Today.... or rather half of today ,was a mixed day...half-day.
I woke up at 4 am, ate a pizza, went to airport at 5:30 am with 70 kg luggage. The person at the Gulf Air counter said I was allowed only 30kg (normal for Gulf flights) and so would have to pay for the extra luggagae (some Rs 250 or so per kilo).
Then after talking to some other Gulf Air people, they agreed to let me take 64 kg (the baggage allowance for US flights) since I was technically in transit at Mumbai but they said they would check the baggage for New York and not Bombay which meant I wouldn't see my baggage till New York.
Anyway I agreed deciding to argue about it after reaching Mumbai. Flight was peaceful with a decent breakfast and it landed on time. At the plane door someone was waiting for me. He asked if I wanted my baggage now or if it should be sent to NY. Hiding my relief (that actually someone was giving me a choice rather than me having to argue about it) I told him that I wanted to take it.
That is when my good luck ran out. I had got the baggage, only thing left was to go through customs and I was free. But no, the customs people made me open up the luggage since they thought I was exceeding the import allowance. They opened one box, didnt find anything to catch me for. Then he asked me if I had enough cash to pay duty, I told him yes but only in dollars. Then he asked me to either pay duty for the items in the second bag or I would have to open up the bag (this somehow sounded like an indirect bribe request to me, since after opening each bag he would go and have a conference with the other customs people).
So I opened up the bag and he didnt find many items dutiable there. So finally he let me go without me paying anything. So in the end basically it was a total waste of half an hr for both him and me.
Then I come out of the airport and it starts raining heavily. Anyway I dragged all of the 70 kg to the Esteem and sat peacefully for half an hr before reaching a relative's home.
Their comp wasnt working...so I did my usual tinkering and now its working (Finally all those years of tinkering with comps instead of studying history and this and that is paying of in a practical situation). My IITK accound wasn't signing in initially.. no idea why...said wrong password... but now it's working. 56K Dialup is pretty slow... I miss my 440 kbps ADSL :( On the bright side, IITK has increased the leased bandwidth from 6 Mbps to 38 Mbps so I'm looking forward to being at Kanpur... and whats more, I heard a new McDonald has opened up there. Yahoo!!
Anyway now things look good here.. All systems up and running.. I have access to the internet, my 160GB hard disk is connected to this comp so I have all my data. I took videos of take off and landing from the plane... transferred them to the hard disk to free up the memory card. I have to recharge my Hutch... I have a bad feeling that my SIM has expired though I bought it in Aug last yr (1 yr card).
I woke up at 4 am, ate a pizza, went to airport at 5:30 am with 70 kg luggage. The person at the Gulf Air counter said I was allowed only 30kg (normal for Gulf flights) and so would have to pay for the extra luggagae (some Rs 250 or so per kilo).
Then after talking to some other Gulf Air people, they agreed to let me take 64 kg (the baggage allowance for US flights) since I was technically in transit at Mumbai but they said they would check the baggage for New York and not Bombay which meant I wouldn't see my baggage till New York.
Anyway I agreed deciding to argue about it after reaching Mumbai. Flight was peaceful with a decent breakfast and it landed on time. At the plane door someone was waiting for me. He asked if I wanted my baggage now or if it should be sent to NY. Hiding my relief (that actually someone was giving me a choice rather than me having to argue about it) I told him that I wanted to take it.
That is when my good luck ran out. I had got the baggage, only thing left was to go through customs and I was free. But no, the customs people made me open up the luggage since they thought I was exceeding the import allowance. They opened one box, didnt find anything to catch me for. Then he asked me if I had enough cash to pay duty, I told him yes but only in dollars. Then he asked me to either pay duty for the items in the second bag or I would have to open up the bag (this somehow sounded like an indirect bribe request to me, since after opening each bag he would go and have a conference with the other customs people).
So I opened up the bag and he didnt find many items dutiable there. So finally he let me go without me paying anything. So in the end basically it was a total waste of half an hr for both him and me.
Then I come out of the airport and it starts raining heavily. Anyway I dragged all of the 70 kg to the Esteem and sat peacefully for half an hr before reaching a relative's home.
Their comp wasnt working...so I did my usual tinkering and now its working (Finally all those years of tinkering with comps instead of studying history and this and that is paying of in a practical situation). My IITK accound wasn't signing in initially.. no idea why...said wrong password... but now it's working. 56K Dialup is pretty slow... I miss my 440 kbps ADSL :( On the bright side, IITK has increased the leased bandwidth from 6 Mbps to 38 Mbps so I'm looking forward to being at Kanpur... and whats more, I heard a new McDonald has opened up there. Yahoo!!
Anyway now things look good here.. All systems up and running.. I have access to the internet, my 160GB hard disk is connected to this comp so I have all my data. I took videos of take off and landing from the plane... transferred them to the hard disk to free up the memory card. I have to recharge my Hutch... I have a bad feeling that my SIM has expired though I bought it in Aug last yr (1 yr card).
posted by Unknown at 2:32 AM
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