Hello california again.

I left office and immediately had the feeling that there is a lot of packing left. Travelling to faraway places requires packing and no matter how well planned your 'packing schedule' it always leaves something to be desired, at the last moment. So as usual before I left home to catch the san francisco flight, there were a lot of things to be done, bought, and packed. My bag had been packed and repacked and rerepacked before finally leaving the house at around 10:30 PM. There wasnt much traffic on the road as a result of which we reached early, checked in early and got bored early sitting in the waiting lounge near the departure gate. Anyway, the airport is full of shops and eateries and I had a nice time watching expensive liquor bottles of the finest brands on display, chunky watches with prices so chunky they make you feel faint !! Finally the boarding announcement was made and we got into the flying machine. I had a window seat. No matter how many times, I have sat in a plane, I never fail to feel amazed at the size of the aircraft and at the fact that something this huge even flies at all !!!
The plane took off, the mumbai lights went smaller and smaller and finally disappeared. I mostly slept and ate through the first flight. An eventful flight it was. The landing was in foggy conditions and only when we were very close to the ground did I see the water of the south china sea. The landing was quite soft nevertheless.
At hong kong airport, we had starbucks coffee and me and dad had a great time doing some window shopping. The Hong Kong airport is huge and has a view of the airport runways, the sea and the Hong Kong city. I took videos of aeroplanes taking off and taxing. There was this sardarji who met us at the airport. He was going by the same flight that was taking us to san francisco. He was a religious preacher and the gurdwara committee in US had invited him to preach. He looked like a leader of the Akali Dal party and I came to know that this fellow had travelled to places like England and Canada and amazingly, did not know how to speak English. He knew only hindi. I filled up his emigration form for him during the second flight.
The second flight was as normal as the first one....except for the turbulence near Mt Fuji where the seat belt sign was turned on and remained on for atleast an hour. This was bad, as I needed to pee badly. After the seat belt sign finally turned off, I got up from my seat and immediately realised, I wasnt the only one with a full bladder. Lot of people wanted to pee, and it was another 15 minutes before I finally relieved myself having moved ahead in the queue!!!
I watched the hindi movie, 'blue' and slept. No one who has watched blue would have managed not to sleep after it !!
I listened to some music after that and played games on the entertainment centre. Like all of my home PCs, the entertainment centre produced a software error and crashed when I started a game !!! I called the attendant and he got it reset for me !!!
We landed in san francisco in bright sunshine and a pleasant 18 degrees celcius. The emigration interviewer asked me........
Interviewer: Why are you here?
Me: To visit my sister, she lives here in sunnyvale.
Interviewer: So what more are you going to do apart from visiting her? Sit home and watch TV?
Me: hahaha....no I am going for some sightseeing as well.....san fran and some other places like vegas mebbe.
He asked me some other routine questions as well and then stamped his emigration stamp on my US visa. We took our baggages and came out of the airport area. My sister was there to pick us up. The journey had ended well and apart from a huge nap in the afternoon there were no 'jet lag' effects.
We celebrated my niece's first birthday with a small function on the 18th April where I met many of my sister and her husband's colleagues and friends. They are very nice people.
Right now, we are planning our sightseeing schedule. I have been out on the bicycle to some local stores and am having fun playing with my one year old niece. Will keep updated.