Today is an exciting day because we are scheduled to leave for London at 6:05pm from Tampa International Airport (by Virgin Atlantic Flight No VS28). We have been looking forward to this trip for quite sometime and we have been preparing ourselves mentally, physically, financially, etc. At least I was prepared for unexpected changes in our schedules and anything else in our trip.
The day started slowly because we knew we had packed everything we needed and so we needed to take care of some routine stuff in the house. I was mostly on my computer doing some last minute stuff like checking my personal and work email, some Excel spreadsheets, some financials, work related documents, etc. etc. I was as usual accused of not helping with trip preparations at home that mostly involved cleaning and rearranging stuff which I don't care about. Well, I did all the meticulous planning and took care of financing the entire trip for us and Mallika and so what else does she want from me ? From my point of view, only thing we needed to do was to pack our toiletry items and drive to Orlando around 2:30 pm and be at the airport by by 4pm (2 hrs before the departure of flight). I wanted to leave by 1:30pm but due to various reasons related to household stuff, we could not leave until about 2:30pm. We reached the parking lot at "U-Save Parking Orlando" around 3:45pm. I left the car and the key with the parking lot attendant and took their shuttle to the airport. Komala and I were the only two people in the shuttle. We reached the airport within 10 minutes (the terminal was just under 3 miles from the parking lot). When we finally reached the booking counter, we got the bad news that the flights to Europe are either getting cancelled or delayed because of bad weather.
Our Virgin Atlantic flight #VS28 was supposed to leave at 6:05pm today but due to snow in Europe (esp. in London) its departure was postponed to Dec 19, 12:05am (6 hr delay). That really sucked big time. Anyways, Komala had packed some stuffed parathas and so we decided to have that for dinner around 7:15pm. Subsequently, we had to kill another 4+ hours at the airport before the flight departure. I was playing around with my iPhone for quite sometime and finally I was exhausted by around 10:30pm and I started dozing off.
Finally, we got the call to board the flight around 11:15pm or so. We got into the plane and finally the plane took off at 12:05. The scheduled time of landing was pushed from 7:05am to around 12:50pm or so.
The food in the flight was a total shit to say the least. We asked for Hindu Vegetarian Meal but what we got was some Chicken Curry. Komala did not even see that. She was almost going to take a bite on it but when I pointed out at what the label read, she stopped. Then we got it replaced by totally vegetarian food which contained some crappy pasta which we did not care about. So, I ate just the fruits and then ate the rest of the Aalu Parathas (potato stuffed Indian bread) Komala had brought. I cannot forgive these British guys for this arrogance. They have known about our culture during their 200 years of their autocratic rule and don't tell me they don't know what Hindu Vegetarian food is all about !!! This really beats me ! Total a'holes ! I will be chewing them up rest of the way from now on. You will get my mouthful criticizing them over and over until you will get fed up because of this incident. Anyway, my respect for English people in general was not good even before but now it is down in the gutter now !
We reached London Gatwick at 12:54pm on Dec 19. Thank God, we got there finally. No problems with immigration for either of us. The English dude at the immigration desk asked a few silly questions to my wife and then let her in after stamping her passport. I, being a US Citizen did not have to go through any of that nonsense. We got to baggage claim area and got our luggage almost right away. Then our task was to find a way to get to Manoj's place by train. My account of our trip will continue in the next edition of this blog ! See you tomorrow !
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