Experience is the name given to one's mistake :)

Hi all, this is what I went thru, when i first came here :)

I had a real good experience of my life, I was able to witness the same afternoon twice.... guess how..... on 18th oct, I flew from bangalore to Hong kong, which is 2 and a half hours ahead in time, compared to Bangalore.I was there in hong kong, and was able to witness 19th afternoon. and then flew from Hong kong to Sanfrancisco, which happens to be almost 11 and a half hours behind IST. I reached San francisco in the afternoon, again on 19th :) I guess it was the longest day of my life :) But it was a great day..When we were nearing SFO, I had sort of mixed feelings.... here i was, nearing my dream and was also scared about the challenges that came along with it. First challenge was, "IMMIGRATION". We were warned to be careful in answering their questions, as I dint want to be chucked out because of some silly answer of mine ;)
I am here on a business visa, so had to be very clear about my purpose of travel.... I was in full formals ;) [ business Visa u see ;)]Immigration was fineee, I was asked few questions, but it was fine.... I guess it was better than my Engineering viva :D
After Immigration, I felt soooo relaxed.... I thought its finally done. Now I can do all that I want. ....Reema and myself came out of the airport, first thing I wanted to do was, call India. We searched for a phone, all we cud see was a 1 Rupee, oops, 1$ dabba phone ;) We knew it wud not allow us to call home....
We went to the enquiry section and were bombarding tat guy with all questions, how do v make a call to India??.... where do we find a phone...where do v get change for 20$ bill.... HOW DO V GO TO MORGAN HILL [by the way, Morgan hill is where our office is located]....when we asked him that million doller question, he looked out of the glass door, pointed out a bus and said, in 3 mins that bus will leave to Morgan hill..we had to rush out of the airport to catch that bus, the lady driving tat bus was schocked seeing our 4 big suitcases, plus not to mention.... our hand baggage ;)
She said she will charge more for those suitcases.... we agreed.... at that point of time, we forgot to ask her one important question.....Will u drop us at our hotel ?? ..... midway we asked her that question and she said she cannot drop us at our hotel, but will drop us nearby.
I was enjoying each and every sight of America, though i was acting like a fool, by taking photos of traffic, roads etc etc[ hmmm now i realize, it was silly ]. Anyways, thank god, i was silly that day, I was seeing all round and suddenly caught a glimpse of our hotel name.... after a while..... our office name.... then i realized we had reached Morgan Hill...
I immedietly asked tat lady to stop the bus, [ guess wat, i asked her to stop, in middle of a freeway, that is like a highway ]. She went about a mile further and stopped in a deserted gas station.. and asked us to manage from there.. we like bakras, got down with all our 46 + 46 Kg luggage... we dint know how to reach our hotel from there, best part was, no one there knew tat our hotel even existed on the face of earth....
We went into a shop [usually all gas staion has a shop ], tat shop guy was really sweet, he allowed us to make free calls...one of us had to stand out with the luggage and the other had to do all phone work....really ahh, we were like museum peices there.... all were staring at us and our huge luggage. Imagine, One person is standing, with 4 to 5 huuuge suitcases, wat a scene...
Some people even started asking if we were lost.... we tried calling for a taxi, but we were not sure how well he understood wat we spoke to him, accent problem u see....one foreigner uncle, took his cell phone to make a call to the taxi, by then our taxi arrived,.... we were soooooo happy to see him....people here are really sweet and helpful.....it was like finding water in middle of a desert... we just dumped all our luggage in and reached our hotel room....guess wat, we had so much luggage, that we cudnt even close the taxi dikki....We had an adventure, we will not forget tat day for atleast quite some time....It was indeed a nice experience....anyways I have bugged u guys enuf now..... i need to put more blade.... so need time to think ....hope u guys learnt something from this blog.... If u ever come to USA, make sure u ask ur taxi or whatever means of transport u r taking, to drop u at ur destination.... mind u, its not India where, u can manage from anywhere :)
cya