travelling

I am posting this from Basel in Switzerland. We have been on a trip from the 10th of this month, starting from the US before coming down here. We head back to India, the next weekend. This has been a very hectic business trip moving from one place to another every other day.

What really touched me was the fact that many of my friends touch based with me while in the US. The nobles’ junta called up through Sreekumar and Sony. I was surprised to get a call from Sony having lost touch with him around 1993! Sree was in his usual self. There were a few others who mailed me during this time.Reni and Aswati came to meet me at my hotel (Hilton, Newark). They formed a lovely couple. The Friday at Newark turned out to be another truly memorable one. Sriram my mechanical engineering classmate came along and took me to the Times Square area. Some impressive hoardings made good photo opportunity! CETians (College of Engineering, Trivandrum) are many in the US, since doing an MS has always been a well established path to get ahead in one's career. We met up with Sangeeth (Tele '96 batch) and Abu (our batch). Apart from that it was a good occasion to remember the good old CET times.

I could not talk to Mrinal, though he had left a voice message from me. He is currently studying law in Boston. I know him from an assignment he was on for Lupin while we were doing an agreement with another company. He used to work for DSK legal then.

Anil and his wife were with me on Saturday. His brother too came along. They live in Philadelphia. We went to an area called Edison. This is known for its "desi"ness and we ate Indian Chinese food at Ming. The idea was to go to New York and see a couple of places. However the snarling traffic did not leave many options open. It took a while before we could enter into New York. I had to be at the JFK airport by around 7.30 pm. We drove through the Wall street and got a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from Battery park. We took the Westminister bridge route to get on to the expressway into the JFK side.

By around 7 pm we reached the airport and I said good bye to Anil and his family. At some level I also thought about my friends who have shifted the US and who may eventually make it their home.

Pavithra is at Bangalore and it has been nice to catch up with her on the yahoo once in a while.