It’s every business traveller’s nightmare: sleeping through the alarm clock. In this case the alarm clock was my Treo, and I slept through it because I’d switched it to “silent” mode during dinner last night. So at 5:15 a loud buzzer sounded in my room. Not the phone (why not?) but a noise disturbingly similar to a fire alarm. I jumped up, checked my watch*, and realized that this was the time that my driver was to pick me up!! 10 minutes later I was dressed and out of my room, and by 5:40 I was meeting my colleagues at the airport. I was marginally awake, and acutely concious of the lack of a shower!
Check-in for the Jet Airways flight to Hyderabad was a breeze. Inevitably the only available seat was a middle…. Never mind, it’s only a 45 minute flight. (And since this is India, we’ll get a full hot breakfast on the flight.) We’re bussed out to the stand to board the 737-700, which is almost full.
By 7:25 we are fed and descending towards HYD. The first officer comes on the PA to announce that the temperature in Hyderabad is already 30C (86F).
I’m visiting the ex-SeeBeyond facility in Hyderabad with a number of colleagues from the Bangalore office. Last time I was here with my colleague Dale Ferrario, we both noticed the complete anonymity of the office, with no SeeBeyond signage to be seen. I’m sure he’d be pleased with what greeted me as I walked into the building this time around:
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* There’s an odd thing about my watch. It’s a Citizen Skyhawk, an exquisite piece of engineering, solar powered. You set it to UTC, and then it can display various time zones (on the digital display or via the hands) with just a press of a button. It has just one, glaring weakness: it can’t cope with time zones that are not an integral number of hours away from UTC. India is UTC+5:30. [Corrected – thanks Amateur Blogger.] So while I’m here, I keep the watch on Karachi time (UTC+5) and mentally add 30 minutes whenever I look it it. A firmware upgrade would be nice….