Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

As promised here’s a brief writeup on my flight to the US and what I saw during it…

This time I flew in Business class on Aeroflot because due to the late date tickets in Business class in Aeroflot were cheaper that tickets in Economy class on other airlines. So mom and dad dropped me at the airport at ~ 1 am, and I walked up to the check-in desk where this one guy asked me if I was a business class passenger and when I told him yes, he told me to follow him and really speeded up my checking by letting me bypass the queue. Then I got the pass for the first class lounge in Delhi which was nice. They have complementary food and drinks over there so I had a couple of sandwiches and then after waiting for a while went through security and waited for the flight to board. They changed the departure gate a couple of times but then they finally let us board.

The flight was ok, as they didn’t have any in flight entertainment for some reason. So I listened to music and read my book. The best part of that flight was the meals. While in the economy class they give you a weird looking/tasting meal, in the Business class they literally give you a Five course meal and the service was awesome. Basically as soon as I sat down I was offered champagne with unlimited refills. I had a glass and then switched to orange juice and I drank a lot of it. Basically anytime during the meal if my glass was empty they would refill it without my asking.

Landed in Moscow and had a 5 hour halt over there.. Moscow airport has this weird rule that they only give you access to the Business class lounge two hours before the flight so since I had about 5 hours to kill I spent 3 hours roaming around the airport and reading a book and when I finally got access to the lounge I was hungry again so had sandwiches and juice. They had a cyber cafe also but the internet connection was down for some reason.

Then I boarded on the flight to NY on time and we departed pretty much on time. The service again was awesome and this time they even had in-flight entertainment. The thing was that they didn’t have the standard LCD displays mounted on the back of the seat, they gave out these portable players which had the movies/stuff stored on it so you could lie down and still watch the movies. I saw V for Vendetta. The seats recline to ~20-30 degrees from the floor and are flat so it was easy to sleep. They even had power sockets where I could plug in my laptop and work on it.

I arrived on time in NY and since I was in business class I missed most of the rush at the immigration and customs. Surprisingly even my bags arrived on time and without getting lost. In total it took me less than 35 mins from the time I got off the plane to the time I was out of the airport.

It was an interesting trip, and if the tickets didn’t cost so much I would fly business class again. But prob not Aeroflot.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

Arrived in one piece in the US.
Details on my trip when I am not so tired/sleepy.

– Suramya

Don’t remember who exactly said this but its true. Friends are always close to a persons heart no matter how far apart you might be at the time. These past few weekends have been really awesome because I got the chance to meet some old friends some of whom I didn’t meet for over 8 years.

On the 19th we had a get together at Yash’s place for AFBBS (Air Force Bal Bharati School) 12C 1998 batch. This get together was planned at the last meet we had where seven of us met at TGIF for lunch. This time 12 of us showed up (Plus +1 for Nora) which was a big achievement as it was the biggest get-together for our batch ever. We spent the whole time talking, catching up with each other’s lives and generally having fun. We were up talking till I think about 1:30 am thats when every one left as they had to drive back home…

The pics from that party are at: http://photos.suramya.com/GetTogether_19thAug2006/, I will be putting them up in the photogallery sometime soon. (No really I will)..

Since this party was so much fun and there were a couple of people who couldn’t make it to Noida we decided to have another one at Ankur’s place in GK-I on the 26th. This party was even better as a lot more people showed up: Ankur, Arundhati, Aditya, Gautam, Gaurang, Kashif, Kunal, Praveen, Samarth, Tarini, Me, Vivek and Yash along with Rahul (Tarini’s fiance) and Parul (Vivek’s fiance). So it was a lot more fun. This time we managed to convince Samarth to sing for us (Which he did and was pretty good at it), Vivek and Parul to dance for us. Once they danced all of us also decided to join in, and it was surprising that Ankur’s neighbors didn’t come knocking asking us to turn the music down.

The pics from this party are at: http://photos.suramya.com/GetTogether_26thAug2006

Apart from school friends I have also gotten in touch with friends I had in 8th standard (~1994) and hadn’t seen/spoken to since. Ricki and Saurabh are two such people I have gotten in touch with on Orkut after having no interaction at all with them since 1994. Thats over 12 years!

Lets see if we can meet up some time…

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya