A mail to my lab.... sent around a week back

Heyy all!,

Time for the fortnightly weather update from Birmingham.... ;) Well now that I have began with it I might as well continue... the weather here is really pleasant (as in me and Chits seem to like it but the locals aren't as thrilled for some reason!), not at all humid and the rains seem to have stopped as of late... not that it rained much even when it did. I heard about the strong rains back in Mumbai and as always reporters standing in pits and commenting that the city is drowning blah blah..... but all of us being battle-hardened Indians, I can safely presume that all are safe and everyone's keeping well :)

Last Saturday we had been to Shakespeare's town... where he was born, he lived, he died (and whatever else he did inbetween... like making quotes 'What is in a name' and so on), then his mom's farmhouse and finally his girlfriend-turned-wife's place. Frankly, I don't even visit so many of my own relatives when I go to my hometown :p ... And we walked over half an hour to reach his girlfriend's place, I doubt I would bother as much for my own, if I had one ;) (interestingly her name is Anne Hathaway, one of my favorite hollywood ladies :D)

The place was no doubt very interesting... I am sure most of us would have come across the phrase "a cut above the rest" and "upper crust". Ever wondered how they originated, the phrases? Interestingly, in olden times when the ladies (so presumably Anne Hathaway in case of Shakespeare ;), made bread or other similar stuff in the house, it used to be baked in a small oven (nopes not microwave or grill ovens.... these were olden times, really old... so think of logs of wood and brick lined walls). So the bottom tended to have grit and charcoal,dirt etc which used to be in touch with the food being baked (no they didnt have microwave safe cookware for obvious reasons) and also the bottom used to turn out much harder to chew. So it was common to cut the bottom slices and give to the lesser members of the household and the cleaner, softer upper slices to the head of the house or any guest of higher standing. So the phrase basically refers to the dividing up of bread in a household where the elite got "a cut above the rest" :) Interesting, isn't it!

On Sunday, we were invited by Dr. Brain to a departmental get-together at the Head of Department's (newly announced - both the department, after re-structuring, and the HOD) place. We had booked tickets for Cadbury World for the afternoon but still decided to make it to the 'party' afterwards. The main intention obviously being to "meet people" (I am sure everyone follows ;). So we turned up at around 6PM, a couple of hours late. There were roughly 15 people left out of which, apart from us, only 3 were below the age of 30. To elaborate further - two of them were Dr. Brains kids and the third was the hosts son (who evidently was reluctantly a part of the party!). So that was that :p But yeah we did interact with several faculties, none of whom I can remember by name or face anymore (except maybe one or two).

As for the work, I am too bored to go in much detail.... except reinforce what I said last time that we are spending more time in the lab here, 'working' (important clause), than we did back in Mumbai! Trust me we are not on a vacation, so anyone greeting us when back with "Welcome from the break/vacation" will have their chocolates cut down by half! ;) But yeah jokes apart, the work is exciting and there is, might sound like a cliche, loads of new things to learn each day! From what we have discussed and planned ahead, I am sure there is enough to keep us occupied till we return and even then there would be several things we couldn't touch upon. We have certainly not forgotten about the pics, but keeping that for a bit later (dont ask me why, we just have not got down to doing it but will certainly take loads to show everyone).

Anyone read any of the papers by this guy called Hikaru Hashitani. Well this 'guy' happens to be a big-shot in the field of electrophysiology and according to Peter (the post-doc here) he is the master of sharp micro-electrode recordings and the best in the business. So the reason I brought up his name (not for random trivia), was that he happened to be in UK and Dr. Brain had taken him out for dinner one of the days. Peter was saying that the guy is known to have a sharp tongue and doesn't mince any words when commenting on anything. It felt different hearing about these 'authors' as people rather than mere names on the top of articles.

One of his papers, can't remember which one but its been widely discussed in the lab, has work on simultaneous contraction studies and electrophysiology (and in a couple of cases also imaging work). I had read through the paper before but hardly gave any thought to the experimental protocol and technique, nor imagined that it involved any level of complexity. But having had a chance to see first hand how these stuff are done, its nothing short of a miracle to obtain those kinds of recordings that he has produced in that paper (if indeed they are genuine :p - just kidding!).

Leaving the unpleasant for the last... this last week we had to endure the worst kind of racism and that too in the lab. This is how it began. Till the week before we had been using a kind of mice called C57/BL6. This week onwards we shifted to BAL B/C mice. And that's where the trouble began! For two days in a row we couldn't manage to get a single electrical recording despite trying from 10AM to 6PM! It just would not respond. And the only difference was this... the former were Black mice and these new ones were White! :p But yes we did finally get the better of them today and put them into place. Infact, we managed to get two of our most impressive recordings till date! :)

Thats all for now... this letter has turned out to be much longer than I had planned..... so till the next fortnightly update... Adios!

Cheers,
Shailesh Appukuttan

13th August, 2012 – Day 2 – Part B

It was noon by the time we got out of the University station. We were to now find our way to Wesley House, our place of accommodation for the next couple of months. Now, Wesley House was by no means a tourist spot in UK ;) and hence we certainly did not expect to find signboards at every crossing directing us to our destination but still expected, reasonably I assume, that people around (atleast some of them) could be of help. We had already gone through the map book and to its defence it was not meant to pin-point every house or urinal; I mention the latter as we were maybe a bit more in need of locating it first.

We knew that we had to move to the left of the station; the right being the way to our department/lab. We began walking, having a vague idea and I mean really vague (something like left of the University) of where we should be headed. Chitaranjan spotted a girl walking towards us. At this point I was all absorbed in finding our current position on the map and working out where we were moving, and that’s my excuse for not paying attention to approaching girls ;) He asked her where Wesley House was. She didn’t understand. I joined in with the map in my hand. The first thing I realized was that we had to talk slow, literally putting a conscious pause after each word. She obviously had not heard of the place but suggesting a few possibilities of student accommodation. She seemed quite friendly and we had a small chat. She was from Germany, had just completed her Masters and was returning soon. I obviously didn’t lose any time in telling her that my favourite footballer was German… Jurgen Klinsmann. Not that I was trying to impress the girl, but not that I would mind that, but it just felt nice talking to someone else apart from Chit (and the Goan on flight, who actually didn’t give us much scope for talking, doing our bit as well!) after over a day. Ok now the observant ones among you would say, well what about Peter the night before. Oh forget it, I accept I wanted to talk to that girl! And come to think of it, she was nice and cheerful J

Well I better not go into too much detail… that would mean describing over a dozen people on the way and the conversations we had in trying to locate Wesley. None of them had even heard of such a place. Amongst the last of them were a couple of University security officers in a car, whom we expected would be know-alls on locating places. But all they could offer, after their own small discussion, was that it would be best if we headed over the main building and inquired at the reception. We hesitated, the main building was a bit far and decided to ask a couple that were coming along (by now we were getting tired and hence we stopped looking out for pretty single girls). They repeated what we had just heard from the security officers and made some small talk. It turned out the guy was visiting India the following week. Don’t ask me about the girl, I have no clue. So left with not much option, I asked Chitaranjan to wait with the luggage and headed for the main building. It was nearing 1PM now. I walked upto the reception and saw that everyone had dispersed for lunch. Just as I was heading back out, I saw a couple of gentlemen, quite old, walking in. I asked them about the reception timings and then to our original issue of locating our housing. The older guy told me to go to the student accommodation assistance desk at the University centre and told me the directions, which was a bit confusing as it involved quite a few turns. He then turned to the other guy, they spoke something, bid goodbyes and then asked me to follow him as he was headed in roughly the same direction. And so I reached the assistance desk. I asked her about Wesley. She too seemed clueless. But thankfully she logged onto the Internet and managed to locate it on Google maps and then marked the spot for me on our map book.

And we were off again, this time with both purpose and direction. We had to walk for another half an hour before we finally reached the doors of Wesley International House. There was a num-pad for unlocking the door but we obviously had no clue of the code. So we rang the bell and a middle-aged, friendly looking guy, white hair and specs, opened the door after a few seconds. We began fumbling for words; we forgot what we were to say and then I started “Dr. Keith Brain had made…” and before I could say any further he shot in “Shailesh and Chitaranjan” … ooh I was impressed! This guy actually knew our names and that made us feel quite welcomed. He introduced himself as Paul, the manager, and guided us inside to his office where he went about giving us a quick overview of all the facilities, taking us to the common kitchen, the storage areas, freezers, study room, tv room and so on. He told us about the locality, the way to the markets and the University. We asked him whether there was a phone booth anywhere around that we could use right away and he offered us the office phone. I wanted to inform Peter that we had managed to find our way and would come over shortly, but the phone line was dead so that had to wait. Paul took out two keys and walked us to our rooms; Chits got #36 and me #34, quite close by, and more importantly close enough to the washrooms J

We spent some time in our rooms, unpacking the things that were of immediate use and taking documents that we would need at the University. We soon left Wesley and found our way to the University, which was a 10 minute a walk away. We asked our way around for both a cafeteria and a phone booth. One of the pay phones we happened to find also turned out to be having a dead line but we eventually located another and managed to get in touch with Peter. It was decided that we shall meet him below the clock tower (called Old Joe – and certainly something you can’t miss from anywhere in and around the campus – after all it’s the world’s tallest free standing clock tower!) at half past two and get the registration formalities attended to. That gave us enough time to grab a quick bite first. We found our way to the cafeteria. After going through all they had to offer and more importantly the figures on the right, I settled for a sandwich and coke while Chit went for some rice/pasta combo. We sat down and had our food but still had had some time to spare. We wandered around and entered a general store within the campus area. We were totally impressed with the right hand side figures here; or rather they were placed below each item here. Everything seemed so affordable. Both of us began mentally noting down that we will take one of this, two of that and so on- but yeah all that after we finally get our first pay.

We walked over to the clock tower well before the scheduled time and waited, taking in the various sights of the campus. Soon Peter came walking along and took us towards the administrative buildings of the campus. The next hour or more involved going in and out of several rooms, up and down lots of stairs, waiting in a couple of small queues, and so on. I finally came to know that the University had accidentally assigned the same registration number to both of us; did they think we were some combo offer or something?! Anyways it meant that I would have to wait for them to send me a new link for registration and then only I would get my ID card. Chitaranjan managed to get his. We also had to visit a place where we got our passports checked and the lady also passed along two packets meant for new students having guides about Birmingham and other useful stuff for people new to the place. She also passed along two free sim cards, pre-loaded with £0.50, as she wasn’t sure whether the packets had them. It turned out they did and we ended up having two mobile numbers each and £1 between them for free. That was really handy and a big tick off the to-do list. Peter then took us to the finance section where we would have to come fortnightly to collect our pay cheques. Then taking the cheques we went to the bank on campus where we finally managed to get some real money in hand! Chitaranjan in excitement began waving it in his hand and Peter suggested it might be a good idea to keep it inside before everyone sees it :p

Now that we were done with all the formalities, atleast for the time being, as I would have to go the following day to inquire about my ID card, we headed for the lab. The lab, and the Medical School, in general was located a bit away from the rest of the campus, on the other side of the railway line. So it was short 10 minute walk and we reached the Medical School. Peter took us in, informing the security that we were new students and still had to get access rights on our ID cards. He gave us a quick round of the building, the common rooms, lunch rooms and such stuff. We then headed for the lab and office. The office was small room, just fine for 2 people but too cramped for 3. We kept our things in the office room and visited the lab. Chris, a summer project intern, was around doing some work. Peter introduced us and then proceeded to give us a quick intro of the various facilities in the lab. We spent the rest of the day chatting about some lab stuff, fun stuff and useful stuff.

On the way back we decided to go to a supermarket that Peter had suggested was the most economical around (he infact said that the campus supermarket that we had been to was quite expensive and we began wondering, wow!). It was called Aldi. So we set off in the evening, finding out way about. After quite a bit of walking, we managed to find our way and spotted the ALDI signboard ahead. We walked forward and got in. Me and Chit did a customary inspection by walking down the lanes and checking the prices. They had several offers going on and we were excited! We picked up several stuff, enough to last us a few days. We paid at the counter without any great tales to tell and got out. Once we were outside, I looked around and found that the ALDI store was in fact further ahead! We had mistakenly got into another supermarket called TESCO! Hehe… The next day we did infact go to ALDI and they did have even better rates. But both these shops are where we do the bulk of our shopping nowdays.


A short note: Hey as you can make out, I am getting a bit bored writing about the mundane stuff… and I am pretty sure you won’t have much fun reading it as well. Also, more importantly, I am having a really tough time finding time to update this blog. I am reluctant to end this here; so will be sure to post atleast a couple more experiences that I had in mind.

Lesson learnt! If writing a blog, don’t start on the backfoot with a lot of pending stuff to write :p Next time around I decide to do a travelogue, I will ensure I start on day 1.

13th August, 2012 – Day 2 – Part A

We got up early the next day, or rather Chitaranjan did and I took the excuse of letting him get ready first to grab an extra hour of sleep. The bed was really comfortable and I don’t know how or when I had turned 90 degrees (or some multiples of it!) to end up dozing with my head on Chit’s tummy… I confess it was marginally softer than the hotel’s soft pillows ;) Anyways he shoved me off and I had to re-align myself back on my side of the bed. By the time he was done with shower and whatever else he did inside (he took real long!) I was ready with my battle gear (against germs and those other stuff :p). I told Chitaranjan about the wifi facility and he got busy with that. It was evident he had a nice lavish bubble bath in the bath tub. There was still some foam on the walls. Being second I neither had the time nor intent to do the same. Admiring my amazing oversized-body (I guess we all do when given a chance :p) in the huge bathroom mirrors (just about managed to cover me ;), I went about  brushing, trimming my beard and taking a bath under the shower. I quickly changed my clothes and both of us began packing, or rather repacking, our stuff. Just before we left we realized that we didn’t do the customary photo shoot. So luggage went back on the floor and we started striking poses for the other to snap; both patiently clicking and waiting for their own chance. Finally we made our way down, having double checked that we had not left anything back. I had the local road map that Peter had given us along with the sheet with instructions for today and obviously whatever was left of our pocket money.

We returned the key at the reception and made our way out of the hotel. We roughly had an idea in which direction the railway station was, so we headed off confidently. It seemed to be office hour as we could see several people making their way to their offices; each dressed quite differently, some with tattoos, some with coloured hair, some who were bound to distract their male counterparts in the office (if you know what I mean ;). Once we were in the general location, we asked a passerby and she (obviously we won’t ask a he!) pointed us towards the station.

We entered ‘New Street’ station and found the ticket counter. I wished the lady good morning, took out a £5 note and asked for two tickets to the University (that’s the name of our stop; not that I anytime assumed there is only one University in England!), as was Peter’s instruction. She smilingly obliged, handing me the change (it was only £1.90 per person) and told me to proceed towards platform 10B. As we still had plenty of time (another hour or so to meet Peter at the University station) and neither of us had any breakfast, and more importantly I had just targeted an outlet of BurgerKing (or was it KFC)! I remembered having seen some combo offer on some street hoarding but couldn’t find that here. Rest everything was a tad too expensive (in our current scheme of things) for now, so we decided to move on. We got down the stairs and reached platform 10B where a train was already waiting. The signboard had a different destination to what Peter had told us; but this was platform 10B. So we asked a person nearby whether this train would stop at the University and he said no, that the next one would, and walked away. He quickly retraced his steps and came back to us, saying that the train would indeed stop at the University. We quickly dragged our luggage inside and the doors closed as the train started moving. Peter had told us that the University was the second stop from where we got on. So it was quite straightforward, we had to leave one station and get off at the next. We did confirm with a couple of elderly seated office-goers and they did confirm that it would go to the University. As the first station arrived, Chitaranjan asked an Asian passenger, who was getting off, about the University station. But due to the accent or whatever, he could not understand and apologized and got off. I didn’t bother trying my luck as it was just one more stop and also there was no easy to locate signboard at the station platform that we could spot through the window. The train resumed its journey. Soon the ticket checker came along, in uniform with a pretty huge device around his neck. I smiled and passed along our tickets. He took one look and said that we missed the stop. We were both surprised and/or shocked! How the… what the… damn! It turned out that this was a long distance train (and hence University was the very first stop) and the next stop was around 40 minutes away – which the ticket collector himself simplified for us that it would take around 2 hours for us to get back to our original destination. Luckily he didn’t ask us to take a fresh ticket for the remainder journey etc, but you could see that he was not too thrilled at having two guys with a bulk load of luggage and no tickets.

So we now had a good 40 minutes to while away before we could plan our next step. I was most concerned about Peter waiting for us at the station. I tried calling his number from my mobile but, as in the previous day, it didn’t connect. I was reluctant to ask the other passengers for using their mobile. It would have been so easy if one of them, having confirmed with them at the start about the route, would have told us to get off when the train stopped at the University. I tried messaging Peter and it was delivered, thought I lost Rs. 70 for two short messages. I took the map that I had but it seemed we had already gotten way beyond the maps limits. I passed the tickets and the book to Chitaranjan and began taking in the splendid scenery outside. There were huge farmlands and the journey was certainly a treat for the eye if nothing else.

After a long time we got off at the next station – Cheltenham Spa  (God knows where that would be on a map). We walked towards the exit and I spotted a rail phone beside it. It had two buttons – one for emergencies and the other for rail info. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t consider this an emergency and so pushed the second button. After some recorded messages were played out, quite loud infact, I was pretty sure others standing around could clearly hear it, a lady picked up asked us how she could help. We told her that we were at Cheltenham Spa and that we wanted to go towards the University at Birmingham and wanted to know the train schedule and the ticket fare. She checked her system and got back, again the speaker being quite loud, telling us that the next direct train would be in another 40 minutes or so  and that the fare for 2 adults would come out to be something like £43! After that “Forty…” I couldn’t focus much :p I verified that the price was for 2 adults on a one-way journey to University and she confirmed. The announcements being quite loud, I didn’t want us to appear like a couple of fools and so didn’t bother pestering her further. Chitaranjan obviously having heard the price was shocked and asked me. I said yeah that’s what she said, but let’s go to the ticket counter and confirm.

There were two counters – one with an old guy and the other a younger chap. The latter was free and a quick stereotyping made me think that the young guy would be more understanding and helpful, whereas the old guy might be a sticking by the books kind of guy from long service, and so I made my way to the younger one. I told him what had happened and asked him the price for the tickets. He naturally told us the same rate just in a different way - £21.50 per person! I went back to Chitaranjan and told him the news, both of us laughing at one another. We started counting how much we had on us and considering we were each given £20 in the first place, there was no way we could bring up enough for the ticket – not to say after having had a very nice dinner the night before! I walked back to the counter and asked them whether they would accept dollars. As was expected he said no. I asked him whether there was any currency exchange centre nearby. He said that there was a post office just across the station and they might have it. I asked Chitaranjan to wait with the luggage while I walked along towards the post office, which was quite close by. It was actually located within a supermarket, as is quite the norm here it appears. I joined the short queue and began looking through all the info that was put up on the notices and posters. I saw something about dollar rate, euro rate etc and was glad that our problem was to be solved. As my chance came, I told the lady I wanted to convert $50 to £. She looked apologetic and said that they only converted Euros there. I asked her about the exchange rates that were posted to which she replied something that I could not make out. I didn’t bother asking her again- quite simply I was not going to get any dollars converted there! So I walked back to the station to pass on the great news to Chitaranjan. I went back to the ticket counter and told him that the post office turned us down and asked what we could do now. He said that there is a bus every 10 mins to town, a short while away, from the station and there we would certainly be able to get our money converted.  I told Chitaranjan the same .He said that we should rather just travel ticketless and see what happens when caught. I wasn’t too keen on the same as it would basically involve Peter having to get us out of trouble and I didn’t want to bug him more especially after wasting his time in the morning. Me and Chitaranjan had quite a bit of to and fro on this and finally agree that I would call up Peter, and see if he offers any suggestion on this; else I go to town, get cash and buy the tickets. Inbetween, Chitaranjan got an international call on his mobile and with the remote possibility of it being Peter, I told him to pick it up. He reluctantly did and I observed him trying to make out what might be going on. It turned out that it was a spirited telemarketer from back in India who just ate up Chit’s Rs.80 for accepting an incoming call while on international roaming! I grinned and left.

I found a payphone just outside the station and put in a few coins and began dialling Peter’s number. Immediately Chitaranjan came running along and began waving excitedly. I quickly cut the call, ensuring I got my coins back and followed Chitaranjan. He was talking to an Indian guy, middle-aged and a few extra pounds here and there. There is this saying that India’s unity in diversity truly comes alive when you are abroad (does that saying actually exist or did I make it up?!). We shaked hands and introduced ourselves and our situation. He said that since we had accidentally missed our stop, we need not bother getting fresh tickets and could just explain the matter at the counter. We told him that we had already tried that. He asked us to show our tickets. Chitaranjan took out the map book and picked out the two tickets from inside it. The Indian guy took it up to the counter, this time the one with the older chap. You could see that the Indian was a resident of the place by how well he knew the staff and greeted them by name. He narrated our story and the old guy said that we could hop on the train and explain to the ticket checker and that he will decide on what to do. Unless he was in a particularly grumpy mood, he would let us go. I guess I forgot initially, when deciding on the counters, that with age one earns both experience and wisdom. So now that we were being advised by two more experienced people, we were convinced on how to proceed. We thanked the Indian guy and he left.

I decided to go back and call Peter to inform him the story till now. He picked up and I started off asking him whether he received my message earlier. He said no he had not (damn! I was charged Rs.70, never mind, but on top of it never got delivered!). I began apologizing profusely and explained the situation. I hate it when I waster others time and was really sorry about this. I told him that we were planning to catch a train back and that since it would take time we shall get off at the University and make our way to the accommodation and then give him a call. I finished off saying that since language won’t be an issue here, we could certainly manage it on our own. That line sounded quite familiar as I had used it just the previous night when I convinced him that we could find our way to the University station on our own! :p As I started running out of coins, I had to hang-up soon after. We walked towards our platform and made ourselves comfortable as there was still a wait for our train to arrive. Fiddling around in my pocket, out came a couple of tickets. And these were the ones that I had bought today morning. Then what was inside the map book that Chitaranjan had taken out?! Surprised we opened the map book to find the two tickets. Looking at the date we saw that they were dates 6 months back! Obviously there were tickets that Peter might have taken on some earlier travel and left in the map book. And these were the tickets that we had been showing around everywhere – to the Indian, the station master and possibly even the ticket checker! The fact that none of them saw anything wrong tells you how observant they were :p

After some time our train came and we hopped on. This time we kept track of every passing station, ensuring that we didn’t blunder again. We did hope that the ticket collector didn’t turn up, but obviously hoping wasn’t going to stop him. He did appear soon and approached us. We had taken out our map book and pamphlets to make it more than evident, if it wasn’t already with all our luggage and interesting story, that we were tourists and new to the place. We narrated our story again and put on our sad faces ;) Like the previous ticket checker, this one wasn’t too amused either but left with a feeble smile. Woohoo we had just saved over £40! J After around 40 minutes, we were back where we had passed by almost 2 hours ago – the University station!

To be continued…

12th August, 2012 – Day 1 – Part C

After several hours, we were nearing London airport. The city (truly a city this one) looked stunning from above. We could see the London eye (a giant Ferris wheel), the river Thames with its snake like path, the wonderful landscape and much more. The trip finally started to get exciting! Now it did seem like the start of a new adventure. As we approached landing I made a mental note that we were going to be tight on time for catching our bus and hence made it a point to rush out as soon as the doors opened. Once we landed, I quickly collected my hand baggage from the storage shelves above and swiftly made my way out. As I was out into the passageway I did my routine body check to ensure that I had all my stuff on me – wallets, mobile, and so on. I had almost reached the main corridor when I realized that I had lost my headset. I was pretty sure it would have slipped out of my jacket pocket when I was taking a nap. I began contemplating whether to go back and search for it or just make my way out. As I had still not see Chitaranjan come out I decided I had some time in hand and hence sprinted my way back, walking across everyone who was heading in the right direction. I spoke to the airline attendant and quickly made my way back to my seat and found my earphones stuck between two seats. I pocketed it and retraced my path back to the corridor with still no sign of Chitaranjan. Sure that he had followed the herd to the immigration checkpoint, I did the same.

Once there I saw him a few paces ahead, in a line that was taking several turns here and there in order to accommodate the horde of people that had arrived. Having no other option I joined the line. I saw a smaller line on my right but it was marked for use only by privileged customers – in short people who could afford more. The line was initially moving really slow. I saw an Indian lady official managing the queue. She might have been an Indian, but from her accent she was certain to have been around for a long time, if not all her life. I asked her roughly how long it would take and that we had just under an hour left for bus. She said that several counters had been opened and that we surly be done within 20-30 minutes. I made another mental note of what we had to do once we were done with immigration check – locate our flights baggage point and collect our stuff, find out where our bus would arrive and if possible get some foreign currency. It turned out the lady knew what she was talking about – within no time the line began moving swiftly. There were around 20 counters or so, each attending to the passengers rapidly. I was just hoping that they don’t ask for any documents apart from our Passport/VISA as Chitaranjan had checked in his hand baggage having all his documents. If that happened it might have meant a further delay. As most of our documents were coupled I told him to call me if they needed anything. It turned out they didn’t need anything and we passed through the check with around 30 minutes to spare. We rushed towards the baggage terminal. As the airport was well laid out with signboards put up aptly, it was easy to locate our baggage collection point. I asked Chitaranjan to stand next to the exit of the long snake-like conveyor belt  (to go through the baggage that was already on the belt) while I took my place at its entrance- in hopes of saving some precious minutes. Chitaranjan managed to spot his luggage quickly while I was having no luck. I asked him to go inquire about our bus terminal and meet me back here. Minutes ticked, or so it seemed in that hurry, and I could not locate it. The gravity of the situation was as follows- this was one of the last buses to Birmingham, or that’s what we thought after having seen the online charts, we had mailed our contact at Birmingham but had not heard from before we left and hence were unsure about his meeting us or we directly making our way to the stop-gap accommodation (mobile GPRS/wifi was not working) and obviously we would have wasted quite a lot of money on those wasted tickets (which I later learnt could have been exchanged for some part/full refund while booking another set of tickets), plus expenses of the accommodation that had been arranged for us at Birmingham. With bag after bag emerging onto the conveyor belt, but none turning out to be mine I began looking all around and to my surprise I saw a somewhat similar baggage lying unattended down the aisle. I quickly rushed across and sure enough it was mine. Some jerk might have accidentally mistaken it for his and didn’t have the sense to put it back on the belt. I pulled out its handle and dragged its wheels across the corridor, having spotted Chitaranjan across the hall. The signboards indicated that the bus terminals were near the airport exit.

On the way out we found a couple of currency exchange centres. We were again stuck between deciding to quickly locate our bus terminals or get some cash… and also wanting to urgently attend to natures call! :p One look at the time on my mobile and it seemed finding our bus was the smartest thing to do. We made our way out of the airport and saw several bus terminals and we had no clue which one was ours. There was a small helpdesk cum booking office nearby and I made my inside. There was a small queue, and I as always being horrible (or reasonable, depends on how you see it) at cutting lines stood patiently. Few more minutes ticked away and finally I got my chance. The lady was friendly, as were most others here, and directed us to our bus stop. So we had finally reached our next point of departure with some minutes still to spare. I wondered whether I could quickly go back inside the airport and get some cash converted or maybe at least make a quick visit to the washroom, which even Chitaranjan was aching to. We thought better of it, better to deal with some pain in the abdomen than get stuck in no man’s land (for us in this case). The bus arrived exactly on time. We had our baggage loaded and made our way inside to grab a couple of window seats. Exactly on the scheduled tick he bus left the terminal and was on its way, making a few stops along the route, across a wide array of clean and beautiful scenic landscape. We were so impressed with what we say that every few minutes one of us would nudge the other and point to something interesting outside. Being a bit worn out by now, we did again doze off from time to time. I forgot to mention that as the bus started moving there were several recorded announcements being played. One of them mentioned something about a lavatory at the back end of the bus. Both of us quickly turned back to see a small boxed cubicle. I decided I could hold on for some more time as Chitaranjan made his way across. He reached the door and tried turning the handle and so on but nothing worked. Then he saw a slot for inserting coins to get it to open. As we had not a single British penny on us, he had to come back and take his seat and hope to control his bladder contractions; after all having done so much research on it, that’s the least we could do :p.

It began getting dark as we approached Birmingham. We knew we were to get off at Birmingham Coach Station. Being facebook addicts, Chitaranjan to a greater extent I am sure, we had searched out Peter’s pictues, our contact at Birmingham, long before we had even received our VISAs. This was now potentially handy in being able to identify him on the odd chance that he did come to receive us – in my last mail I had told him that since our arrival was quite late in the night we shall find our way to the accommodation and asked him to meet us next day to guide us to the University. As it turned out, as we alighted from the bus I could spot a similar looking guy amongst the small crowd that had gathered. As we collected our baggage, I could see him approach another Asian chap, in all likelihood wondering whether it was us. I quickly made my way across and introduced ourselves. It felt nice that he had taken the pains to meet us at this time of night, around 10 PM with him still having to make his way back home after showing us our place.

We made some small talk about Birmingham. He seemed a warm person and was really polite and helpful. He did a quick short tour guide talk of the paths we were taking. He told us it might not be too safe walking alone at night along these paths and to avoid dark lanes. We had been booked overnight rooms at Holiday Inn, a hotel in the heart of the city. We were to move to the University area next day morning. On the way he asked us whether we wanted to grab a bite. We were eternally ready but didn’t take up the offer as the poor chap would already be getting late. I asked him how far his place was from there and he said around 20-30 minutes. Already feeling a bit bad about him having to take troubles for us, I told him that we shall find our way to the University station the next morning and that he did not have to come all the way over to take us along. He agreed. Once at the hotel I approached the reception to confirm our booking. It turned out that the payment had not been made in advance (as was our understanding earlier) and that a credit card account had to be assigned to the booking. Fortunately, Peter had come to pick us up and he did the booking using his card. Once we received our keys, we sat down by the waiting area and Peter went about writing down detailed instructions for travelling to the University station the next morning. He was to meet us at the railway station close to the University and take us to the accommodation that had been arranged for us for the next two months. He also passed on a book of Birmingham maps thinking that we might find it handy, and marked our hotel and the University campus on them. Another envelope had some pocket money (20 GBP each) that Dr.Brain had very thoughtfully left for us to cover any expenses till we could collect our first pay from the University. As he was about to leave, we checked whether we could stay in contact via my Indian mobile number. I had expected it to be operational as was stated on the operators website and also had not faced any trouble during my visit to South Korea. But here, despite showing network coverage, it failed to both receive and make calls. Hence, it was decided that we shall meet him at the railway station at 10:30 AM and in case there was any issue we shall get in touch with him via a pay phone.

Once he left, we made our way to our room. It was moderately-sized room but made to look grand and extremely comfortable. There was a cushiony double bed at one end, a TV, a fridge, a writing table, one wall covered with large windows, bathroom with bathtub and an overall pleasant ambience. We put down our luggage and started messing up the room. Chitaranjan jumped on the cushiony bed and it began to squeak. I immediately asked him to get off as our 20 Pound pocket money would not be enough to pay any damages :p Now that we had some money on us, something we are not used to, it meant we had to spend it. So we decided to go down and grab something to eat. As Peter had been showing us our way to the hotel, I had been mentally noting down all the fast food outlets we walked across and also tracking the best rates. The best offer seemed to be quite close to our hotel. We first entered a general store as Chitaranjan wanted to celebrate with some Vodka! His first purchase abroad J I went to an outlet called Dixy Fried Chicken and found a combo meal for 2 Pounds – Burger, Fries and Pepsi. I got one for each of us and we made our way back to our rooms. We sat down and turned on the tv. It was the last day of the Olympics and the closing ceremony was on. We opened our meal bags and began munching in – hardly paying any attention to the grand closing ceremony ;) It took us hardly a few minutes to finish our first meal in UK.

Chitaranjan felt very tired and immediately took to bed while I decided to relish our stay at this comfy hotel room. I wondered whether we had wifi in our rooms. I took out my laptop and found that yes wifi was available just that it needed a room number to activate. I was half in doubt whether the wifi would be free or we had to pay for it. If the latter, then my pocket money would likely run out within hours of receiving it :p It was best to call up the reception and they confirmed that it was complementary. Anything free has to be made utmost use of. So I began checking my mails for starters. Found that Peter had infact replied to my mail and suggesting that he would come pick us up from the bus terminal. Too late now to reply to that anyways. I sent short mails to my folks back in Korea, my guide and a few of my friends who had seen me off. Then it was facebook time, it deserving a photo upload of our first meal in UK J As is my ritual, every net login has to be accompanied with a check of the latest news in football. An hour or two online and my eyes began to get heavy – craving both rest and sleep. I finally obliged to my body demands and rolled into the comfortable bedding and went into sleep mode… zzzzz. 

12th August, 2012 – Day 1 – Part B

With the various time zones involved in the trip, I don’t remember when we reached Kuwait except that it was around 3 hours since we had left Mumbai (oh then it obviously had to be around 10 AM IST). As the flight was making its way towards the airport, and thus flying at a lower altitude, we could start to see the city beneath. Now Kuwait was something that I had been hearing about a lot as some of my relatives had been working there for quite long and also the middle-east was known to be rich, posh place. So I always had this image of a huge, modern city for Kuwait. But what I saw below seemed nothing like that… infact I would even think twice before calling it a city! Even once we had landed and were later at the waiting lounge, with glass walls giving us a clear view all around, there was not a single tall building on the horizon… all one could see were some roads and the vast desert like barren land. I am sure the ‘city’ has to be somewhere around. Possibly, some way away from the airport or something like that.

Once we were of the aircraft we followed everyone into the central lobby of the airport. There we saw a counter for Kuwait Airways with several people crowding around it. They were being directed somewhere and handed out something. We got it line and told the lady in charge, who seemed to be in a foul mood and was ordering passengers about like a headmistress deals with students, about our connecting flight. She directed us to the waiting lounge and gave each of us a coupon – FREE Snacks at the waiting lounge! J hehe… guess Kuwait Airways wasn’t that bad after all. We had some trouble in locating the lounge. We finally spotted an airport official who was talking to, apparently, an Indian in his late 50s or so. It turned he was also inquiring about the waiting lounge. We then together made our way to the elevator to reach the lounge. From what we encountered at the airport till this point, it seemed that Chitaranjan would still have to wait some time to feel that he has finally gone abroad. It seemed that everyone around was an Indian! Many of the staff, the waiters, the managers and so on. And yes most of the crowd as well. We passed on our snack coupons and collected the modest snack – a sandwich, a cake slice and a packet of juice. Well it was free so I can’t complain. All three of us – we both and the Indian person we met – sat down at the same table and began munching into our snacks. We quickly bit into ours and gulped it down – half hungry and half out of habit. It turned the other guy was a diabetic and hence could not have all the snacks – he passed along half his sandwich and the entire cake slice – which he graciously offered us and we shamelessly accepted ;) Ah life can be generous at times!

We started chatting about our backgrounds and other stuff. He was from Goa; now retired and leading an enjoyable life traveling everywhere. From there it went to his health conditions and the medicines he was taking. He had a huge pouch full of colourful tablets which he took out after his small snack. It turned out his wife was a physician and hence managed to get prescriptions to carry so many drugs on him. He had visited UK quite a few times in the past and hence suggested a list of places we might like. I noted down a few of them. He was a bit of a loud person – quite outspoken and dramatic in his expression. It is interesting to meet different people for the very reason that they are different. He kept popping up with some interesting stuff or the other – either related to Goa, his work, or anything in general. For example he told us that the first thing that two Goans would discuss when they meet is about which fish they had for lunch! And that in Kuwait even the duty free shops inside the airport do not sell alcohol (I knew it was forbidden in the country, but for some reason thought the airport would have been an exception as it is generally an international location).

Left with nothing much to do, and still having several hours to kill we began strolling around the lounge, staring at the horizon through the glass walls, still unable to locate any signs of a metropolis. I took my leave from the group and went down to roam around the airport. Before I left he told me that the airport is small and that there is hardly anything to see. And he was bang on right. There was hardly anything to do – just a few shops around that’s it. I went into one just to while away time. I went through the toys section – now a habit for me ever since I have had my nephew around J On my way out I looked around for alcohol – just to see if what he told us was accurate – and yeah there was tobacco around but no alcohol.

I returned to the lounge and saw that the two of them had started chatting with the lounge manager. Me and Chitaranjan were wondering if we could go take another round of snacks. It seemed not as no one went for a second serving and one lady who went to the counter was turned away. We sat back and joined in the conversation. It turned out that even the manager was an Indian and that too another Goan. That got him talking – and talking loud. He narrated several of his experiences – about his job, the place, the culture and customs, call girls (no holds barred – but to his (some) credit he concluded by saying that a wife is the best companion!). After quite a bit of talking he asked us whether we did like some coffee. Do I need to say that we nodded (wagging our tails if we had one). After some more wait, we proceeded towards terminal # 24. We found an airport vehicle meant to transport people to terminals. The old man suggested we take it and so he spoke to the driver. The driver at first seemed reluctant; mumbling some stuff like another vehicle will come etc, but finally heeded after some persistence from the old chap. Yet again, we piggybacked and within no time reached our terminal. There was a baggage check leading to another waiting room. We took our places at one end of the room, and waited patiently. It was almost nearing time of our flight but there was still no activity at the boarding point. The old chap took this time to inquire with the security whether alcohol could be brought from a foreign country’s duty free shop and carried in hand baggage (for those interested- yes you can as long as you retained the original sealed packing and keep it out of the hand baggage; atleast that is what he was told). Everyone was starting to feel a bit impatient and getting up and down. After a long wait, just a few minutes before the scheduled time of departure, we were informed that two patients were to board the flight. One of them was serious in a critical state, in coma. They were waiting for a doctor to arrive to confirm whether he/she was safe to be transported. It seems the doctor they had arranged for was sick and hence they had to wait for a replacement (or atleast that’s what we understood). There was still no news for quite some time, except for some people moving in and out the doors. We were already around half an hour behind our scheduled time of departure. Our flight was supposed to reach London at 5PM and we had booked seats on a bus at 7 PM to take us to Birmingham- that seemed comfortable at the time we booked with enough time to go through the immigration, collect our baggage and reach the bus terminal. We seemed to be getting increasingly likely of missing that, especially since the airline had still not even began boarding the passengers.

After another aching wait we were told that we could now go aboard and take our seats. I forgot to mention this about the earlier flight, which holds equally true for this one as well, the flight staff are not what you would expect - ever-smiling, extremely courteous and polite- these ones seemed as if they were doing a favour by having us aboard and seemed to take no particular interest in customer satisfaction. There weren’t even any good looking air-hostess :p I am pretty certain not to travel again with Kuwait Airways if I had a choice (and I don’t say that for the air-hostess reason! – read the earlier post for more). Everyone soon took their places and the staff went about giving their routine and monotonous safety instructions and soon we were off. This time I had a window seat and hence could lean on the wall. I was getting very drowsy and kept dozing off again and again – each time getting up with a startle wondering if I missed the food being served :p Seeing that everyone still had their trays locked up I went dozed off again. After some time they did start serving food… finally! I sat up, pulled down my tray and was asked to choose from veg, chicken or fish. I pondered over the last two and settled on the latter. It turned out to be Awesome! There were several chunks of fish marinated with herbs and rice to go along with it – plus the regular stuff. Even the sweet dish was tasty and filling. Later I got to know that Chitaranjan, who had been on a strictly veg diet for the past month or so for some religious reason, got so tempted seeing the fish fillet on his neighbour’s tray that he changed his mind and went for the same J And I am sure he felt it was worth it. The on-board entertainment system was the same as the earlier flight – plain awful. It refused to startup until I called up one of the attendants. And once he managed to turn it on, within a few minutes I made up mind that it was much better turned off. I leaned back and dozed off- waking up occasionally and then again conking off. Inbetween they did serve coffee and biscuits during which time I managed to stay awake. But apart from that is was sleeping or starting out of the window as the clouds took up beautiful shapes and forms.

12th August, 2012 – Day 1 – Part A

The cab dropped the 4 of us at the airport- me, Chitaranjan, Mithun and Rashmi- by around 3:30 AM. We were pretty sure we had exceeded the baggage limit and hence we had asked Mithun and Rashmi to stay back till we give the green signal. The cabwala, pretty sure of not managing to get any other business at that time of day (or do we call it night) and hence agreed to wait, somewhat indefinitely, free of charge (assuming he did not demand more on the way back! We made our way to the departures terminal. We did a mock-farewell, over a round of chai from a local vendor, as I was pretty confident that we would anyways be coming back to hand over the excess baggage. To that effect, I had even taken along an empty bag to stuff in the extras once I was turned away from the check-in counter. Rashmi, as is now quickly becoming a tradition (that I like), handed us both a bar of Snickers J Chitaranjan opened his there itself and we all shared it. I was sure I would be hungry quite soon, so held onto mine ;) I took out my wallet and saw that I had only around Rs. 400 on me, so I took out 300 and asked Chitaranjan to remove another 400 so as to pay the cab fare. So just for the record (as we shall come to these figures again ;), I was left with something like Rs. 140 on me (counting all the change) and Chitaranjan had another few hundereds. So basically we were traveling to a foreign country with around Rs.500 between the two of us. My mom would have kicked me if I had told her :p Well yes, we were not too worried because we did have some dollars that Sir had passed on to us for getting some stuff he wanted. We could always eat into that and then replenish it once our stock arrived… or so we thought J

This was Chitaranjans first trip abroad and hence I assume he was even more excited. But the sight of the international departures terminal was a downer for him, with people hanging about like at Kurla terminus, here and there and some even sleeping with makeshift pillows. We finally decided to move in and with all our luggage loaded onto trolleys. Chitaranjan was worried about not getting Indian food there and hence had got along quite a bit of rice, poha and other stuff. I on the other hand had no plans to eat anything Indian for quite some time ;) Our journey was split into two legs – Mumbai to Kuwait and then Kuwait to London – both on Kuwait Airways (as it was quite cheaper to the rest – interestingly Air India also had roughly the same price but with their repo in recent times, we didn’t bother to entertain it, and what can one say, the Air India flight on that day did get cancelled! :p) We were told of a check-in baggage limit of 20kg (I had always seen 23kg before) plus hand baggage and laptop bag. During my trip to Korea, again being overweight (both me and my baggage ;), I had stuffed quite a bit of clothes into my laptop bag as well :p … frankly I didn’t have any other option with 3/4^th of my bag being full of Indian spices, masala and other stuff to take over.

We moved over to the Kuwait Airways counter. There was a short queue so we waited. Finally both of us got called to two separate counters. I, nervously, picked up my baggage in one quick swing (trying to make it look effortless so that they didn’t realize it’s too heavy;  as if they didn’t have a weighing scale, but yeah that’s some of the stupid things one does when guilty! ;). I put it down on the conveyor belt and waited for the weighing scale to stabilize. Ah… it was only 21.6 kgs! J I was so sure it was going to go way over. I plastered a nice warm smile hoping she didn’t comment about the excess 1.6kgs; airlines seldom do for small exceeds but you never know when one of the attendants is having a bad day and decide to take it out on you! She went about doing some entry on the machine. I was relieved when she finally handed over my tickets and wished me a pleasant journey. I pushed the trolley back, with my hand luggage and laptop loaded on, to the back and waited for Chitaranjan. He took some more time and when he did finally appear he only had his laptop bag with him. In confusion, he accidentally checked-in his hand luggage as well which had all his official documents – except the ticket and passport obviously. We both had managed to get window seats for the second, and longer, leg of the journey. I asked him to wait with the trolley while I went back and handed over the empty bag to our friends waiting outside. I am sure they were as surprised as me when I passed on the bag with nothing inside. Last time around Mithun had to take back something like 7-8kgs worth of stuff. We bid bye with a final round of farewells.

I rejoined Chitaranjan and both of us moved ahead towards Gate #3 (if I recollect right). On our way we came across several foreign currency exchange centres. We approached the first one we saw, Thomas Cook. The conversion rates was showing something like Rs. 95 per pound or so. We were totally confused. Just before leaving it was hovering somewhere around 85-86,what happened during our cab ride ;) hehe … jokes apart, it didn’t seem worthwhile to exchange it there. We had a look at a few other forex centres and they were no better. We decided that as it was not too much of an emergency we shall let it be, and if need be get some dollars converted later.

We reached the immigration check where there was a long queue, despite having 6-7 counters working. Finally we got to the front and were assigned to a counter. One after another, counters started closing to our left and right. The queue by now had disappeared and for some reason our counter was at a standstill. Murphy’s law at work? Maybe. It seems an African guy, Nigerian if I start stereotyping, had got into some trouble there. From what he said to the officer and seeing the ticket in his hand, his flight was due in 15-20 mins; I wonder whether he finally made it or not. After a long wait, we finally got our things checked and passed through.

We proceeded towards Gate #3, passing several food stalls, all teasingly tempting us.  We reached our gate and with loads of time in hand we decided to please our taste buds. Samosas for Rs.120 and VadaPavs for Rs.80 left a bad taste in the mouth, without even tasting them, and so we left. Chitaranjan decided to wait with the baggage at the lounge and I took the opportunity to roam around, I accept looking for quick cheap bite – yes that’s me with Rs. 140 left in the pocket J

I roam around and don’t find anything too pleasing. A few of the more appealing ones, though heavy on the wallet under present circumstances, were just closing down. That actually helped in not having to convince myself to move on. I came across a counter which was selling International sim cards. That was certainly something we needed! And the best part was it was free! Plus already having some talktime preloaded and with call rates to India as low as 1p/min! That’s better than some local call rates here! We just needed to show our passport and boarding tickets, that’s it. I asked for a sim card for UK. He said that we would have to go to the other counter for UK sims and directed me towards it. I went there and after some searching he apologetically informed that they had run out of stock on UK sims and asked me to inquire at the earlier counter. The offer being too good I decided to ask, if by the odd chance, they had one hidden somewhere. But no luck there as well. Anyways not a big deal, certainly should be easy to get one once we reach; maybe at the airport itself with some better offers possibly. I did loiter around a few more food stalls, checking out the rate cards before deciding against it. On the way back I was passing by another waiting lounge where I spotted a kinda expensive Nokia mobile lying on one of the seats with no one around anywhere nearby. I saw a couple of people look at me and I pointed at the mobile, asking whether they had any idea. I decided against picking it up; safer option is most circumstances. But obviously didn’t think it would return to the owner if I left it there. There was no security guard or staff anywhere in sight whom I could approach. I saw that a line had been formed for boarding one of the flights. It seemed most likely that it would belong to one of them. I went upto the airline official who was managing the queue and informed him of the mobile. He seemed a bit reluctant, amidst his work, but said that the most he can do is to inform the guard via intercom. I told him that he should. I walked off a distance, just to ensure that he didn’t have me babysitting the mobile but all the while keeping an eye on it and the official. Finally I saw him inform the guards about it and soon one of the airline officials came along and collected it. I felt my moral obligation ended there. During my whole roaming around, from time to time I could hear announcements and people with intercoms running to and fro searching for Mr. Khan (naah not one from Bollywood :p) who was already quite late for boarding his flight. I wondered whether the airlines actually do that for each passenger who fails to show up on time. I decided against taking it and quickly walked back to my lounge. Oh I forgot to mention, I did have a look around for ATM machines – one reason being able to afford one of the numerous dishes being displayed and secondly, it seemed a good idea to carry some cash while going abroad ;) Rs. 140 was something I was also starting to feel ashamed about :p But there were none on that floor and so my wallet remained light.

Soon we were allowed to make our way into the aircraft. We got in and first saw the nice comfy seats, obviously business class. Further down, behind a curtain, we reached the aam aadmi ka section (what Shashi Tharoor famously called cattle class J). Yupp there was just enough space for me to manoeuvre towards my seat. As always I went about going through all the magazines and papers that they provide; it is more of a compulsive disorder than anything else. The flight took off after some time. I tried on the headset and connected it into the socket. The display screens were so damn small… I bet my mobile was just slightly smaller. And once it came on, there was no doubt, my mobile was way better! They had some 7-8 channels, of which around 2 of them were operational, of which one showed me the altitude and temperature and the route the flight would take. As if I was really bothered where it decided to take a turn or go up or down – as long as it wasn’t too way up, but then that they would anyways not be putting up for display.  I put it back down and went about reading a book that I had borrowed from my 14-year old nephew – Diary of a Wimpy Kid, in case you haven’t heard of it, do catch the movie it’s a fun watch. My mind soon drifted towards the food that would be served soon :p That’s one of the highlights for me when travelling via air. On trains you have vendors who bring stuff and you decide whether to buy that or not or wait for something else. But in flight, the food seems free (as you have already royally shelled out money for it!) as you don’t have to make any (further) payment, and more importantly, you don’t have to choose what you will have. So it feels something like being a food critic and they brining you some stuff which you shall taste and comment upon (obviously to yourself and in this case to Chitaranjan later ;). So alaa… after some time they start distributing it. I wait for them to approach my row, hoping for them to move faster. And once they approach close you start to look around, continue reading the book, etc and not make it too obvious that you are maniac. At long last they reach my seat and ask me veg/non-veg. What a stupid question, I tell myself, and more politely ask for the meaty version. I go about unwrapping everything. Even fruits seem so exciting when they are nicely packed and presented hehe. But the main course was horrible! I am sure my mess food, at times, was better than that :p hehe (for the record, hostel 8 mess food has gone down – atleast that’s what I hear, I hardly eat there anymore :p). But this was bad! Trust me Air India was way better. They have better food, though Indian style whereas I generally prefer to try different stuff, and also the entertainment system is incomparably better (Kuwait Airlines has really lowered the bar for me!). But obviously I did finish off every last morsel on the plate. They offered juices; I went for orange. The tray, as always, had sachets for milk and sugar. I have always wondered whether it is not weird to have cold juices/soft drinks followed immediately by a hot tea or coffee, and who might actually do so. Anyways as it was provided I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I followed up the juice with a cup of coffee. I wondered whether they would let me have one more glass of juice, I did manage to get it on Air Indian before. I was a bit hesitant to ask lest I be turned down and made to appear a hungry jerk. I was quite sleepy from the long long days (virtually non-existent nights) in the build-up to this trip. I dozed in an out of sleep several times. Finally a after a few hours, we were to land in Kuwait. To be continued… J

11th August, 2012 – Day 0

Just a day back we both had finished our APS, short for Annual Progress Seminars. It went by quite well by ‘SoMe’ standards ;) (pun intended!). Having picked on that topic, I realized I could write another one-month long blog of the pre-APS period. It was in most aspects more interesting than the final presentation itself! I better move on, or else I will never reach Birmingham :p So basically (yeah Shubha, that’s the first basically ;)… we had just over a day to shop, pack and leave – plus get a short crash course on the project aspect at Birmingham.  So do cut some slack, when you see a lack of planning and preparation leading to some interesting situations down the line (day 2 for example ;).

By 6 PM (10^th August) we had got out of CRNTS building, where we were ragged in the name of APS (and they say ragging is strictly banned at IITs!)… (but jokes apart, the examiners did point out several important things which I hadn’t given enough thought to). All the lab members, as is the ritual in our lab after a major presentation, spent the rest of the day (and night) going out for dinner and fooling around. We finally left for our rooms sometime around  2AM for a well-deserved night of sleep.  Our flight was scheduled at 6:30 AM from Mumbai airport on 12^th August and so we had decided to leave from IIT somewhere around 2:30 AM. So this entry - Day 0, basically constitutes the one whole day that we had inbetween.

I got up sometime around 8 AM. Recollecting that the breakfast in the mess is good on Saturdays I quickly brushed and went down. Ahhh it was poha and sheera…I forgot they had changed the menus recently. I was hoping for something like Parathas or Puri Bhaji. Abhi aaye hain toh kuch toh khake jayenge… so I grab some of it and quickly gulped it down. I went back to my room and started packing… finally. First thing out was my big travel luggage. I saw that all my clothes were lying for laundry. I quickly stuffed it all down into two overflowing buckets and took it down to our dhobi. I caught him in the nick of time, as he was just stepping out for some work. I told him that I need them all washed and ironed by end of the day. As always, he complied. One of those people who never let you down ;) I remembered that I had a few mails that needed to be sent urgently – one to the lab at Birmingham about our final travel arrangements and so on. I got all that out of the way quickly.

At around noon I had to leave for my Aunts place. I had been telling them for around a couple of weeks that I am coming over and each time ending up changing my plans due to some or the other APS related work. Day 0, and there was no option to push it further, and also I wanted to visit them before I left. I especially felt bad for having promised to come several times and not making it. I took a rickshaw from within the campus to Kalina, one of the luxuries (amongst many ;) that I afford myself on these rare trips. I used this time to quickly get in touch with some from my dabba gang (read as college group) who know me for disappearing from the radar every now and then. I reached my aunts house just before 1 PM. My nephew wasn’t back from school yet. Schools on Saturdays… thank god I am out of it! As it is I bunked schools on most Saturdays… so much so that once when I did go my class teacher asked my mom ‘How come he is here on a Saturday?!’ :p Once he was back we sat down for lunch. My bhabhi had prepared Onam-style lunch for me, whats called as a ‘Sadhya’and served on a banana leaf. Plus FISH! Ah awesome! It was very thoughtful of her as I would not be around for Onam, a grand festival in Kerala, this time. I bid farewell and left shortly after lunch, having played a couple of games of FIFA with my nephew on his playstation.

It struck me that I better go get a haircut as I remember its quite expensive abroad, and moreover I was starting to look a bit barbaric. Me and Chitaranjan had a meeting with Sir at 4 PM for a crash course on experimental electrophysiology. I was sure I wouldn’t make it in time. But I was certain I wouldn’t get time afterwards as I had quite a bit of shopping and packing to do. So I texted Sir and asked him whether we could delay the meeting by half an hour. I was sure he would oblige, so I went on. As I had to directly go to the lab, I had no option but to get a hair wash there itself. When bigger expenses are on the horizon, you tend to go light on the smaller ones ;) Finally, I managed to reach just a few minutes before our scheduled time of meet and got things ready. Over the next couple of hours, we had a preview of what we were going to do for the next couple of months. As we were totally occupied with our APS work, we didn’t have a chance to attend to this earlier. And Sir being ever understanding, never pushed us. Finally we dispersed at around 6:30 PM. Sir had wanted us to get a few things back for him from Birmingham and passed on some foreign currency for the same.

I realized I was leaving things too late with regards to my packing. I rushed off, grabbed a rickshaw to my hostel, told the dhobi to leave the clothes with the canteenwala in case I don’t come back in time. Being stuck with an empty suitcase with no clothes to put in would have been a weird situation that might have involved having to break in to the laundry room to fetch my clothes :p On my way to the shopping market, Shubha and Claire joined me. Mithun and Chitaranjan followed in another rickshaw.  The next couple of hours involved some shopping, swift moves in and out of shoe shops in my search for a decent pair of lab slippers (I have a track record of proving difficult in selecting my footwear!) which I finally managed to get at the last attempt. I should say Shubha was a great help all this while.  Oh I forgot, we all ate a lot as well. No matter what the rush, one should not forgo food and ignore the hunger (read as temptation) pangs. So we had panipuri, sweets and lotssss of ice-cream from Baskin & Robbins J As I said, with bigger expenses on the horizon, you shouldn’t think too much about the smaller ones. Bad financial advice I know :p

On the way back I bid adieu to Claire. She would be leaving for France by the end of the month and its quite unlikely that we would meet again. But as they say… never say never J I was back in my room by 8:30 PM having collected my clothes from the dhobi. Met the canteenwala and the hostel caretaker (that’s what I call him) on the way and told them about the trip. They form some of my better acquaintances in the hostel – the only constant people in hostels with the students often getting shuffled about. And add to that my near zero spotting inside the hostel; except when its football season J

Mithun and Shubha helped with my packing. With the clothes all ironed and ready, the major part of packing was easily dealt with. After that I was lost. What else did I need to pack?! I generally prefer to have a list and tick things off. But with the busy build-up to this trip, that was a luxury I wasn’t able to afford this time (on hindsight, I could have taken time off here and there had I really wanted to – but the truth was that my though was limited to my APS day and nothing ahead). I packed in all the stuff that I found useful lying about. Tickets had to be printed out and my passport was in the lab. So I had to make one trip to the lab to fetch those and also attend to some of the pending routine work. From my trip to Korea I had some foreign currency left.  Me and Chitaranjan had planned that we would take some of that along and exchange it as and when needed. There was not much sense in carrying a lot of British Pounds as we would anyways be provided our allowances on reporting to the university. I looked around the room at all my hiding spots but couldn’t find the envelope in which I had packed them. I did one more thorough search and got Mithun into the hunt as well. But still no luck. I decided to go to lab and get the rest of the work done and also have a look there. Darshan and Rashmi were there in the lab. I went about getting my work done but didn’t have much luck with the money; not that I would have left it in the lab anyways. At 11 PM I remembered that I had still not made arrangements for a cab to take us to the airport, having tried on the way back from the market. I asked Mithun for the contacts of all cabs that he had saved from past trips. I called up the regular guy first, known as papaji. From the sound of it he was just about to doze off. He seemed to agree reluctantly, being tempted between money and sleep. After keeping the phone I realized that Mithun and Rashmi would need a cab to travel back as well. I wasn’t sure whether the price quoted was for a single journey or return. I asked Mithun and he vaguely remembered as that being the price for a return trip. I called papaji again and asked him and he said no that it was for a single trip. I was certain I had spoiled his sleep this time :p And that was confirmed when he called back in a few minutes and said that he won’t come as we were asking for a return trip at the same price and so on. I got a bit pissed off. It was fine that he didn’t want to come but he went about giving weird reasons. I told him that its perfectly fine if he didn’t want to come and that there are several other cabs we can hire, and that there was no need to make flimsy excuses. He cut the call before I could go on and lecture him :p In such cases I generally tend to call back and give an earful but this guy was quite elderly and obviously sleep deprived ;) Also I didn’t have much time left on my hands! So I called up one of the other cabwalas. He said he would get back to me in a few minutes. From thereon, I asked Mithun to handle the cab arrangement. And we finally got it booked for 2:30 AM. Before leaving the lab, I passed on a pile of paperwork that Mithun had to attend to on our behalf while we are away. Again, this is a common trend in the lab – one person leaves and it translates into work for everyone else :p How could I break that pattern ;)

We all went back to my hostel. I did another search in my room for the money, and as I started running out of places to search it dawned on me that I had stored it in the bank locker for safekeeping several weeks back! No wonder I could not find it in a 100 square feet room with just 2 beds and a cupboard to call as furniture :p All this finally meant that we had no foreign currency except the dollars that Sir had given us. I decided, with no great intent I might add, we still had a chance to convert some money at the airport. I zipped and locked my luggage and brought it down. Had a few snacks from the hostel canteen as we waited for the cab to arrive. It reached almost on time. I loaded my stuff and then moved on to pick-up Chitaranjan from his hostel. After that we were off… to the airport J