Jet…. Set…. and RRRRUUUUUUN!!!

To catch a flight at 8:30am, you would normally wake up at 4:30, get ready and leave your place at 5:30AM. Then, as the system is everywhere, dial a number, call the cab and reach the airport at 6:00AM. Check in by 6:30 and wallah! your on your way to the destination. Simple, isn’t it?

But, when you are me…. in New Jersey…. awake chatting with ur bud till late the night before… things are bound to get… well… ummm…. pretty fked up!

So, I woke up at 430AM alright AND got ready well in time… but decided to take a short walk to nearby cafe to have a snack and WALLAH!!!!! we got so fuckin delayed…. we reached the airport at 7:45AM. So what? Just in time! right?? yeah, they said I could check in, but they had stopped checking in the luggage… toh I was practically suggested to goto the city of angels, dressed like one… (with just once pyjama in my backpack!!!)

Many emotional requests later, the sweet and kind-hearted lady at the counter rescheduled my non-transferable, non-refundable, booked a month in advance (well… in other words, cheapest-available) ticket to the next flight (in the evening)! All this while, I stood there with a sad face, drenched in sweat waiting for the good/bad news.

As soon as I got the boarding pass for the next flight, we came out of the airport and breathed the cool air! What followed was a sequence of events beginning with us getting back to Ankit’s house, leaving the luggage and going out to the city…

The first half of the day was spent in search of a second-hand mobile (just to make-do) and finally, I got hold of an okeish mobile for  60 bucks. After a quick bite at the Indian Street in Jersey, we rushed back to Ankit’s house.

Cab took us to the EWR airport at around 4:30PM. I checked in and then spent 45 mins with Ankit doing chit-chat. I boarded the flight at 6:15PM and after a short announcement by the captain, a shaky-looking plane took me to the sky!

Next Stop: LA a.k.a. Los Angeles a.k.a. City of Angels a.k.a. My home for next 7 weeks!

 

A day in the Garden State

For the uninitiated, New Jersey is also called the Garden State. Now, in the last post, I wrote about how we reached at Ankit’s Place. After taking a nap from 7:00am to 2:30pm, we finally woke up to the 1000th snooze of the alarm! Getting ready took another 1:30 hrs. The weather was very good with chill winds and low temp of around 5-6 deg. I was feeling bad because I had missed the snow by just two days. But anyways, we went to the Jersey City to get sum stuff and buy a mobile. I got my supply of Indian food to get me through the upcoming food shortage that I’d be facing in LA. With that done, we went pillar to post in search of a mobile and a phone connection. In US, everyone has a constant service provider and mostly post-paid connection(s). So, the situation was pretty bad. But we finally settled on a T-Mobile plan for 50$ per month. Now, the only problem was a mobile. Finding one turned out to be a real pain in the neck. It is only then I realized the difference between your own country and ‘paraya pardes’!!

We could not find the mobile, so it was decided that it’d be purchased in LA. I had a flight the next morning, so we had some food outside and came straight back home.

Rest of the time was spent chatting and we went to sleep!

The next day was one full of adrenaline rushes!!! But who knew!

Read the next post to find out more….

 

Next Stop: The Times Square!!

We boarded the train to go the the NY Penn Metro Station on our way to New Jersey, Ankit suggested the idea of going for a walk at the Times Square which is in Manhattan, NY. So, it was decided and we got off the train at the nearest station to Times Square. With two large bags (total 60kgs) and a huge back-pack, we climbed two staircases to reach the ground level. We exited and I found myself standing at the Times Square. It was an amazing sight with XXL Billboards and XXXL Buildings and not to mention the fact that every single THING was lit up with endless no. of bulbs. This was the condition at 2:30 in the night. We walked on the 42nd street. I saw what I had been hearing about for years… Broadway theater, Madam Tussad’s (Wax) Museum (With wax statues of Nicholas Cage and Opera Winfrey in the window displays!!!), Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not!’ building and ofcourse, Mc’Donalds. We had a snack at Mc’D and then walked to the place where America welcomes its New Year (remember those visuals on your TV from NY showing thousands of people gathered for New Year?). We saw Macy’s and Virgin Store and mind you, we had walked for almost a mile to reach the (end?) of Times Square (this square is biiiiggg!). It was really irritating to walk back all that distance to reach the Metro station to New Jersey. But, so we did! I was tired but nevertheless, it was a great feeling to be sitting at the underground metro station at 4:00 in the night, waiting for the train and with the visuals of Times Square in the head! The train came, we boarded and an hour later, we were in Jersey (the garden state). A quick cab ride brought us to the doorstep of Ankit’s house at Mulock Place in Harrison.

We dragged the luggage to the second floor apartment and all I could possible do at that point was to get a good sleep. And so I did.

More on how my time in Jersey and NY was spent in next post…