Sabbatical Leg3 / Chennai, India
I had 45 minutes before the reporting time for my next flight. I looked around the airport for Wifi access in vain, but I did find a credit-card operated Internet and phone booth, the kind where you have a browser displayed in Kiosk mode and a metallic keyboard in front of which you stand and surf. I swiped, and soon realized that just a browser would not suffice if I plan to update my blog: I needed SSH! Well so I googled for a SSH Java applet, so I could login to my server, complete my post and commit it. I mean, Java applets must be useful at least in these situations, right? Well, almost. I was in the middle of a Vi session when I realized that the Escape key does not work and I found myself stuck in Insert mode: I then tried messing with the SSH terminal applet's settings, but the touch screen was fuzzy, and the mouse lost focus, and before I knew it, everything else lost focus, and the terminal appeared frozen. I hit the refresh button on the browser, and another Java applet opened, further complicating things. This time, nothing responded anymore - the screen was still except for a continuously incrementing minute-counter that indicated that I was still being charged!
I had hardly a few minutes to spare before my flight; so I ran like crazy looking for help, (the thought of pulling the plug on the Kiosk itself did come to me, but caution prevailed) and had a hard time explaining the situation to this nice lady at one of the information counters. She came with me to see the 'frozen' terminal, so she would be able to tell the tech support people which one to shut down. I ran to catch my plane. The last I saw, the Baht/minute counter was still counting, and my email inbox page was left still visible to passing strangers...
... and now, the original post describing the India leg of the sabbatical:I reached Chennai late on the same night. I had tried to convince my parents otherwise, but they remained keen on picking up both me and my sister (whose flight was coming in at around 5AM, only a few hours later).
Me, on a rock-pier somewhere on the northern shore of Chennai, still within city limits, but further north than I've ever been before.
My goals for this trip are:
- To pick up academic transcripts from both the Universities I graduated from while I was in Chennai: (a) University of Madras ('96-'99), Bachelor Of Electronic Science, (b) Pondicherry University ('01-'02), Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications
- Meet with an ex-professor from (b)
- Other than my folks and my
estrangedsister, spend time with, or at least meet:- Praveen Dass
- Arvind Balan, who complains of London
- Prasanna, who has now been through multiple baptisms of fire in a start-up
- Sort out some personal finance issues, including an ugly mess that ICICI bank and BSNL seemed to have created (the same thing mentioned in this complaint happened with my old, dormant account itself; and while I cannot say that it cost me 'mental stress', it was a lot of trouble indeed.)
I must admit that it turned out to be a good idea; we sort of multi-tasked and got stuff done. I was especially lucky that my street-smart and wily sister (whose 'Chennai skills' have not eroded much despite so much time spent in far-away Chile) helped.
So Leg-3 is done; and only objective (2) has not been satisfied. Oh well.