Hold Open The Glass Door...Please

A piece of news in the paper today, that upset me a lot.

A heart-wrenching scene played out on the tarmac of Mumbai airport on Saturday morning, where an offloaded passenger was seen crying with folded hands, pleading in vain to the commander seated in the cockpit, who refused to take him onboard.
...
"There definitely was an emergency in his situation. Probably, he cannot afford another air ticket. Or it could have to do with the strict service conditions in the Middle-East, wherein he stands to lose his job if he fails to report on a particular day. Or maybe, his visa was to expire. Whatever the reason be, I have never seen someone cry and plead like this," the source added.
...

It is the sense of sheer desperation and helplessness, when a person loses all control and the walls close in.

ps. I don't know who was at fault and who was to blame.

My apologies to everyone who got spam messages from my orkut account with some f00 link. I got some wierd message from a friend of mine due to which messages were sent out to everyone on my friends list as well as subscribed me to random communities in Qatar. And I was wondering since morning what was wrong with this service and why I have been receiving so many friend requests all of a sudden until PowerPork told me what it was all about. blah!

Ok, I am not sure how this works out but from what I could gather from this report, the new airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore are going to charge something between Rs. 675 -1000 (Indian Rupees) every time someone decides to catch a flight from these places. This cost is over and above the "1. Fuel Surcharge + 2. Passenger Service Fee + 3. Air Traffic Congestion Fee" amounting to Rs.2025 that one has to pay as taxes for each ticket bought.

"Hyderabad International Airport Ltd is going to charge Rs 1,000 for international outgoing passengers and Rs 725 for domestic outgoing, while Bangalore International Airport Ltd will levy Rs 955 and Rs 675 for these, respectively. Taxes are over and above these charges."

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I am not based in either of the two cities , but in Pune, which has its own share of wierdness related to air-travel, especially in my case,

First up, there are only three flights out from here that go to Kolkata (my hometown) and all of them are hoppers:

1. Jet Airways : flight out at 5:30 PM, reaches Kolkata at 9:30 PM (via Bombay)
2. Kingfisher: flight out at 5:30 PM, reaches Kolkata at 9:50 PM (via Ahmedabad)
3. Kingfisher ATR: flight out at 2:10 PM, reaches Kolkata at 8:40 PM (via Indore and Raipur)

(Just for the records, #3 always costs around Rs.2000 more than #2 and no one in their right mind would book on that flight for the entire sector. Its an ATR afterall and takes 6 hours!!)

The other way round the timings are like this:
1. Jet Airways : flight out at 6:05 AM, reaches Pune at 10:00 AM (via Bombay)
2. Kingfisher: flight out at 6:45 AM, reaches Pune at 11:00 PM (via Ahmedabad)
3. Kingfisher ATR: flight out at 7:15 AM, reaches Pune at 1:30 PM (via Indore and Raipur)

Add 1:30 hours more to the commute from the Kolkata airport to my home. The morning flights are such timed that one has to wake up at 3 in the morning. I don't know which terminal city in this case is an obscure destination, but given the number of Pune-based, Kolkata bound travellers we travel with from Mumbai (3-4 hours away from Pune by road) its pretty easy to assume that the flights would generally not be empty, if only

1. the prices were not so prohitive and,
2. the timings more convenient

One way fares between Pune-Kolkata starts from Rs.8000, which would be equal to the roundtrip fare between Mumbai-Kolkata.

And lets not even talk about the way the commercial jets take off from and land at this tiny little airport.

Overheard on #fedora-admin last night:

<$nick1> hmm i wonder how wikipedia will handle the power outage in florida <$nick2> $nick1: what? PHP caused a power outage in flordia? * $nick2 goes to tell everone OMG!!1!! <$nick1> yeah too many people were trying to read the "good" articles on wikipedia :) <$nick1> but seriously, wikipedia is hosted in florida somewhere

:-D

Ever since I was Delhi bound for freed.in, I have been encountering t3rmin4t0r lookalikes quite a few times. First at Mumbai airport, there was this guy whom I overheard speaking in fluent bengali. Now, the chances of the real t3rmin4t0r speaking bn_IN is quite remote, hence any suspicions were easily discarded. After enjoying 3 days at Delhi, sankarshan and me boarded an Air-India plane to return home. The plane was on a Varanasi-New Delhi-Mumbai route and when we boarded there were already a few passengers inside. So, we located our seats and I nearly gasped. In the row behind us, 3 guys were fast asleep. Aisle and Window were sporting the same hairstyle as you-know-who-by-now. I sat down, fastened my seat belt and turned towards sankarshan to say something. There again...across the aisle on the same row. Yet another t3rmin4t0r.

Apparently 6-7 guys (somewhere between 25-35), including all the hairy ones, were travelling together. They were saying pretty rude stuff about the air-hostesses and doing mischiefs (like not following the instructions during take off and landing etc.) to get their attention. Initially, I thought they were a group from some high-paying IT company and were returning from a holiday after blowing up some good amount of money. Overall, pretty disgusting. However, after the meals had been served and everyone was settled in, a steward comes to them with a sheet of paper and a pen. He tells them that his friend follows their music and it would be really great if all of them could autograph that piece of paper for his friend. All of them quietly sign the sheet and then for the rest of the journey things were pretty much uneventful. Neat! They are a "hindi rock band", based in Mumbai. Not too famous I presume, but googling does help. :-)

Tazz, unfortunately, they were not performing at Eastwind Festival, but thanks for the list

If one lives with a photography enthusiast , breakfast on a sunday morning gets delayed due to this:



Reminds me of Kathy Sierra's presentation on Creating Passionate Users.

During the day I keep visiting multiple planets to get a general overview of things that people are talking about.

To start off (with some drumroll) there is a new planet exclusively for Indian women in the FOSS world: planet.linuxchix.org.in. Its still in a beta stage and Barkha is working to fine tune it. More feeds welcome and do drop in a mail to planet-admin at linuxchix dawt org dawt in to get on-board.

This morning I read Atul's listing of the FOSS events happening in the next few days all over India. This list along with Puthali's mail to the LinuxChix-India mailing list helped me redraw up the "Upcoming Event list" on the LinuxChix-India main page. There had been some complaints about the wiki main page looking cluttered. So as an attempt to correct it, the "Events" and "Upcoming FOSS Events" sections have been merged into Upcoming Events of Interest. A big list for February and March is in place already. Under each event, the participating members could add their talks/sessions etc. However, this format can always be changed if its not looking pretty. Also, there are new pages now for the CityMeets and Past participation by LinuxChix India members at various events.

(Also, my talk+BoF (one session) for GNUnify 08 got accepted. Its on the second day of the event i.e. 9th February at 3:30 PM in the afternoon.)

Ankita has done some work on the Task List page to segregate the tasks according to their status.

The other post that intrigued me was by Kart_ referring to the article about the EEE laptop and PC launched by ASUS. The opening lines from the article claim that the the EEE PC is aimed at "pupils, housewives, old persons, and teenagers". Are'nt "target users" of gadgets to be judged by the "use they put it into" and or "volume of usage", rather than their status/age.
What kind of "pupils or teenagers" are being talked about here?

What age (or perhaps baldness level) defines "Old persons"?

"Housewives"...ahem...I consider myself a "married working professional who also looks after the house she lives in" - does that count?

fwiw....comments made on this blog using the anonymous option don't get approved unless the comment writer leaves his/her name. Thanks.