Trip de Switzerland !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am on marathon call for next 5 days and I think this would a good time to do some updates to my out dated blog :)
Mind you, I am updating this when the call get stalled due to ‘Technical issue’ :)

Now, one lady is looking for the latest version of docs she has to walk through in the meeting – I think folks are well prepared for this discussion – ok no something I will be interested to update in my blog.
So were was I ? I was here last time when I set my foot back to my home land and I was saying I like – Life @ TVM.

I had been busy with so many thing happening around me – work wise and personal wise. Three of my good friends got hitched in one or other way in last three months – one still left for the hunt for the better half just like me. Got into a umpteen project which had been written un doable and I took it up as it had the silver line of working from my home town written all over it. I took up the challenge and had been in office 9 to 9 every day including Saturdays …all I got was kind of 12 Sundays in 3 months but I think it was worth the effort. Finally signed off the stuff and got a – more than average sign off for the assignment. Enjoyed a lot with a very fresh and committed team. One thing I learned here was the folks in my team – most of them in the age group 23 to 25 was much more matured than what I was doing at the same age. I think the generation gap is now shrinking to a gap of 4 years. These folks are already having plans of when to quit, when to get hitched and what they want to go after – after being in hardly one or two years in the industry these folks are pretty good at what they are doing and what they want to do! I hardly knew where I was headed when I had two years of experience under my belt. Leaving the work part, I was lucky enough to travel to one of the most expensive and most beautiful places on the world – Switzerland!!! More of a business trip but had fun @ Switzerland

Travel de Switzerland :

Stayed for 14 days, had only three days to spare as the business meeting were tightly scheduled. I had my flight Via Dubai to Switzerland. I had a three hour stop over in Dubai which I happily slept , the flight was good other than the vegetarian meals I got. I never ordered this and later I got to know that the meals was misplaced for me and the one who ordered was my friend who was two rows ahead of me, and this left him to be happy with some fruits for an 8 hour flight. The Zurich airport was smaller than I had in my mind for being such a tourist location and same with the Zurich city. We had been put up in a business suite in a hotel in Zurich city.

About the city Zurich: it is not as neat as I expected, there was lot of construction going on which might be one reason for the dust. The streets were mostly empty on week days by 7 or 8 pm and night life also was dull. One more thing I learned was Swedish German is a different language from German and some one who speaks German cannot talk Swedish German. Also every one doesn’t understand English :) . So if you are headed to Switzerland, get used with words like ‘ Danke’, Mercy and Good Morningk – with the German accent. The total population of the country is well under the total population of my state ‘ Kerala’. People are good but not ‘ smiley’ people like folks from US. They are more of folks from France / UK where they don’t smile until there is a reason. Public smoking is not an issue here and every other guy / women smoke here- may be the climate is the excuse these smokers cling on to! Cycle is one of the most common transportation used here and we have folks cycling to our customer location on suits. The trams here are too good and it looks to be the affordable transportation to everywhere. We had our chuck cut out for cabs but even with a fat allowance, money was not enough to pay cab charges . For any one who is still tied to Indian food, there are lot of Indian and Srilankan restaurants in Zurich. I was amazed to find out that there was a restaurant named – Kerala restaurant and one conversation when we were about to leave convinced me that it’s a restaurant owned by a malayale

Owner : (phone) : Hello
From the other : ….
Owner : Elaam kazhinju, njan iceum vellavum ready aaki vachelkam, inghu ethiyal mathi ( everything is over, I will be ready with Ice and water)
From the other end : ….
Owner : urappalle

I guess this was conversation regarding a drinking get together the same evening. Malayale never changes – even in Switzerland and falls back to the tag line ‘ inetha parypady’ ( Whats today program?)

I heard that when a new building has to be build, there has to be a approval plan from the locals on the building appearance which will fall in place to the neighboring buildings and that’s why the streets look so much similar. Also they have some amazing building all over. The spider sculpture is really big when you go near to it. The climate ( it was summer) was around 25 to 30 degree Celsius. It was raining almost once in three days but it was never so cold not much hot. I think it justifies why we didn’t find a bigger went in our room for our air conditioner. Out of 26 channels we had in our hotel only one was English and rest was German / Swedish. Also it was a little surprise to find out that our hotel and another one near by doesn’t have a complimentary breakfast even after charging quiet expensively for a two bed suite. This was more of a normal thing in any inns in US! We were lucky to find that lady Gaga performed on the ground right in front of our hotel. We were roaming around and the song sounded familiar. A peak over the fence, we were surprised to see lady Gaga right across the fence performing for a group of half drunk crowd! As I didn’t had any pop song fans with me, we didn’t bother to venture in!- Lady gag looked very small when compared to the pictures I saw from her albums. We experimented with our dinner and played safe with our lunch as there was a online order delivery available with Best curry – 10 franks lunch – Indian vegetarian lunch :)

We had couple of Mexican diner, one Italian, three Sri Lankan and rest was either Pizzas at hotel or Indian restaurants around. I gained almost 4 KGs in two weeks – blame it on eating out completely for two weeks.

Ok, Left it about our weekend on my last update
The weekend, we had it planned quiet good and thankfully it was a long weekend. For Saturday we roamed around Zurich city, Zurich lake and some local mall. One thing I found every where was Swiss army knife and lots of cheap – really good wine. We took a local Zurich lake – boat trip for around one hour and had a good site of many buildings. It was curios that the boat restricts, food, smoke and ice cream. I didn’t understand the difference between food and ice cream :)
On second day we headed to the Alps – Junfrau ‘Top of Europe’. It was more of a 6 hour journey one way and spend almost 2 and half hour on the top. The journey had two hour of bus ride, a on hour stop over at Interlaken and another 3 hours on a Cog wheel train to the top of Europe. More updates and pics on next update :)................

American Adventures............

American Adventures

It was another boring 16 hour journey, over conflicting time zones to reach the dream of an IT professional ...USA. I had mixed thoughts in mind, when I had my first step in US. The major thing going on my mind was, how I am going to find out the address that I printed out two days back from my E mail. There are two addresses, one mobile number and two home numbers. But I had my own list of problems.


1. My flight reaches around 6 in the Morning, US timing. Will the guy whose number I have will pick up a call 6:00AM in the morning that too from an unfamiliar number where incoming costs you in US.


2. What if he doesn't pick up? Will he pick up the LAN number?


3. My connection flight is in one hour and if I miss him in this one hour, all the people whose contacts I have will be in their office and I will not be able to contact any one.


4. I don't have coins to make a call and I searched the whole Navag airport for a phone machine which accepts dollar bills.


Finally, I decided to buy a coffee and get some change. Got change for three dollars. But my first two dollars where eaten by the machine because I forgot to press '1' before the number I had dialed. +1 is dialed in US for out of state calls.
But the lady luck shined on me as I got the person pick up my call next time. He was kind enough to tell me how to reach office and get in touch with him. The driver of the cab I took from airport to his office let me use his mobile to call my friend and get the keys to his house.

But I forgot to give him a fat TIPS. I gave him a nominal tip of 1 dollar where you have to keep it at least to 10% if you are satisfied with his service

I had a little problem in the leasing office, as the lady @ leasing office didn’t allow me to get into the apartment. I had to call my friend, to convince the lady to let me into the apartment. Then the numbering problem! If you are not aware I have a strange problem of not remembering any numbers lately. I had a sharp memory but these days I struggle with almost everything which is lengthier than four digits. My friend had given me the code number to open the gate to get into the apartment. But as usual I forgot, but my instinct helped me to type it in. Even today I don’t remember the 6 digit number to press to enter but I enter it correctly when ever I reach that particular place.

The rest of the day was like I had six peg of vodka. It was all the sleep and tiredness from a 16 hour travel. But I had to keep my self awake to fight the jet lag. The very next day I had to kick off my work in full swing. So the formula was like If I sleep today, I will have to sleep at least for another three weeks. I managed to keep my chin up until 5:15 pm, that’s the last time I remember reading my system clock.
My adventures continued on the next day with a train episode. Every place I had visited, I had problems with the directions for the first few days. Here also it happened. From my place I had to catch a bus to stop E7, and then catch a train to Five Points which is the central station and then a train to N2. So the funda looks very easy. I travel from east to centre, then to north. So while coming back, it will be travel to south until I reach Five points and head towards East.

But on the first day when I traveled back, this was not the case. I reached Five points central station and I got confused whether I need to take towards east or west. To put it clearly, I have to go to E7 but which train will take there was the question. There were more than 5 sign boards saying east bound and west bound, but some how I managed to avoid all those and get into a west bound train. After the first station itself I realized that I am traveling in the exact opposite direction. After a while I realised, any way this train will go until the end and come back to east. I had a good hard sleep for next 25 minutes. By the time the same train traveled to the end of west, came back to central station and traveled to E5 station.

The next adventure was with the coin washing machine in the washing centre. My friend had told me on about 1.75$, 2.75$ and 4.75$ washing machines. He also told me to use the smallest one as I had very less cloths. Any way after I went to the washing area, some how I found only 4.75 $ machine and wasted almost 3$ on that because I had very less cloths. The people around me was staring at me putting so less cloths in so big machine. My ego or my ignorance kept me away from asking where the right machine is. But now I found out the 1.75$ machine.


I have a strange gut feeling that lots and lots of Mis-adventures are lined up my way…No worries ....enjoying each day by being the dumbest.

A night in Volvo :)

The air conditioner was switched off inside the bus. Felt like I'm inside a boiler. Time was 3:30 and the bus is parked under direct sunlight in front of Sangeetha College. I gave attender my ticket and he gave me the boarding pass. I took it and the seat number was 40. I looked at him in disbelief. I asked him whether I'll get another seat. He said he'll try, be happy with the last seat in the corner for time being. I recalled my dad's words" seat is conformed but no seat number".I tried to push-in my bag to the overhead rack but it was too big. Usual i managed to push it in. So i have to keep it on my lap. I sat at the rear end of the bus wondering where I'll be tomorrow.
The passengers where a lot different from the usual bunch. I spotted two foreigners in the third seat, a black in the seat in front of me and one gal and her mom have a look of "chinkes" but dressed up like Europeans. There was one more fair lady in seat number 26 keeping all her luggage on the next seat. She already had a fight with the bus attender when he said , the seat is booked for someone else and the lady cannot keep luggage inside the bus. But she's tough I guess!

The aircondition was too cold when bus got started but I had my overcoat. The fun began as the guy in front of the tough fair lady moved his seat a little back so that he can sleep. The lady was having her leg inbetween the seat. As the guy moved it back, she began to scream out of pain. No body screams like that for a small thing like this. Then the culprit( the guy in the front seat)
asked " Mam, what happened ?"
(Fair Lady ) FL: Why did u do that ? U broke my leg U U :^*@ &*^^!!!!
(Culprit ) C: Sorry mam, I didn't see u had ur leg inbetween
FL: I'm not gonna leave u, U %&$#@ Now saying sorry to me AUUH my leg
C: turned back and said in Malayalam ," Do anyone scream like this for getting their leg inbetween two cushioned seat!!!!"
Then happened the most incredible thing, the Fair lady went to the bus cleaner and complained about the culprit. Then she came back and startd to make calls, first one was to one of her friend in Indian Express News paper, then one call to some Ministers's secretary.
Call was all about "The misbehaviourof a keralite to a foreigner :(".

The culprit had a red face and he didn't know what to do. Once the fair lady stopped talking, the other two chinkees joined her and they started to curse people around them. The major discussion was about the illiteracy of Indians, about our manners ( according to them , we don't have any).

Most frustrating thng that I saw there was no one in the bus was willing to comment or to take part in this heated discussion. They all have their own things to bother and the innocent fellow was left without any sleep until the bus stopped for dinner. I was little worried about the culprit and invited him to take the seat next to me. Fortunately the seat was empty until we finished our journey and the fair lady was happy with the leg space for her when no one was seated in front of her. Fir this journey she occupied three seats in effect, one to put her luggage, one for her and the one in front of her :) Luckly as we were in the last row of the bus, no one was there to put their leg inbetween our seat ;)