thats not quite it is. But the point is, at that hour these people get seriuosly drunk. Some really pretty ladies drunk to the hilt being dragged by their moms. The real smart guys, drunk and then instead being dragged by their still more drunk friends without the slightest idea of direction. They are of all ages, the old ones on their wheelchairs, the new borns in their prams and rest of em , well they no longer are on their feet anymore. Its everybody screaming and jumping and there were a lil bit of fireworks and then there were the cops entering in just to make sure nobody does anything so that they also dont have to do anything! Gopala made us wait for an hour more than what was promised but I aint really complaining. It was at 2:45 that I returned home after being part of my very first American New year party... and the rest as they prefer to call it...is history (2004).

Infinite Improbability in Florida : Working at it

Well Uncle Sam's is just that Uncle Sam's. Its not India and when I say that I am stating the obvious. Let me start with somethng that I havent touched base upon with yet. My office and work.

I have always been a part of the development teams at Kanbay. Essentially, I see the requirements and see what all needs to be done with the code so that it works as desired. My job has always been inside the code, inside the programs, and see if that program is doing whats it doing or not. That was when I was in the GWT team. Now its GDT team wherein I see that if this is the requirement of the business, then which program do we pick up and schedule it where so that, the requirement is finished. I have shifted from development to implementation. Now being a development person gives you an amazing insight into why things go wrong when they are not quite working as desired. My being there for 2 yrs has given me lots of insight into that. And I am safely leveraging that in my current work. My immediate client our here knows less of technology than I do so its easier to deal with him. But my team is like the core central team of implementation and we have lots of support groups which look into us and depend on us for their activities. Hence I get an amazing amount of exposure. I am generally part of the calls where all of these support groups discuss their strategies and then they let us know what they intend to do.

The HSBC office is essentially a ground floor building, with several wings where my wing is segregated into two huge halls and the third hall is the cafeteria. There are 4 types of offices, the cubicles, the cubes, the corner office and the closed doors - in the order of ascendancy. Most of Kanbay guys sit in cubicles and someof HSBC staff too. There you just abut have enough space for your computer and a chair. Your screen is visible from across a mile because there are no screens between adjacent cubicles. The cubes have large screening on all 4 sides with a door shaped opening in the one of the sides. Its like a room with no roof and a part of 1 wall opened. There is a long table along two walls and two chairs, one for the guy who sits and the other for a visitor. Most of HSBC staff sits in cubes. The corner office is not necessarily in the corner, its just cube with the window instead of one of the walls. Theere are certain corner offices with closed doors which make the 4th category.

I sit in a cube. Not for any other reason except that my predecessor also used to sit in their and I just took it over from him - the work and the office.

The best thing out here is that we can work from home too. I mean after and before the office hours. Its just that you can logon to the system from home, connect on to HSBC and have access to everything. So I generally leave from office around 6:00 and if there is still work, carry it on from home. My most important task is to delegate the work to offshore. So I just understand what all needs to be done and then pass it on to offshore. The post is Onsite Co-ordinator and thats what I do, co-ordinate the tasks between offshore and onsite. Its still pretty hectic, because at office I have to get all the requirements answered, and then after office when my offshore enters office, I have to let them know and make sure they understand. Its 10:30 p.m.EST when its 9:00 a.m.IST. So its generally around 11:00 p.m. EST that I start on with my call to offshore and then its may stretch until any time. If there are issues,as there were earlier, it could even stretch uptil 2:00 a.m. EST. But for all the exposure that I am getting, its pretty much worth it.

So thats what it was at the office... Next in line would be the trip to Fort Desoto...

Infinite Improbability in Florida : The morning after

My first day is just drawing to a close and its been a beautiful day. The full moon shining brightly has never seemed this bright. Even the stars around are twinkling a lot more brightly. I was often told that sun outside India shines brighter than what it does in India. I had never really felt any difference, I still don't. The moon however is a lot brighter, maybe to the tune that it hurts the eye at the first glance. Its a beautiful night too.

I am currently staying with two guys - Viraj Raul and Shashi Kant. Viraj is the Quality Leader for all HSBC projects coming out of Tampa. I had seen him before, even spoken to him but never knew that he was Viraj Raul. Shashi was the Quality Lead for my project (Gold Plus) when I had just joined in. He later became the Project Manager for LMS(Loyalty Management Subsystem) and is here for the same. Staying with them is on a temperory basis and I'll be looking out for a house from mostly tomorrow. Another guy called Cherian is the most likely to share the apartment with me.

The house faces an artificial lake which is right in the middle of the entire apartments complex. There are trees all round it and its carpetted on all sides by prim green grass (turned a slightly lighter shade of grey these days) All kanbayites stay in one of these houses in this apartment, so we are all at walking distance from each other. Mostly everybody house has around 3 - 5 people and simmilarly every group of 4 -5 people also share a car. I am sharing a Daimler Chrysler Dodge automatic gear car with 2 others right now in an extremely costly deal which took place before I reached. Next week, I'll plan out something where in I might rent a car (or most likely a SUV) for myself. Not quite sure since I havent enquired about the rates.

The day began at 9:00 when I woke up to a slightly chilly, bright sunny morningand headed straight for the laptop. The internet connection out here is extremely quick. Moreover its over the wireless. So I dont have to put any cables into my laptop, I am just connected with the world from anywhere in the house. Took a lazy bath and a was perusing through mails. Went to a mall (Circuit City) which is among the closest ones here around 11:00. The malls here are wholly different from what we have in mind. Its mostly just a single ground floor building which is really huge in size and houses a lot of things. Hardly anything is more than 2 story. Mostly everything is just ground floor. There is a huge amount of parking available.

Infinite Improbability in Florida : The journey

I am somewhere over Iceland right now, nearing Greenland and inspite of the window seat, I cant see anything besides a lot of clouds. Northwest is playing "The Notebook" which is terribly unabsorbing and I have just had my lunch. Now I still cant understand how could this be called Lunch. If I consider US timing its somewhere around 4:30 in the morning, India its 5:30 in the evening and Holland its nearing 11:30 a.m. Nonetheless its vegetarian pasta, bun with cheese and butter and chocloate mousse with vanilla and strawberry cream which I just relished. I have a glass of red wine and some 7UP still unfinished on my table and every now and then I steal in a sip.

Northwest is no great shakes of an airline. Specially if you consider it in comparison to Singapore Airlines. Infact when I had boarded at Mumbai, I was a little disappointed. The seats didnt have personal video monitors, so there was no way I could have had the selection of movies which I did on my way to Hong Kong. Moreover, in the flight from Mumbai to Amsterdam which is over 9 hours of flight time, there were stupid stewards who werent exactly cordial. Its got to do with the fact that this flight was from India and had mostly Indians, that NW could do away with such shabby service. The flight from Amsterdam didnt have any really cordial flight staff either but the service was better than what it was on the first flight.

Thats what I was typing in the plane but ran out of laptop battery so here is the rest of it.... Time 7:49 a.m. IST Sunday 02 January 2005 . BTW I still keep the indian time on my laptop so that I know what must be all of you upto when I am here writing this mail....

The flight from India was mostly in night. I started at 01:20 a.m. and reached amsterdam at 6:00 a.m. (local time). For that purpose, I didnt have too much of a view. However, Europe from the top is beautiful. When you fly over it at night, it looks like a lot of protozoas linking to each other through tentacles. The central part of the protozoa is the bright cities - so many of them, and the tentacle are those connecting roads. It looks beautiful though and infact the first time I had seen one of the cities at the horizon, I had thought I am seeing the rising sun.

Amsterdam looked like a sleepy city waking up when I landed there. There was a slight mist and a winter chill (Temp - 6 degree C). It was still dark but I could see the lighted buildings etc and even those multi storeyed flyovers were visible from the plane. The airport is huge and houses a lot of shops. Levi's, raybans, Food courts, GAP... it has most of everything, Samsung and Sony, Swiss chocolates and Swiss watches. I had a 4 hour stay on the airport and more than 3 of those 4 hours were spent walking about. I don't remember too much of the view of the city from there apart from the fact that I saw a very beautiful sunrise over the city. The junta around were mostly Europeans and the thing about Dutch junta is that everybody is really huge. Its not just the guys who tower over 6 ft but also the gals. In fact the girls were not pretty, they all looked so disproportionate with very tall and wide body frames and small head on top of that.
The flight from Amsterdam to USA had better service. The airhostess weren't exactly cordial but there was atleast the small talk which is so very very ingrained in the US life culture. They dont say 'Yes' to a request, they say somthing like "There you go" or "Yep, we all set" or something on those lines. Infact I will touch upon this small talk thing in some subsequent mail because it really is so visibly American thing, so very very unlike the twitchy Britishers.
The flight takes off into the Atlantic, which is what we have to cross to get to US. Since it wasnt cloudy I had quite a view of the sea below. Every now and then there was this vessel carrying something across - men, material. The entire sea looks like one whole sum of lots and lots of different water currents. I mean its like foam and then some clear water and then foam and then clear water. Must be because of all the waves but I had always thought, that sea from the top would look calm and peaceful - something like what it seemed in Jurassic park when they were travelling over to the Park. Its quite different or maybe thats because I was at such a height. The part where we enter over Iceland and the place where I had taken out my laptop to write this mail to all of you was essentially covered with clouds. So there wasnt much that I could see. It was like clouds clouds everywhere - somethng like what Antarctica would look like when you go there - or atleast thats what I used to think - about Antarctica. The clouds did continue for sometime and with no view outside I slept the rest of movie Notebook and then wok up to more clouds. Then just got absorbed in the next movie they played - after 'Notebook' - Spiderman II. It was somewhere when Doc Oc comes looking for Harry Osborne when I peeped out of my window and it was there that I saw a sight which was what made me think about what the Indian, I met at the airport, had said about Canada. Okie, had missed out on this - I had met an Indian settled in Canada, returning to Mumbai and he had said that he was going back to India because Canada was covered with Ice - several inches of it. Well, I saw some rocky mountains covered to the hilt with ice. I mean it looked like a dirty white bedsheet because it was pristine snow and every here and there the mountainous rock was visible, grey and dirty. There were these frozen rivers and lakes in the middle and it all seemed pretty close. Now I am not sure how you pictured what I saw but it wasnt very pretty - not that it wasnt scenic but it felt depressing. A huge large wasteland - wasting away - with no signs of life - except for some shrubs or small trees - the tundra vareity or whatever thats called. And then this continued for almost 5 hours. Infact I was almost angry at the scene not changing because that signified the huge extent of this wasteland.

At 12:00 noon local time my flight landed a Minneapolis. The sight from the top was my first view of the United States of America - It looked white. There were these single storeyed bunglows with snow all around them. The roads, strangely, were totally free of any traces of snow. The houses are exactly like what we see in movies. With lawns all around boulevards that connect all of them to the main streets.

Minneapolis airport is also huge. The first thing you do is go to immigration. Even as you step in, there are these notice boards saying - "We are the US Immigration department - We will treat you politely and we will do this for you and these are all your rights and Blah blah". When I made it to the immigration guy, he took my passport, scanned it over and stuff, took my index finger prints and then asked me "Whats your Status?". To which I smilingly replied - "Single". He smiled back and told me that Status means the type of VISA - mine was L1. So its Vikram Bahl - status L1 who arrived in USA entitled to stay in the country till Feb 01 2007. I was to call Arun and Anu on reaching US which required me to have a $1 coin. So it was McDonalds and the double cheesburger to the rescue. It costed me something like $1 and 69 cents and it was a very preplexed, almost bewildered cashier who took the $50 bill from me and returned me $48 and 31 cents. Its only now, after staying here for a week that I have realised the infinite inprobability of a guy coming in for a double cheesburger sandwich and paying his check through a $50 bill. Nonetheless, after expending 15 minutes and $1, I was finally able to get across to Anu and Arun over the phone for a total time period of 4 minutes.

My connecting flight to Tampa was at 3:49 p.m and I was to arrive at Tampa, Florida at 7:30 p.m. EST. I dont remember anything from the flight because by that time I was so tired of flying and so tired other wise that I slept off the entire flight barring ofcourse the 15 minutes they serve food and Mountain Dew.

My ex project manager - Sameer Kapoor and my ex project QL - Shashi Kant were there at the airport to recieve me. Collected my checkout baggage and in a Dodge Stratus - made it to 9912 Balaye Run drive, Apartment #203, Tampa, Florida 33619.

One final thing which I just thought I'll let you guys know. The US custom department does examine your baggage. They open it. So if you have put a lock - they break it open. So it was an open bag and a broken lock pasted to a slip that told me this happens. When you all would be visiting the country - just remember to take out the locks at your port of entry. So I could have removed the locks at Minneapolis before rechecking my stuff post Immigration.

Thats it - in as many words - my over 30 hours journey with a flight time of over 24 hours from Mumbai to Tampa, Florida.

So now that you are through with reading the epical story of Vikram Bahl's journey across the proverbial 7 seas ... Watch this space for an account of how I spent my New Years eve...coming shortly.