Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!! Apologies for that but I am in an excellent mood, for tomorrow I am flying home for Christmas. I will be taking my laptop and phone, and am under no illusions that this is a holiday.....I am just looking forward to seeing my family and my little girl!
The office was quiet today. There is stuff to be done but it was not manic. In the evening we decided to go to the new restaurant across from the villa again. I just wanted to show our new fleet manager at least one place outside the villa he could go to and get a beer.
Guess what, it got messy. Well, I say messy, we'd all had plenty to drink by the time we eventually left. We were the last ones in there but, instead of the burly "time gentleman please" you get in the UK before some knuckle-dragger wrenches the half-full glass from your hand that you get back home, these guys just waited....and waited....and waited....until we were finished. Don't get me wrong, it was obvious they wanted us to go by the way that 6 of them hung around us for the last hour. What also gave it away was the lights. They turned them off at various stages, starting with the ones furthest away and then, about every ten minutes or so, they would turn off the next farthest bank of lights and so on. Of course, we knew they wanted to go, but we just didn't care is the honest truth.
Eventually we gave in and went our separate ways. A quick glance at my watch tells me it is gone midnight and that it wasn't worth going to bed because there was a car picking me up in one and a half hours to take me to the airport. What else was there to do except drink more beer in that case?
So I said my goodbyes, wished everyone a happy Christmas and made my way to the airport. This time I was prepared for the throng that haunts Shamshabad airport at silly o'clock in the morning and it did not phase me.
What did freak me out was the security. Not that it had been beefed up following the Mumbai attacks, or the slow pace in which that build up happened, but the whole passport checking thing. Just when you think the locals cannot produce anymore Indian stereotypes the man checking my passport pulls one out of the top drawer. He checks my photo, then looks up at me, back down at my photo, back at me, again with the photo, then back at me (repeat ad infinitum). I then waded in with my second Hindi phrase that i had learnt and simply said "Tikay?". Granted that only means "OK" so it's not that impressive but it was enough for him to stop what he was doing, look up, and say "yes sir, have a nice trip".
The rest of my trip was quite uneventful to be honest. I slept through most of it because I was so tired. I did manage to perk up as soon as I landed though. The adrenaline rushed through me as I scythed a frontiersmans path though the rabble to get off the airplane and too my waiting family. Before I could get there though I had to face my nemesis....
I can jump out of a plane at 13000feet with a smile on my face, I will often look in amazement and wonder off some very high buildings, the assault course on Krypton Factor was an ambition of mine until they cancelled the show so why, tell me why, can I not go through the green channel at an airport without sweating? I seem to, without knowing, rip off my usual looks and features and replace them with my latex "international drug smuggler" mask. I don't know why I do this, I just know that I do and that is why I got stopped. "Come over here sir" came the monotonous voice. It was quite clear to me that the excitement and eagerness that may have once accompanied those words, from what may have been once a keen and eager young customs officer, had probably departed along with his looks, his hair and I would suspect, his wife. I got asked where I had come from? What business I had there? Where I lived? Who I was?....and so on (all this for someone who was carrying 200 cigarettes and a bottle of champagne). I couldn't help but think, whilst he was grilling me, there was probably a couple of albanians slipping through in whatever suitcase they were being wheeled along inside!!
Still, I am home now and that is what matters. I will probably leave blog now until I return to India so I would like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas. Have a good one everybody :-)
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