I remember reading somewhere like - The journey to a destination is more enjoyable than the destination itself. Writeup today is something revolving around it.
I for the first time was about to step out of my country. I did not have enough time to prepare myself for this trip......and so I had the feeling that I would miss out somethings... But yes, I had to start my journey on the date my company wanted me to.....there was no other go... It was definitely a mixture of all feelings.....sad that I had to leave my dear hubby alone and happy that I would be seeing something new..... Anyways, will not get into the details of it, as this post is about the journey that I said.
With loads and loads of information from every possible source around, there I was in the airport...all alone. Little nervous and pretending to be confident, I moved along to the baggage checkin counter. A lady standing in front of the counter, smiled and handed over a paper to me.... I smiled back, folded the paper and kept it in my handbag. She also handed me the cabin baggage tag and I promptly attached it to my bags. Got my luggage checked in and was instructed to move to the immigration counter next. There were many queues and I went and stood there, with my boarding pass and passport in my hand. I was pretending to be confident and was looking around....and what do I see...hee hee....ppl are holding their passport, boarding pass and a sheet of paper....form like..... oh oh...i think that lady gave that only.... where did i keep it, did i drop it?....ok its in my bag.....went back, filled it and stood in the queue again and then cleared it and the next baggage checking also fine. Then there was this big seating area where ppl are sitting and waiting.... My flight was at 2:20 in the night. I had my dinner at around 8 that day and had started for the airport...was not able to eat much also with all the thoughts gng on in my head....
It was around 12:3o in the night that i started feeling hungry..... looked around to see what I could eat.....i saw a pizza shop, a cafe shop, some other shops of not much importance to me at that time (ya i mean the book store, the garment store etc etc...). There in the cafe, I saw they were selling fruit bowls too.... dont even ask me how much it cost me.....but ya it was all fresh and good.
I think I wil skip some details here, as it would be of no use to you nor its anything worth remembering for me.
I went and sat in one of the empty chairs......cursing myself for not getting along anything with me to read also........oh god how wil I pass my time....its just 12:45 and I need to wait for atleast an hour more :(
A middle aged gentleman came and sat next to me and said "Hi", introduced his name as some Santosh or something ..forgot now...and working for some company...forgot that also....
"Travelling alone?"
"Hmm"
"Where to?"
"US"
"First time?"
"No" :P
Ya I was behaving like the kid who has been instructed not to talk to strangers....so I told him "Not the first time" :-) But why was he trying to get over - friendly anyways!
Then there were general talks of "This new airport is good na" types....
After sometime...."Ok then its my flight time, got to leave now..... see ya"
Hmm.... clock is stil ticking 1:15...... oh man why isnt the time running now as it does when we are studying for our exams? or when we get up late to go to office?
Few minutes later..... an aunty took the seat next to me....smilingly she said "Hi".
She asked - "Tamil?"
"No aunty Kannada"
"bangalore?"
"haan"
"naan kooda bangalore.....tamilian....kannada artha ...." and she smiled and gestured.... I understood that she can understand kannada.
She said she was travelling alone, for the first time to San Francisco.
"Oh....ok"
She asked me to help me out if needed in the flight as we had the same flight till HongKong and she could not understand or speak english. I checked her tickets and found that our seats were way apart. In any case I told her that I would help her in all possible ways.
After boarding into the flight, I saw her in the HongKong airport only directly. She had her flight 2 hours before mine. Reached HongKong at aroung 11 in the morning, and my next flight was at 4 only. So I had all the time in the world to see the airport leisurely......
Oh god I think I wrote a lot today.... will continue some other day.....
