Day 2: Still at Brussels!

Went back to sleep and woke up by 8! Went back in the queue to get some food … broke the line – no one figured out I did.. got food in an hour and a half what would have taken easily 3.5 hours! Ate a hearty breakfast, and M and me went back to sleep! Woke up by 10 and called my sister up – poort thing did not sleep a wink figuring out what the hell to do! Checked once again – the morons at Kingfisher haven’t done shit.. for all the customer service crap that Dr. Vijay Mallya spews out while taking off in a video .. we were left to do our own jazz!

So my sis then asked to check if there were flights from Brussels to other airports .. there is no information desk in the area where we were been shepherded like cattle (Damn.. Shashi Tharoor should’ve been on this expedition – He would have given a whole new spin to the phrase “cattle class”!!). Asked my sis to check if there are indeed any airports that are actually operating out of London and poor thing did check and get back that Manchester and South Hampton airports were indeed functioning, she booked M and self on the FlyBe Brussels to South Hampton flight at 5:55 PM! Thought we had to get the tickets from the Brussels Airline counter and stood in the queue for about 2 hours! Standing the queue gave me perspective on why jobs are getting outsourced to India! It takes 15 minutes to book an international ticket in India at the airport counter (did that last year for our Bali trip where makemytrip screwed up for us!) Finally after I hit the counter, get to know that they do not give flybe tickets and that we need to print on our own! Fortunately, the Brussels airport has enough Internet terminals with printers that allowed us to do that. My sis meanwhile (bless her soul) had even called up the Brussels airport authority and checked the gate where we had to egt in the flight! Came back, checked the gate and finally had the first hot meal in about 28 hours at the Bar! Typing this while M is passed out on the table and waiting for the announcement of the flight! Meanwhile, it is snowing here in Brussels and is tremendously pretty looking at the concourse with the planes parked all over! Meanwhile, no word from Kingfisher and even Air India had arranged for their passenger to be moved to Madrid and Jet Airways arranged for transit visas for their passengers and tickets on EuroStar! Talk about customer service! Korean Air, meanwhile, was the ultimate in customer service. They don’t have a hub in Brussels – they actually flew in a crew from somewhere so that they can keep their passengers updated on the status on a hourly basis! KingFisher for all its 5 star experience is shit!

Waiting now for the Flybe flight so that we can start our holiday in earnest! Well.. Flybe also got cancelled! back to the drawing board! Checking a few other options!

Meanwhile the Kingfisher guys showed up and took everyone's passports except ours! :-)

So now we are stuck! Resting for the night at the Brussels airport in a tent bag! :-) Talk about roughing it!

Day 1: Stranded in Brussels

Left early in the morning at 6:30 AM from home in Bangalore to catch the Kingfisher flight to Mumbai at 9:05. The flight was over 15 minutes late and landed in Mumbai at 11:40 AM. Kingfisher connecting Flight from Mumbai to London Heathrow was at 1:05 PM. As we were obviously late, the airlines arranged a bus for us to catch the flight directly at Mumbai. Connected the flight without much of a hassle.

Supposed to land at London Heathrow (LHR) at 6:30 PM London time and we heard an announcement in the flight that London Heathrow has been snowed out and the pilot will try to land at Manchester instead! Well, we had already heard that London is having the coldest winter in over 30 years so that was something to be expected! Crossed our fingers and prayed.. well, an hour after the first announcement, we heard that all the airports in London are closed and that all the flights are getting diverted to either Schiphol (Amsterdam) or Brussels. As luck would have it, ours got diverted to Brussels. I had never seen Brussels so was mildly excited. Landed in Brussels and were in the flight stuck for an hour and a half when the Brussels Airport Authority came on line and told us that they are expecting a lot of flights into Heathrow to be diverted into Brussels and we disembarked.

The Brussels airport authority was kind enough to provide us with Food Coupons worth Euro 13 per person and then started the troubles! Brussels never anticipated the kind of a problem this whole snowstorm was going to ensue. There was just 1 restaurant open at Brussels and we had to stand in a queue for about 4 hours before we got food! Getting food was pure mayhem. The restaurant am sure had made more money that one day compared to a whole year.. There probably were close to 3500 people whose flights got stranded in Brussels. Had dinner, slept on bedsheets given by Kingfisher on the floor of Brussels airport at about 5AM in the morning. Up by 6, to try figure out what the plan of action is! No representative by Kingfisher.. no one even knows that Kingfisher is an airline.. Right royal mess we are in!

Uk Holiday - 18th December 2010 - 3rd January 2011

Off to the UK for a holiday.. dreaming about a white Christmas in UK.. Given that we just completed our home improvement project (what a bitch that was!) we finally did manage some time to get Visas and buy tickets!!! Extremely excited about heading off there and capping a fantastic year..

Global Economic Crisis

Hell – it has been a bloody long time since I have penned anything of note.. so here goes, my two cents on the current headache that all the governments in the world are trying to fix..

Well – first and foremost – I do not understand it at all..

Yes – I get the fact that this was precipitated by greedy and over-enthusiastic banks and the housing crisis…. but what is the fix for this mess that we all are into – most of us have been spectators who have become involved unintentionally?

Governments all over the world are trying to put more money into people’s pockets by reducing key lending rates so that consumers who have started penny pinching to get back to the market and spend some money. Now this money is what most corporations need for R&D and for any new products that hit the market. However, if you read any business news papers or websites, it will probably scream that some corporation or another has frozen salaries or stopped hiring!

Isn’t this counter-intuitive? Governments are trying to get more money/credit into the system and corporations are doing exactly the opposite? No matter how much money the government puts into the system, if corporations decide not to give salary increments to their employees – how will consumers hit the shops?

Call me naive – but I don’t get this at all – shouldn’t it be in the corporations’ benefit that people have money with them – it will help necessitate the want to buy their products and therefore will boost their share value – which goes on to satisfy the shareholders because the stock value will go up – no matter what because the customers are spending money buying up products which means they will consistently exceed market expectations!

Yes – I agree this recession will go a long way to get people to save.. but should this not be corporate responsibility to ensure that any nation’s economy does not reach recessionary levels!

Does this make sense?

The glorious uncertainty of sport

Well – What a match it was last night between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal!
Superlatives flowed so easily by Vijay Amritraj who himself was, apparently (only because I did not see him play), very stylish and sublime.
This match was by far the greatest sporting match that I had witnessed, even if it was on television.

Superb, supreme, mind-boggling, mind-blowing, awesome, delicate, deft, sublime are but a few words that come to mind! BBC has been showing the McEnroe versus Borg match in the rain delay and I think this will put an end to that.

It was not the fact that almost everyone was expecting an epic, but the fact that it became one as soon as it started was what shocked me! While expectations are one thing, we have very often seen one opponent demolishing the other in any kind of sport where there is such intense rivalry, most recently between these two protagonists themselves in Paris at the French Open.

We as spectators of the rivalry that, I hope, will survive in the years to come and hopefully only get stronger, have been privileged to have been able to watch this spectacle between these two tremendous gladiators. At one point in the 4th set, it was impossible to choose between either of them. This is, by very far, the best match that I have had the pleasure to watch. And boy, was I glad!

I am also not sure of the tag that Rafa had been called by – underdog, pretender etc. Pretender – who is anyone kidding? Pretension is only by mere mortals who want to unseat an emperor. Rafa has earlier at Paris, demolished Federer so systematically that sometimes, one tends to be reminded of Andy Roddick, who gets so mentally harassed when he is playing Federer, is Federer getting a taste of his own medicine?

Who won the match was incidental and both the players will have to live with this fact that they will always be talked about “that match at the Wimbledon finals”. Roger has to love with the fact that he did indeed come second on his favourite surface.

It will now get even more interesting that since Rafa has mastered this particular surface and has this piece of silverware in his cupboard on a surface few Spaniards win on, it is Hard Courts that he will begin to target for the other 2 silverware that is missing – As Roger said in the award ceremony in 2007 at the same hallowed ground when he won – this kid will win everything there is to win. He is young and strong and mentally so focused that he will have to bear the burden of spectators like me hoping for a career slam, if not the Grand Slam.

Reams will be written of this match by people more accomplished by people who can certainly write much better that I can ever claim to, but this was too good to miss out penning about.

Oh – what I would give to be at the ring-side of another epic of Roger vs. Rafa at Wimbledon…..

Wishing both of them for more riveting contests in the future.

Thank you Rafa and Roger for giving me and the other teeming millions, the pleasure of this stupendous bout.