Sunday, May 1, 2011

Arriving in Bangalore

I made it to Bangalore! I loaded the plane at JFK at 10:40AM on Saturday. The seats in Business class were amazing. It was almost like your own personal room. The person next to you has to walk by your seat, but there is a rather large partition that makes it so you don't have to see the other person if you don't want. Before we took off I met another person from GS. She was headed to Bangalore as well. Her stay is only going to be for four days after which she flies to Singapore.

On this plane they really made you comfortable. The stewardess asked it I wanted to have my mattress taken out before or after take off. I stayed up and selected a movie to watched. each person is able to select their own movie to watch. At least in Business class, I did not check to see if each economy class got their own scree. I select Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Emarites provided sound canceling head phones in order to watch the movie.

in addition to the head phones they made it a little easier to sleep on the plane. The matress make the seat very comfortable to lay on. When I say lay, I really mean lay! The seat almost turned 100% flat. This made it much easier to fall asleep. The also provided eye covers to block out all the light. I still had issues and was only able to sleep for four of the eleven hours to Dubai. I decided to watch another movie once I woke up. I selected Robin Hood and Sheila you wouldn't like this movie, too much talking not enough action.

Once we landed in Dubai, 11 hours by second but 20 hours by the clock, we had to get off the bus using stairs and load a bus to move to the terminal. It was about a 15 minute drive before we finally reached the terminal. When I got off the plane I met another person from Goldman Sachs, he was moving to Bangalore to become the head of some teams. When you enter the terminal everyone must go through a set of security again. The guy moving to Bangalore somehow managed to unknowingly brought a Swiss Army knife through security at JFK. The Dubai agents had a good time with them catching the knife and New york missing the knife. Well, he was pulled aside and question by a few different security members for about 30 minutes. Finally someone else started making a larger scene and allowed him to go.

We then walked to the business lounge. This lounge was much bigger than the one at JFK, really just more seats. It was also much more busy. In the lounge I met another Goldman employee who was coming to Bangalore to train a new team. We sat there chatting until it was time to load the next plane. This trip was not as long, only a little more than 4 hours. I felt very lucky that my luggage made it from SLC to Bangalore. If it had been lost I was smart enough to pack one set of clothes in my carry on so I could have lasted one day.

After picking up my luggage I walked outside to find my car ride to the apartments. Well, I quickly learned that if I never got in another car in Bangalore it would be to soon. Lucky for me I get to get in another car tomorrow morning. I think that the traffic lines in the road mean nothing. No one follows them and they honk more times in 2 minutes than I have my whole life. It took us an hour and a half to get to the apartment. During that time we just chatted about Bangalore and the US.

When I got to my apartment I went in and started unpacking my stuff. I soon found I was very hungry and decided to go down stairs to the in house restaurant. I got a chicken and cheese grilled sandwich. The cheese tasted like it was cheesewhiz from the can. I was starving though and it tasted pretty good. I came back and decided I could afford the 200 Rupee to get the internet for 24 hours so I could write an email or two. After the email I am going to go to bed. I am extremely tired and hope that I will not suffer to bad from the time lag thingy ( I can't think of what it is called). Hopefully the continuous honking outside my window does not cause to much issue sleeping.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!


And P.S. since it is Sunday night at 10PM the Super Bowl has already happened here and the both teams played a good game. Nothing too exciting happened. Hope you all enjoy it! I won't spoil who won because that would just be rude to give it away.

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