My recent trip to Bangalore

Recently, I had chance to visit Bangalore after 11 long years. My flight was suppose to reach at around 8.40 PM and I must say I was little bit worried because it was night and my destination was about 50 kms from the airport. Not to mention I was flying in AirIndia since it was an official trip. I kind of had a love hate relationship with AirIndia. When I was in US, I even fought with some travel agents to book tickets in AirIndia despite their warnings. But, lately since it is mandatory for us to travel airIndia, my love for the airlines has vanished. My last Lucknow trip was memorable since I ended up coming in the majestic dreamliner, that was nice. But this time, what surprised me was the timing and professionalism of the airIndia staff. It was just about right. They started off at the right time, served food and were very well behaved. The best thing about the majestic maharaja, was the leg space and passage space. Indigo airline on the other hand, is extremely narrow and when the person in front of you bends back for sleeping, you gasp for breath. Another thing I noticed was a lot of Passengers of Nepal origin from Kolkata to Bangalore and vice versa – was there a pattern? Don’t know whatever may be the reason.

Now coming back to my airport to guest house trip. It was more than pleasant and I must say I would not miss US for this. There are KSRTC cabs from the airport, and you get an easy ride through the employees helping you to get into the cabs. The cabs are uniformly sized and very well maintained. The roads were almost built like highways of any other developed country. I passed through Hebbal, where I lived once upon a time, but I failed to notice anything that was there before. This place has completely changed for better. Kudos to the government!! I was put up in NAL guest house which is right next to Leela Palace. Guess what the room rent is just Rs. 25/- per night. The room was big with 3 beds, large enough for a whole family. That is the advantage of being a govt. servant I thought. Meals, tea and everything else is subsidized.

Finally I went to work on 10^th  Jan 2013 to cMMACS lab that is located in a place called Belur (just 5 kms from the guest house). I took an auto, and it costed just Rs. 50/-. This time I liked everything about Bangalore. Just wondering what it will take to replicate this model in other cities. My new found home Kolkata needs to learn lessons from this.

I could do some stuff in the institute, but because there is no ssh and sftp access, file transfer is a big pain. There were JRFs and SRFs, that I was put to work with to get my installation done. Although they are extremely good, but they don’t talk. That is the big problem! Here in India people know their business but don’t know how to present their work. I had very tough time communicating with those folks. But nevertheless, could do some work. I was trying to compare them with their US counterparts. They in this place will be so pompous and talk so much..