Flew to Mumbai

I flew to Mumbai for a day yesterday for a training program. This gave me my first experience flying from the new Bangalore airport. It was not pleasant, got up at 3:30, called a cab at 4:30 and reached the airport at 5:45. All this for a 6:50 am flight.

The return flight was almost 45 minutes late and finally took off at 9:30 pm. We landed at Bangalore around 11:00 pm only to be greeted with a comical situation when the plane reached the aerobridge. Apparently the airport staff was unable to find the keys to attach the aerobridge. This caused a 10 minute delay and we finally set off at 11:15. By the time I reached home, after dropping my colleague off, it was 12:45 am.

The real shock will be the taxi fare. They charge 15 Rs/km and 50% more if it is between 9 pm and 6 am. The total bill for both journeys was around 2400 rupees!!! This is going to drive people flying on their own expense crazy.

Cycling to work

One of my (unstated) objectives when I started cycling was to cycle to work on a regular basis. Though it has been close to 3 months since I started cycling, I was still sticking to my motorcycle for going to work. It was a number of small issues that were preventing me from starting off

- My laptop and all accessories weigh a lot
- We don't have a proper cycle parking facility in the office
- No shower or cleaning facilities in the office

I finally decided that none of these were particularly big issues and began cycling to work last week. As for the issues, the solution wasn't too difficult

- I lock the laptop in my drawer and only take it home on the weekends
- I still don't have a solution for security, but I atleast substituted my heavy metal chain for a metal rope solution that I picked up from KR Market last weekend

I did it on 3 days last week and 2 days this week. I hope to continue on for atleast a couple of days each week, atleast till the rains start or I get proper fenders.