Trip to Hyderabad
I recently went to Hyderabad on office work (conference) - most of the time I was in the Hotel since it was a conference. Interesting time - (the organisors arranged for ghazal nite! more of that later); Left by Jet lite (formerly Sahara) - managed to upgrade myself to business class - simply went and sat there when i saw some others sitting there and some seats were empty - in any case, the boarding card mentioned free seating :) The sad part is jet & kingfisher seem to have too many customers - when i enquired at bombay airport at the jet counter, he reacted as if i had come from some small village. Both the airlines seem to have stopped issuing customer feedback form- kingfisher went to the extent of saying that magazines are meant only for business class and they can't provide me magazine;
Anyhow waited as usual at the airport - these days one spends more time at the airport as compared to the flight time - great business opportunity for enterprising people - have some entertainment, library, etc, at the airport
Looks like we are moving the west way in a wrong manner -one doesn't get healthy food these days either at office or airport - everyone wants to eat or supply dry food which means bread and its variants - the only shop that had "american corn" was also not open at 11 AM :)
Anyhow finally landed at Hyderabad airport and after a short while we were whisked off to Marriott (again customer handling at the Hotel was very poor unlike some Oberoi hotels that are better); three of us were waiting at the reception while the reception staff was dealing with someone else (?)- we finally got our room key and after some time two of us - me and Shankar from Deutsche Bank had lunch at Okra (restaurant at Marriott)- Shankar too loved reading books and we got along well -Shankar shortlists category of books e.g. ancient history or health or fictional history, etc. and reads books of that category during that year. Interesting right? The food was good and healthy though i was tempted to have curd rice.
After the conference, we had a ghazal nite with good food once again; the best part about the Ghazals was that the singers particularly were very enthusiastic inspite of the fact that most people paid no attention to the Ghazals -I enjoyed the Ghazals and more importantly one enthusiastic and smiling singer. We went for a short walk adjacent to the lake which looked wonderful from the hotel but was quite dirty.
Of course i made use of spare time (early morning/afternoon) to catch up on my running though at the Gym. The next day went of well and evening Shankar and I went to Hyderabad Central (one of those many malls that seem to be there in many of the cities)- it was not a great one containing mostly apparels. Mostly the drive was filled with traffic and worse lots and lots of fumes - i was glad i returned to the Hotel after which we promptly went to the airport for returning to Bombay. Outside the airport i finally got some healthy food - corn and coconut water. As usual the usual delay and waiting for kingfisher to land (dont know why these airlines dont specify the correct time and alert in advance - i have never in the recent past seen any airline taking off in time - the flight was supposed to leave at 9.20 pm - i finally reached home at about 12.30 am - apart from the usual bland apology there was absolutely no kind of commitment or compensation by the airlines - imagine having to eat dinner(my normal time is to finish by 8 pm) at 11.15-11.30
All in all a good trip
Anyhow waited as usual at the airport - these days one spends more time at the airport as compared to the flight time - great business opportunity for enterprising people - have some entertainment, library, etc, at the airport
Looks like we are moving the west way in a wrong manner -one doesn't get healthy food these days either at office or airport - everyone wants to eat or supply dry food which means bread and its variants - the only shop that had "american corn" was also not open at 11 AM :)
Anyhow finally landed at Hyderabad airport and after a short while we were whisked off to Marriott (again customer handling at the Hotel was very poor unlike some Oberoi hotels that are better); three of us were waiting at the reception while the reception staff was dealing with someone else (?)- we finally got our room key and after some time two of us - me and Shankar from Deutsche Bank had lunch at Okra (restaurant at Marriott)- Shankar too loved reading books and we got along well -Shankar shortlists category of books e.g. ancient history or health or fictional history, etc. and reads books of that category during that year. Interesting right? The food was good and healthy though i was tempted to have curd rice.
After the conference, we had a ghazal nite with good food once again; the best part about the Ghazals was that the singers particularly were very enthusiastic inspite of the fact that most people paid no attention to the Ghazals -I enjoyed the Ghazals and more importantly one enthusiastic and smiling singer. We went for a short walk adjacent to the lake which looked wonderful from the hotel but was quite dirty.
Of course i made use of spare time (early morning/afternoon) to catch up on my running though at the Gym. The next day went of well and evening Shankar and I went to Hyderabad Central (one of those many malls that seem to be there in many of the cities)- it was not a great one containing mostly apparels. Mostly the drive was filled with traffic and worse lots and lots of fumes - i was glad i returned to the Hotel after which we promptly went to the airport for returning to Bombay. Outside the airport i finally got some healthy food - corn and coconut water. As usual the usual delay and waiting for kingfisher to land (dont know why these airlines dont specify the correct time and alert in advance - i have never in the recent past seen any airline taking off in time - the flight was supposed to leave at 9.20 pm - i finally reached home at about 12.30 am - apart from the usual bland apology there was absolutely no kind of commitment or compensation by the airlines - imagine having to eat dinner(my normal time is to finish by 8 pm) at 11.15-11.30
All in all a good trip
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