• The last time it happened to me, I understood the situation. There was a huge thunderstorm in the New York area and my flight, a KLM, was sitting in the tarmac waiting for the weather to clear. This time around the skies were bright, blue and the Newark Liberty Airport was bathed in abundant sunshine (though I must admit there was a hint of cloud behind the Manhattan skyline). But we were kept waiting. Behind ten other equally unfortunate aircrafts, our rather cynic skipper informed us (it is a instinctively disheartening when someone in charge starts a sentence with “My worst fears were confirmed…”). Finally after two and a half hours we took off, albeit we went south towards Philly and DC instead of up towards Boston and New England. This couldn’t have been done earlier? No one knew that heading south and making a left is equivalent to going north and making a right? Too much to expect – the airlines industry has given up. In fact, I suspect it did that long time ago.

• The next time someone has “language problem” as excuse of not doing business with India, I’ll take him to the business lounges at the Frankfurt airport. Housekeeping at the showers cannot understand English (like “can you move me up please, my flight leaves in the next hour?”) and then comes the diction. I just had this intuition to do a rain check when I heard “Mayoondah” on the PA system. Basab Pradhan writes about American pronounciation of Indian names in this rather funny post and confesses to having a secret Starbucks name. I’m signing up to Basab’s brand of snake oil. Given that a lounge has a larger population I won’t risk a Smith or a Mike. I think I will pick something easy to the German tongue – like a Oliver Kahn or Max Mueller.

• The waiting area at Gate B45 at the Frankfurt airport was taken over by a gang of raucous youngsters spread in a circle playing cards, shouting and generally doing stuff you would find at undergrad dorms. However, they were rather proud showing off their lineage with everyone wearing a “Think Flat, Think Infosys” shirt. I always suspected that the factory called Infosys might be a fun place to work but I got to see the thing in action several thousand miles away from Bangalore. I always was half convinced about this “flat world” thing – I changed my mind yesterday. I might as well have been at the marijuana smoke heavy area just behind the Presidency College canteen on College Street at Calcutta. I wonder what Infosys would call a German game of “teen patti” played by its brand ambassadors in the flat world – “drei karten”?

• It was good to be home. I missed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, though.

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