Scariest flight yet

We had our group's annual strategy meeting at Kumarakom earlier this week (I will write about that and the Poovar visit soon). We returned last night and it was one of the scariest flights I had ever been on. When we took off, it wasn't too bad. But once they served dinner, it started moving around a bit, enough that they had to suspend the service. Then we hit a giant air pocket and the plane fell what seemed like a few hundred feet. Everyone was thrown up, only the seatbelts kept them on their seats. The dinner wasn't as lucky and plates and spoons and food was all over the cabin. The rest of the flight was bad, but luckily we didn't hit any more air pockets. Everyone was counting the minutes till we landed. As the pilot announced the landing, we began to relax and from the window, i could see the airport surroundings as we descended. But, there was no sound of the landing gear deploying and sure enough, we started to gain height again and were in full take off mode. There was no word on why this happened for around 10 minutes and this only heightened our fear that there was something wrong with the plane. After some time, the pilot came on and said that the conditions were too bad for landing and put on some music to calm the passengers. We stayed in the air for around 30 minutes more. All this time, it was raining heavily and the plane was getting thrown all over the place. People were very tense, many of them closing their eyes and praying for a safe landing. Finally, at 10:50, almost 90 minutes after we took off, the plane came in for the final landing. This time, the landing gear deployed properly and we made it safely to the ground.

A wonderful weekend

So far, it has been a weekend to remember. It all started on Friday. Nisha's school has a competition (sort of), where the kid with the highest number of stars gets to take home a toy monkey (named George). She's come close many times, but last weekend was the first time that she brought it home. The joy on her face as she announced it to us will remain forever in our memory.

On Saturday, I woke up to read that the Bangalore marathon has been scheduled for the 16th of December. This was one of my resolutions earlier in the year, to run the half-marathon. I started the training with a 10K run, which I managed in around 72 minutes. I was half-dead at the end of it. At this point, I'm sure I will not be able to "run" the full distance, but I feel confident that I will be able to run-walk the complete distance. I'm aiming for a time of 3 hours.


Later, we went to an old friend/colleague's kid's first birthday. I got to meet all my old friends from Infosys. In the evening, we went to Capgemini's annual event, Jashn 2007. They definitely know how to throw a party, it was held at Bangalore Palace, with amazing food and drinks. There was a dance show by the employees, which was so well done that we actually thought they were professional dancers. We had a couple of professional performers as well, one good (Mahalakshmi Iyer) and one bad (Neha Bhasin from Viva, someone needs to ban North Indians singing in Tamil).

All in all, a weekend to remember.

A moment of madness

Misbah-ul-Haq lost the Twenty20 world cup for Pakistan in a single moment of thoughtlessness.

Today, on my way to work, I saw a ghastly accident just outside my office gate. A motorcyclist was lying on the road, dead, his skull smashed. He had skidded and lost control. Unfortunately for him, a truck was coming at that very moment and it ran over him. If only, he reached that place a few seconds later.

Almost everyone in my office saw this on the way to work. The euphoria of the World Cup victory was gone.