Surprise Surprise

The D Space

After a long hiatus we are back. we've all been sick, off and on, and fiona started working again, so we;ve been really busy as well.

But in the last three months or so the best telephone conversation i've had, went more or less like this..

"Hi mom"
"Hi nandan, how are you?"
"mom were you sleeping?'
"Yeah, its 3 in the mornig..."
"oh? Sorry...."
"do you wanna go back to sleep?"
"no, its ok, keep talking"
"Well we missed you a lot, and we wanted to know what gift you wanted for your 70th birthday..and then Fiona had a great idea...Now don't get too excited...cos its just Rhea and Me"
"Youre coming here???"
Yeah"
"ooooohh wow that's great news....when??"
"oh in around two minutes.."
"Waaah? Where are you?"
"oh outside the building...open the door :-)))))))'

that;s right...Rhea and I went on a trip to india, to surprise mom on her 70th birthday.
It was Fiona's idea...and before she could take in the logistics of what it would mean for her, i booked our tickets.

it was a great trip. Rhea was an angel all the way. She enoyed the trip, despite all the hassles.
We left austin, at noon, and then landed in new jersey, where we had a 4 hour layover. instead we were told that our plane was late, and that we had an additional 4 hour delay. So now we had a 8 hour layover, in new jersey. at least newark, is close to new york, so we had a good view of beautiful downtown manhattan, and we also ate some chinese, and then went for a few rides on the airports automatic train service that connects all of the different terminals.
Rhea was asleep by the time we were to board the plane which was full. Air India , boeing 747-400 "konark"

But she made friends at the airport terminal with a lot of the people ther, including one "motherly" lady , who was from bombay, and whose kids had both studied at Thadomal!! one of them was even in fiona's batch!!
Rhea finally declared that she wanted to board the plane with 'her'. i told her to shut her yapper, and go back to sleep.
as it turns out, the lady was sitting right next to us ,and rhea slept with her hed on her lap most of the way.
The flight to paris was full. 545 passengers.
When landing in paris, i was dissapointed that charles de gaulle airport is well outside the city, so we could not see the Eiffel tower. we did have a very clear view of the airports control tower, and i explained to Rhea more or less what the control tower does.
Because the flight had been delayed, they would not let us disembark. in addition, they were cleaning the aircraft, so they wouldn't even let us leave our seats...
So we were essentially sitting all the way from newark, to mumbai.
The trip to mumbai, was again uneventful, except that we flew a route most western aircraft rarely take, mainly over russia, and then between iraq and iran (over iranian airspace).despite the darkness, i got a good aerial look at the caspian sea (there was a thunderstorm over it) and then we flew south of Teheran, getting a good look at the city's lights.
Couldn't help thinking that this is probably what a B-2 bomber crew is gonna see, minutes before they bomb Teheran.
landing in mumbai felt veeery good. immigration was instantaneous, but it took an hour to get our bags. We landed about 12:30 and met alok and swapna out at 2:00.