Vancouver Visit - Prelogue

Jai Guru Deva,

Little more than a month ago that I came to know that someone thinks my contribution is needed for a high visibility and critical project. However, I am not sure how they know about me. Apparently somebody pictured me as an incarnation of Hercules. I had readily accepted the offer to work in that project because that would get me out of my comfort zone. This is not the domain that I ever worked and that means a lot of opportunity to get the hands dirty and learn business first hand. I seldom let such things unattended. With that I ended up in this high critical project and started attending the weekly working sessions. Soon I found that there is an opportunity to travel and my travel got approval before I prepared to travel. The place of visit is Vancouver in the state of Washington. As always I'm not very interested to travel, my experience tells me that these kind of short term trips doesnt give the ROI it should give. Because there are non work things like jet lag, food, stay, family etc. It will take a while by the time people are fully ready to contribute and by then the date of return journey would have come :)) Still I wanted to travel because it means significant amount of money which I cant forego. The only reason I do an international travel is because my company sponsors it and it is financially beneficial to me. Period!

This is much smoother than my first visit because I already have my Visa to US and all I need is the two week gap to book my tickets. Perhaps to make my life more eventful, I had loads of work in the days leading upto this travel and had to clear a lot of things. Then, there was a journey that I had planned to my family God's temple. Which effectively means that I dont have time to relax myself. Every weekend is blocked for something or the other. I ran out of books and didnt get a chance to browse the new books and order few. what a pity! Right now I am desperately looking for something in life and that is relaxation; both physiological and psychological. I was so tired that I didnt check my luggage fully, just asked my wife to pack whatever she pleases.All said and done, I boarded the plane to Dubai and from there started my odyssey for next 33hours. as I write this my back is still paining  and I am sleeping and eating at unconventional hours. It is 5AM here and I am feeling terribly hungry. Perhaps, it will be a while before my biological clock gets adjusted to the new time zone. 

I have read strange things in books but stranger things have happened in my life. I was calmly roaming around in the Dubai airport and window shopping some of the clothes there when suddenly some one called me in Telugu. It was an elderly woman who had lost her way to the terminal that she needs to go. Seems she had come along with her neighbors hoping that she can follow them to the terminals and reach SFO along with them. Strange thing is that the neighbors got down of the Dubai plane and didnt bother to wait for her. Stranger thing is that she had found me and immediately identified I am from Andhra Pradesh!! This is not the first time some one talks with me Telugu the moment they see my face. I remember once I asked some address in Hindi to the other person in Bangalore and he responded to me in Telugu. I was wearing a helmet then. Perhaps, it is written on my face that I hail from AP :))

The journey from Dubai to Seattle is equally eventful. The cabin crew gave me a pizza and I started reading the contents and she said "Its purely vegetarian" as if she is slapping on my face :)) I have the habit of reading the contents before I eat anything. Being a strict advocate of vegetarianism I think i should do that more than often. There is another interesting thing. I was asleep for few hours in the journey of 15hrs and when I woke up i realized my plane was near to Russia.For a moment I thought, "Did I get on to the correct plane?" but it seems I did. The fact is for some reason the Emirates planes from Dubai goes towards North Russia, Greenland, Alaska and Canada before reaching Seattle/SFO. I'm not sure about the reason.

Completing the long journey I had landed in Seattle and thats really beautiful. I am very much impressed with that city. Half of the city seems to be in ocean and the airport is even good. I would say Seattle airport is better than SFO's. I liked a lot of things about this airport but the best of them is to having a train to go from one part of the airport to other. I was a little confused if I am going out of the airport. But thankfully I went to the other terminal where I had to take my connecting plane to Portland. The only thing that irritated me is th waiting time for immigration. Had to stand in queue for more than 2hrs to get that cleared. The journey for Portland from Seattle is 35mins and I had spent 7hrs in transit. Its bad weather no bad time perhaps! 

....More to Follow!!

Sarvejana Sukhinobhavantu,

-Karthik