This post is being written after 24 hours of travel and 48 hours of complete rest. The weather as was announced by the cathay pilot is ‘balmy’ with maximum temperatures at 23 degrees and a minimum of 10 degree Celsius. The sun is out here till 2100 hrs here in California during these days, which is greatly surprising for a person like me who sees the sunlight go off at around 1830 hrs in India.
We checked in early at the Sahar on the day of departure (night of departure?). After passing quickly through the customs and immigration checks, it was a long 3 hour wait in the waiting lounge, before we boarded the plane (The time of departure was 0300 hours and we checked in by 0000 hours!!!). I have never before seen an aircraft and so I was taken aback when I saw the wing of the plane from the window!! It was so huge!! Indeed when I first saw the plane, I wondered whether the thing really flies at all!!! But then the pilot taxied down to the runway and after a moment’s halt on the strip, accelerated the plane to such a high speed that I could feel like I left my stomach behind. And then it took off…..I could feel the power of the engines…..could hear its magnificent whistle and could barely believe the sight, when the lights in mumbai city became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared when the plane leveled out at the desired altitude.
The landing at Hong Kong airport was another fantastic experience. Hong Kong looks truly fabulous when seen from above during the time of landing. Its covered by sea on what seems to be, from all the directions. The mountains and other landforms can be seen quite clearly. The plane makes a sort of ‘thud’ when it touches down and then vibrates a lot before coming to a halt and then starts taxiing.
There is this one sight, I will probably never forget. A few hours after takeoff, I opened my window flap and looked outside. Behind the wing of the aircraft I could see total darkness and ahead I could see a halo of morning light being filtered through a portion of the clouds!! It was so thrilling a sight that words cannot describe what I saw.
Hong Kong airport was a marvel. There are a total of 70 exit gates, all in single rows on either sides, between which, are the waiting areas and the escalators. (straight escalators). For people who want to save the trouble of walking; there are these…small carts (called ‘shuttle’) which ferry people from one end of the airport to another. 50$ Hong Kong is the fare from one end to the other. People here have a different accent, than either the British or Americans. The whole building has glass panels so that the airport runways and the aircraft parking areas on either sides can be seen. Its rather fun to see, different aircrafts land and takeoff against a backdrop of the Hong Kong city and the China Sea. The second flight was much boring except the takeoff part. I mostly slept during the second journey. After 12 hours we landed at San Francisco airport My sister and her husband were there to pick us up. I pushed the trolley up to her car in the parking lot. There are a lot of good looking cars and bikes out here. I saw a Ford GTI, Lexus Mountaineers, a lot of Mini Coopers and also a snazzy looking Yamaha bike called RTZ and a Harley Davidson. There were a lot of Toyota corollas and camrys as well. I even saw a Hyundai Accent. The roads here are as beautiful as they can be. Signboards are put up everywhere and the network of roads is very complicated. You got to have a map to move around here. Traffic Discipline is maintained and on the first day a car stopped to let me cross the road!!! My sister told me that pedestrians are given the first priority to cross roads!!! It was even surprising to see signals being followed and people braking completely even where there was just a ‘STOP’ sign. My sister’s house is nice and neat. It has a large garage where the cars are parked. My sister owns a 2 door Honda Civic, a very cute looking car. On the first day we visited a grocery store called as Trader Joe’s. My sister showed me the cheese section. There were atleast 100 different types of cheese…..mozarella, cottage, milk, goat, cheese cubes, gowda, Feta etc etc etc etc.
We also went to the Sunnyvale public library. Here again there were several millions of books and several thousands of CDs and DVDs. Also they were all properly categorized and were easily accessible. Any book could be searched for through a search engine on a computer. The library as everything else here was so big….I almost lost myself in the war books section. A lot more programs have been planned out. I might take my sister’s bicycle tomorrow in the morning and go for a small joyride!!!
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