Skip to main content

America Diary II

 After 7 hours of journey, the flight landed at Narita, Japan.We were supposed to wait for couple of hours on Narita airport before departing to Los Angeles.  I was again on that familiar airport after 5 years refreshing my memories of  kanji letters, those familiar Japanese words and the beautiful custom of bowing. I felt like I am missing my those wonderful days in Japan, I felt like just to go out and recall the past moments, but reality took me to the flight and I was ready for the takeoff for the third time since my departure from Mumbai. It was the longest air journey I ever had in my life, a journey of almost 11 hours to reach Los Angeles from Narita. I was tired and needed some sleep. When I woke up, I noticed the clear daylight outside the window. I started thinking, we left Narita 6:45 in the evening and were traveling since 4 hours then where this daylight came from? Suddenly I realized, yes! we had crossed the international dateline, taking us a day behind. We were going to travel on the Pacific ocean all the time, the ocean which I had experienced in the book "Kon-Tiki", but I hardly got to see it from the thousands of feet. Still couple of more hours to go to reach Los Angeles and I just finished watching a movie, now the count was 3 since I left Narita making my total count to 7 Since Mumbai. I spent the last couple of hours of my journey in utter frustration and desperation, it has been almost more than 40 hours since I left Mumbai.


    Finally it was announced that we were about land the 'Los Angeles International airport'. As the flight started coming down, I looked outside the window, to see the LA downtown. LA is 2nd largest city in US and the largest in the California. LA is not the city of skyscrapers like New York, Chicago, Tokyo. But LA and in fact the almost whole the Southern California is blessed with bright sunlight, I was delighted, climate was just like my hometown Pune, always blessed by bright sunlight and warmness.


   After the long, tiresome 11 hours we landed finally on the Los Angeles International Airport. I was lucky enough to clear the Federal Inspection and customs in half an hour and came outside of the airport, my chauffeur was waiting for me to drop me at the Riverside , around 60 miles from LA, where I was going to stay for a month.
   Left hand driving and Left hand traffic to which I was not accustomed, I am from those few countries in the world which follows the right hand drive and right hand traffic rules. America is the countries of wide roads and the cars, country of large cars and I was watching the variety of cars. There were the cars of almost every make like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Subaru, Mercedes, Volvo, Hummer and so on. I hadn't seen such a wide variety of cars before. I was feeling like, there are just the cars on the roads in this country and people are not allowed to walk on the roads at all time.There were the hatchback cars, there were the sedans, there were the trucks, there were the limousines, there were the minivans, in short I found almost every type of every make on American roads.The cars were running with a average speed of 60-70 miles per hour on the wide roads of 5 to 6 lanes on each side. It was Monday afternoon, there was a considerable traffic on the roads, as it was the end of the long weekend due to the holiday of 'Memorial Day', now people were returning to their homes after enjoying their weekend.
   We reached Riverside in just 1 hour 20 minutes, finally I was in my apartment ending my longest journey I ever had, covering almost 9000 miles from my home and 12.5 hours behind in time difference, after all I was now on the other side of the globe.





                                                       
                                   
                                    

                                     
                                
                                 
                                  
                                   
(in continuation)

Comments

  1. which one is yours? I am ok with the last one :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Too Good....First 2 snaps are best snaps .......... Let's plan out to buy all the cars in coming future..............Hehehehehehe

    ReplyDelete
  3. मित्रा, blog एकदम झकास आहे. माझ्या आवडीच्या विषयाशी संबंधित असल्याने जास्तच चांगला वाटला.

    मला थोडी माहिती सांग. (मित्रत्वाचे नाते जोडून घेतल्याने पहिल्याच संभाषणात अरे-तुरे करतोय.) blogger वर मेनू कसे बनवायचे? माझासुद्धा ब्लॉग आहे. पण विभाग पाडण्याची सोय मला मिळाली नाही म्हणून मी आता wordpress वर गेलो आहे.

    माझा ब्लॉग - kavdasa.wordpress.com
    sagarvidwans.blogspot.com

    मेनू तयार करण्याची पद्धत mail केली तरी चालेल.
    sagarvidwans@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. नमस्कार सागर ,
    तुला उत्तर द्यायला थोडा उशीर झाला याबद्दल क्षमस्व.
    तुला मी सांगतो कसे मेनू बनवायचे ते, मला सुद्धा हाच प्रश्न पडला होता व नंतर कळले की कसे बनवायचे ते.
    1. Go to Dashboard, click on Edit post.
    2. You can see the three options above New Post, Edit Post, Edit Pages.
    3. Click on the Edit pages link, you will find the New Page link, click on that link. You can now create a new page of your choice.
    4. Now to Add it as a separate tab, click on the Design Tab which lies on the top.
    5. Click on the 'Add Gadget' link just below your header section.
    6. A window will be popped up, select the item called pages.
    7. You can configure the order, visibility there and and can add the tab.

    तुला काही अडचण आली तर नक्की विचार, मी तुला लगेच सांगेन.
    छान वाटले तुझ्याशी बोलून. मी तुला facebook वर add केले आहे.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India is changing!

Thousands of people on the streets, without any leadership, without any political influence, demanding for the Jan-Lokapal bill, a bill that will ultimately control and cure the cancer of corruption in India.    Yesterday, I came back from a candle march organized by few organizations in my city, Pune. I felt as if I was watching any Bollywood film, I felt as if  I was in dreams, it was unbelievable, I could feel the enthusiasm of the people, giving the slogans against the corrupt politicians, corrupt bureaucrats and corrupt system. There were the young collage students, there were employees, there were pensioners, in short there were people from all backgrounds, agitating by holding candles in support of Mr. Anna Hazare, who was on fast till last hour, for the demand of Jan-Lokpal bill and the victory was ours, it was the victory of India again after 'cricket world cup', when government agreed for all the five demands raised by Mr. Anna Hazare.   I remember...

The Camera Story...

   Visiting new places also comes with the requirement of capturing photographs with some good camera, not necessarily with digital SLR but at least with digital camera of few mega pixels and considerable optical zoom.  I have a digital camera of 8 mega pixels and 3X optical zoom. I bought that in 2006 when I was in Japan. I was satisfied with the quality of the images I captured with it and I had no intention of replacing it in near future. During my stay in USA my friend suggested me to buy new camera but I ignored his suggestion, I was firm on my decision. But one day we were coming back from office, my friend casually said "At least you can take a look at wide variety of cameras and many other things". I nodded, there was no harm in spending some time in that giant electronic store. We parked the car and entered the store. The store was obviously huge with a wide variety of various electronic items. My friend took me to camera section, there were plenty of cameras of ...

Friends, Indians, Countrymen! its just our battle

    Mumbai and the whole country has again seen the shameless blood bath after recent bomb blasts which again only killed the innocent people. It is reported that when the Chief Minister of Maharashtra visited the hospital to see the injured s, the angry mob protested by giving slogans against him and the government. Seems like people have lost the patience and faith in the government and why shouldn't they? Is this that our Government even can not offer the safety of our life, is that something we do not have a right to live without fear, to go out without worrying,  in our own country. Its just two and half years have passed when the city of Mumbai was attacked and we lost many innocent lives that time, the city was like a battle field, but due to the brave police men of the Mumbai Police that shameless terrorist Kasab was caught alive. But today we have seen what message enemy wants to give, they want terrorize us without stopping , they want us to fear them all t...