Back to Amreeka, and an advertisement for Singapore Airlines!
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.
~Bill Gates… So true, planes bring people together - I feel closest to and know the most about the places that I’ve visited, without planes it would be much tougher to visit these places.
In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours - one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport.
~Neil McElroy(we’re much closer than this reality than I anticipated)
The ride home from the airport took FOREVER - though I had this view of Pittsburgh coming out of the tunnel that I’d been looking forward to the whole year - coming through the fort pitt tunnel really is incredible:
)
Lots to write about - apologies for not writing for the past month. It’s been busy - I was travelling in the north (Uttar Pradesh and Nepal). I didn’t have a lot of internet access, and when I did for a time and wrote a post, it disappeared when the power went and I lost everything I’d saved. I also left my old laptop in India (sold it and bought a new one here - the Dell XPS 1330 for the geeks - it’s supposed to be pretty awesome - it better be for what I’m spending on it, but it’ll take a month to make it and deliver it to me 
).
Anyway I have a lot to write about (trips, closeout at Indicorps, etc), but right now I have all my pictures on various other media sources and I hate posting from not my own computer (certain things- software and keystrokes I’m just not used to on other computers)… so it’ll be a while.
My flights home were AWESOME.
I haven’t flown in the year since I flew to India, which is somewhat crazy considering that I had racked up 550,000 miles on US Airways in the previous 4 years. I flew Singapore Airlines (Star Alliance partner of US, flown on an award ticket), in executive economy from Singapore to Los Angeles. I realize that I took the long way around the world to get to Pittsburgh - but I did it for 3 reasons… 1- I wanted to stop over in Singapore (on the way over), and 2- I wanted to stop over in LA (on the way back, ended up cancelling it but still meeting up with friend for dinner), and 3- non-stop flight from Ahmedabad to Singapore. The 16 hour flight from Singapore to LA was pure bliss. It was in an A340-500, which is a pretty big long-range craft, in which other airlines usually seat at least 300. Singapore had theirs configured to seat only 181 in 2 classes, so it was supremely comfortable. I’ve had the fortune of flying in business and first class on many other airlines, but I think I would take exec economy in Singapore over them (note that I’m small and don’t care for the really wide seats - actually I hate them)… I was seated in the last row of the aircraft, so I was really worried that my seat wouldn’t recline at all or something on the 16 hour flight and it would be terrible. To my delight the seat reclined fully and was awesome… the service, entertainment and food was all awesome as well. I watched Spiderman 3 and Shrek the Third on the trip (there were some 150 on demand movies available), and slept for the rest of the journey.
This is economy!
(I didn’t take the picture - it’s from Singapore’s PR website… I wanted to take the picture, but I was too shy to pull out my camera on the plane)
Then my flight from LA to Pittsburgh was on US Airways and it was pretty bad as per usual. One thing I will have to get used to is not having airline status… I used to automatically get bumped up to first class and treated really well, but after a year of no flying, I don’t get any perks
A couple of things since getting back -
1) It feels like I never left, I just jumped back into my old life. I haven’t even started driving on the left side of the road or anything crazy like I have done in the past. My friends comment that it seems like I was only gone for a couple of weeks (I don’t know if that is good or bad)
2) Right now me and my brother are obsessed with watching some of the DVD’s I bought in India (I bought a TON of them), especially the Abhishek and Amitabh Bachchan ones:
3) First 3 meals: Paco’s Cantina (Mexican) with Shawn in LA, Tofu Lasagna at home, then spring dosas and tamarind rice at Udipi Cafe in Pittsburgh (I know its weird to have Indian so soon after coming, but they are catering my bro’s grad party and we had a tasting… also I think that their dosa is better than any I had in India).
ok, I’ll write more soon… still have to write a year-end wrapup for Indicorps too.
