United JFK - Los Angeles

Nice flight, chirpy airhostesses (though old) and nice food!! I never thought i would say this but yes the food was good, they showed a nice movie, the flight was pretty empty and on the whole five hours breezed by. Just got out of the aircraft and walked towards my gate at L.A. Airport, stopped to get a Low fat latte and to write this blog at the starbucks just opposite the gate. I'm now officially addicted to blogging!!

Coach Carter

Interesting movie I watched on the flight – Coach Carter. The story of a black coach who comes back to his neighbourhood school to coach the basketball team there. The difference being that he decides to not just teach the team how to play ball but how to lead their life. Makes tough decisions but manages to win the respect of the team and show them the bigger picture of life. All in all a nice watch. Samuel Jackson plays Coach Carter well. It would also be a pretty inspiring movie for todays american youth.

Crisscrossing America

Ok. people. Writing this as i fly across the United States. Am taking United Flight 15 which goes from JFK in New York to Los Angeles. Have luckily got an entire row of thre seats to myself. Plonked myself down on the window seat and am taking in the sights. And a remarkable sight it is. Twenty minutes of staring out of the window at land below myself and we get to know why America is the most powerful country in the world. Miles and Miles of farms, cities, roads, houses – its got it all. I dont see a single bit of arid land. Everything below me is green and well laid out. The farms are divided into strips and some of the strips are green while the others seem like they've been left barren in a planned out manner. Shows that they've really put thought into maximising the output of the resources they have been blessed with. From an aerial view I see huge factories, power plants, highways, trains – superb infrastructure. I'm reminded of the movie Swades – its time for us to make india into a similar superpower. We are bound to reach the goal if our generation puts in some effort we will see the results for ourselves instead of our future generations.

United e-checkin

Have heard a lot of bad stuff about American airlines in general so as i'm getting into the united flight to LA and then onwards to San Jose am suitably prejudiced. But my first experience was pretty good. Used the e-checkin where instead of using a human checkin counter used a kiosk – it was a breeze!! I'm surprised why more of the Arab/ Indian carriers dont use this – its so much faster, convenient and of course saves them manpower – really no reason not to go in for it.. hmmmm..

The Big Apple New York, NY

Well, finally go to see the Big apple what everyone keeps talking about. Got out of JFK, left my bags and laptop at the luggage store at the airport and with just my wallet, cell phone (yes my Qatar sim does work!!) and passport went into the city. Decided to take the bus instead of the subway as i wanted to see a bit of the city while commuting and landed just outside the Grand Central Subway stop in New York. The first thing that strikes you is how well New York is laid out – the city is divided into neat grids with avenues running perpendicular to streets and with the exceptions of a few landmark streets most of them go in numeric order so its quite easy to navigate with either verbal instructions or else through the address. I decided i wanted to see all the major sights so opted for the gray line open air double decker tour of the city. Glad I did that as i probably saved a lot of money in the commute and so pend the next 3 hours taking in the usual tourist spots – the Empire state building, the Little Italy, India, China, Germany, SoHO, Wall Street, The World Trade Center site, City hall, the public library, fashion street, Macy's, Central Park, The Statue of liberty, Rockerfeller center, Battery Park, the Brooklyn Bridge etc.

Some Interesting facts I found quite interesting:-

1. When going around NY you see quite a few old buildings with their third and fourth floors having very large glass windows – it seems there used to be an aerial train running through the main avenue and so the windows were meant to be displays to attract commuters to shop at them. The train is no longer there.

2. Rent control – seems some people in NY are still paying the same rent they used to pay in the 1940s. Reminds me of bombay's own rules. Lucky for some!!

3. When brooklyn bridge opened up, people were really scared to use it so P.T. Barnum the world famous circus owner had 78 of his elephants walk across to prove to them that it was really safe!!

4. 2/3rds of New York buildings have now been converted into high end housing

5. SoHo stands for South Of Housing street. And yes SoHo in Ny came first

6. The loft apartments in SoHo made fashionable by the artists and writers were actually illegal!!!

7. New yorkers feel there is no need to travel out of the city, its all here!!

8. Macy's is the largest department store in the world at 2.2mn Sq. feet!! Its also one of the oldest.

9. Penn Station is the largest train station in the U.S. And probably one of the largest in the world and yes, its in the big apple.

10. The Freedom tower which will come up where the WTC used to be will be 1776feet high in rememberance of the year in which America got its freedom. Its supposed to become the tallest building in the world.

11. The Empire state builing, built at the height of the great depression was constructed in 13 months entirely from prefabricated parts and steel beams which were still warm from the furnace!! For quite a while it was empty leading a few people to rename it the Empty state building. Today its quite a prestigious business location with its own unique art deco arhictecture.

What struck me about New York

This is truly a LARGE city with unique culture and modern outlook. Its not a new gleaming city but this is the old money. The buildings are imposing and most importantly demonstrate that for as far as we can remember NY has been the financial capital of the world. The city and its people have a spirit thats hard to miss and grow to love. What strikes you most as you glance at people, as you speak to them as you walk the streets – these are real people, they have real worries, fears, aspirations, passions. Nothing is picture perfect, as you see people you can imagine that they are ambitious, have gone through sacrifices and are living life to the fullest but they are definitely not content or complacent. This is really the most remarkable thing esp. when you compare it to places like Qatar or Dubai(in parts) or even Bombay where to a small extent people are not go-getters. Here everyone from the beggars on the street to the tour operator to the bus drivers everyone will tell you how and why you should give them some of your money and why they deserve it. I'm not sure if they are poor, but they definitely have the spirit.

Would I live in New York? Hmm,, difficult call to make esp. after just spending a day in the city. At this point I would rather be in San Francisco which is more tech to my liking but as I leave New York I cant help feeling – If i were to spend some more time here , this place would grow on me!!!

JFK Airport, New York

Landed at JFK, managed to breeze through immigration, collect my luggage and get out in a span of 15 minutes. Dubai airport has to take a pointer from JFK. It regularly takes me 30 mins to board a flight or 30 mins to get out of dubai airport. The walk itself is an exercise. While the authorities have no doubt tried to innovate and the airport has quite a few attractions on its own to keep you amused while you walk around, for the regular traveller, its a bit of a pain. Imagine someone who flies even once a week and has to spend an hour on each trip just at dubai airport. JFK is a much larger airport than Dubai International yet its very nicely organized. Its actually massive and so probably an order of maginitude bigger than DIA. However, its organized into terminals (9 in total) each of which are reasonably small and easy to navigate into and out of and there AirTrain which is a sort of aerial train service connection all the terminals. What this means is that passengers arriving at one terminal and having a connecting flight at the other probably would take longer than a passenger doing the same in dubai but for someone getting in and exitting out of JFK the commute time is negligible. I guess these unique aspects are because DIA is more of a hub and destination in itself while with JFK, its really the big apple which is the destination.

The Emirates New York Review

Well I finally managed to check out the Emirates Dubai- New York (JFK) flight. A really long flight – the longest I’ve taken at 14 hours and the verdict:- A brilliant flight by Emirates.

The flight started off at 8:00a.m. dubai time which means you can get into Dubai airport at 6:00 a.m. – 6:30 a.m (very convenient) and it reaches JFK at 2 p.m giving you quite a bit of the day in NYC.

The flight takes quite an usual flight path going from dubai upwards through Iran to Russia passing just under Moscow and flow there crossing the Baltic Sea into Scandinavia and then going westwards and crossing Greenland and the Atlantic entering Canada and then turning south to hit New York. I wondered why the flight was taking such a convoluted route until I realized that it only seemed convoluted when spread out over a flat map. When we consider that the globe is round, it probably is the shortest route. In shorter flights the shortest point is usually straight line approach as the distance is negligible compared to the radius of the globe. Not so in this case.

Kind of aircrafts – A340 -500s the largest aircraft presently flown by Emirates until their new A380s come into service. The two things worth noting were the in-flight entertainment and a new service – I’ll call it the moving sky.

The inflight entertainment on the A340- 500s is a definite step ahead from the regular. It features video on demand with a personal TV screen on every seat and so you can surf and they have some pretty good comedies. Personally watched Friends, Frasier, Malcolm in the Middle and a bit of the Incredibles!! What is really noteworthy is that the user interface and the overall experience of using the controls with the wired remote control is excellent. Really a job well done!!

The Moving sky feature. This was something that really impressed me the most. Most frequent flyers would remember how its quite normal when taking a long flight to spend a day or two coping with jet lag esp. when taking a longer flight. The moving sky effect is that on the A340- 500s the roof of the aircraft is lit up with a variety of effects synchronized with the flight paths so that the virtual sky mimics the sky at the take off and landing destination and thus helps your body in coping with the transition. This is noteworthy considering for instance the Dubai- JFK flight was a 14 hour flight where we were chasing the sun from Dubai to new York leaving dubai at 8a.m. and landing at dubai at 2p.m. so a passenger whose window blinds were open would have been quite disoriented. However, with this feature the passenger adjusts much better to the changing time zones. I for one am very much impressed. The roof also has stars which twinkle!!! Must be experienced. And Also, for the foodies, yes the food is very good though you do feel overfed at the end of it all – a full meal, a breakfast and a hearty lunch in the span of 14 hours esp. when you are sitting down and not buring any of those calories.

On the whole, Emirates lives up to its reputation as the airline that innovates on this flight.

life takes unique turns

A pet peeve I have with quite a few people is on planning out life. I never seem able to plan or visualize what my life would look like 10-20 years down the line. More so, i just do things I feel strongly about and trust that I am building valuable expertise and skills. Strongly feel that life presents us with enough opportunities and its a matter of recognizing the important ones.

Met an interesting guy today whose life took a very interesting turn. He was working in India at a regular job when he was asked by one of his relatives if he would work for his boss as his personal assistant. His boss ended up being one of the highest net worth individuals in India and post meeting him decided to hire him immediately. He moved to London along with his family in a weeks time and lived along with his boss for 6 years in his 56 bed room castle on the outskirts of london. Spent 6 years assisting him with multiple investment proposals and speculative activities while seeing at close quarters how he worked and cultivating relationships of the right kinds. He's just left and decided to start something on his own but I'm sure the experience must have been out of this world.

met an interesting guy today

Met an interesting guy today. 65 year old guy, british, was visiting his son one day in Azerbaijan, went to visit an office saw a woman, fell in love, divorced his wife in the UK who never got along with, moved to Azerbaijan and is the regional rep. for a satellite communication company based there. Bought a 1 acre plot for 20,000 USD came with a huge house, sauna, orchard with apricot trees, store to sell the jam made from the apricots, etc. Previously he's also lived for two years in the antarctic, been in the navy, served in the falklands and today he's all interested in setting up a yahoo group so manufacturers can help each other find good agents. Got to give it to you John, I wish i have such a full life by the time I am 65... Cheers, and hope to visit you soon in Baku

abcd humor

just watched where's the party, yaar? - one more of those abcd movies. Nothing more than the usual poking fun at FOBs, the dressing sense, superstition etc. etc. while i agree with the characterization (it's amazing how true it still is), and find it very funny, this topic has been done to death. I think ABCD movies need to move on to maybe later stages of the ABCD life??