anyway, looking forward to the belgium trip. i dont’ really know much about belgium and i’m not sure how much i’ll get to learn or see. i’m pretty sure that the folks i’m teaching are from dubai so i don’t really expect them to be able to tell me much about the country.

oh, one other exciting thing about travel. i’m trying an experiment. i dumped all my work files to my usb stick and i’m not brining along my work dell. instead i’m bringing my trusty ibook. ah, how i love you so. . . . this way i’ll be able to better edit my pictures and such. i think i mentioned a while back that i just never quite got gimp to work as well. i mean, i knew how to use it but when i saved images, the quality seemed to suffer. i’m sure there is a way to tweakthe settings but i gave up. so anyway, i get to have my mac with me.

i’m planning on brining back chocolate and i hear the coffee is good too. i don’t know that i’ll get to bring back any beer but i’ll make sure to drink some while i’m there.

delta sucks my left nut and united takes the right

i’m home now. woot. say what you want about the usa but i like living here. sure we make a lot of mistakes and we aren’t the best neighbors but damn, i like drinking tap water. i like that traffic laws mean something.

the flight back was uneventful for the most part. though i did meet some nice ladies from the MN zoo that had just gone on safari in africa. the trip from pune to mumbai however, was . . . unpleasant.

when i arrived in mumbai, my assigned driver from the company didn’t show up so i hired my own cab. he didn’t seem to know where the hotel in pune was but we found it ok. from the expressway to the hotel (because it doesn’t go all the way) took maybe half an hour tops. but i don’t think it even took that long. it’s hard to say for sure though because it was 2am local time and i had basically been up for 24 hours. still, i thought that was pretty good for a guy who didn’t know the city we were going to. i was happy and slept well.

now, fast forward to the trip back to the airport. the company i was working with made sure that i had a driver this time and were adamant about me taking their car. ok, fine. this is a driver local to pune. he couldn’t find the expressway. there is one expressway that comes into pune. he couldn’t find it. took an hour and a half and we had to stop and ask for directions. stopping for directions also meant a toilet break (which means peeing in the bushes near the road). when he found the expressway, we got on and then he had to turn around because we were going the wrong way.

so at a point when we should have been in the car for half an hour and i have pretty much lost faith in my driver. oh and by this time, it’s clear that he doesn’t really speak english. plus, i realize now that i really gotta take a leak. all of a sudden, he doesn’t understand the word for toilet and i spend the next two hours thinking about whether or not i should pee in his car. i mean, i’m starting to think that he won’t get me to the airport on time so who cares if i piss him off (heh) but on the other, maybe he will get me there after all. so, i hold it. hard.

so, we make it to mumbai in about an hour of hair pin turns with tires screaching and the windows rolled down so i’m full of desiel fumes and dust and then exit the express way. awesome, now we’re going to get to the airport and i’ll still be comfortably early. maybe i misjudged this guy.

no, i didn’t misjudge this guy. we spend the next hour and a half driving around these little ass roads in mumbai in the dark. and whenever i ask him how much further or if he knows where he’s going, his only reply is “30 more minues.” so, he stops and asks guys for directions every 20 minutes or so and also refuses to show me where a toilet is. finally, after i’ve almost totally excepted that i’ll be spending the night in mumbai (in the nicest hotel i can find and charging it in) i decide that the only way out is to make it happen. i start looking everywhere for buildings and signs that look familiar. i see a sign that says “Sahara” that looks familiar. the airport is called Sahara Airport, or something like that. so then i keep my eyes peeled for signs and we start seeing some for the airport. i take an active role and just start telling this guy when to turn. which is sort of hard and involves violent pointing because his english is bad.

we finally make it to the airport terminal 2A and i’m only half an hour later than i wanted to be. i wait in a few more lines and as soon as i’m on the plane, i have a nice solid drink. finally.

it occured to me on the drive in this morning that on average, i probably travel twice as fast as they do here. i’m actually kind of looking forward to traffic along 94. it’ll be like a pleasant sunday cruise, comparitively.

it’d be better if i had an internet connection in my room. i could chat with the folks back home. it’s just after 7pm last night there. in a way though i guess it’s kind of a cool that i don’t have a connection. i mean, how often does that happen these days? almost never, that’s how often. i’m always connected, or near enough anyway. and mostly i really like it that way. i find it comforting to know that i’m connected in such a way to the rest of the world. it feels good to know that i can reach out to the rest of the world at any time when i have a good connection.

still, there’s things you can’t get while connected like that. you sort of look at things differently when you’re alone. first off, it’s much quieter. when i’m traveling for work, i frequently don’t talk to anyone when i’m not at the client site. i might say “thank you” to room service but that’s about it. for a guy that likes to talk as much as i do, that’s a weird thing, to be quiet for so long. you have a lot more time to think about thingsand sometimes i do, sometimes i just watch tv. (india is nice because they have many english channels). still, there’s just more time, more room for self-doubt, out here. the nice thing is that it does teach you that you can do it. i dunno, maybe i’m being a bit melodramatic (i’ve been accused of that before, certainly), but that’s kind of another side effect of not having anyoneto talk to.

well, i suppose i should get to a couple of the things that were keeping me awake. if only i could remember what they were. . . .

ps. those fuckers in room service didn’t replenish my supply of nescafe. . . black tea i guess it is. damn, but i have like 8 non-dairy creamers. woot.