Wow

Link.

Take to the skies in 'Indian'

Indian Airlines has (finally) re-branded itself. With the word 'Airlines' dropped from its name, it hopes to detach itself from the rather dismal brand image built by Indian Airlines over the years. Personally, I believe a complete change of name would have a better impact, but I guess dropping 'Indian' from its name would have been a political disaster for any Government. As it is, the 1st look of an 'indian' aircraft is great. I simply cant overstate my joy that they have dropped the idea of having the 'black' nose - which I cant understand why they had in the 1st place. It just sucked for a plane to be given a black nose. Read more about the new brand livery here.

Air India is not far behind with announcements a couple of days ago that they are looking to re-design their cabin uniforms.

Related:

• India's Aviation Minister Praful Patel has been named Asia Pacific's best Aviation minister of the year.
• Airbus believes India's avaiation sector is gonna grow fast, by buying about 1000 planes in the next 20 years.
• Vijay Mallaya owned Kingfisher Airlines hopes to start international flights in next 2 years. Thats definitely ahead of his A380 orders being delivered.
  

Aish in comic role

Well, she isn't doing a comedy movie or starring as a comic. What I meant to say is that she will be starring in the French silver screen version of the comic series 'Asterix & Obelix'. She is slated to star (though her role isn't known yet) in the 3rd movie in the Asterix series - Asterix and Obelix at the Olympics. This movie apparently will have Jean-Claude Van Damme playing the role of Gluteus Maximus.

The earlier 2 movies in this series were:

• Asterix and Obelix take on Caesar, released in 1999
• Asterix and Obelix Meet Cleopatra, released in 2002 starring Monica Bellucci in the lead role of Cleopatra

Houston Diary

It's been a week since I landed in Houston, and the USofA hasn't made much of an impact thus far. Well, on the other hand, most would also tell me that I'm seeing the wrong side of the US, what with Houston being a rather boring place at the best of times, and me being put up at a Hotel in downtown Houston has kind of resulted in me experiencing the most boring place of Houston :-p. But still, all I can see is all I can experience, right?

Anyway, going back to last weekend, the flight from Singapore to Newark (a town on the outskirts of New York - infact, most people working in the Big Apple live in and around Newark, and travel to Manhattan and the likes on a daily basis). Anyways, as I was saying before I interuppted myself about Newark, the flight from Singapore to Newark was great. Amazing really. It was more than 18 hours long, but hey Singapore Airlines is a lovely way to fly. The wide, luxourious seats (which can became as flat you want), the plenty of leg-space, the lovely, ever-helping air-hostesses. Oh! did I forget to mention I was flying SIA Raffles (business) class. Well, yeah I was (my company paid for the tix - I'm really not that rich :-p ) Btw, at the SIA Raffles link, you can read about the space-beds, which is what I was talking about too!!!

At Newark, I had to change to a domestic flight to Houston, and changing from an international to domestic sector, I had to re-checkin, and pass security check and everything. Heck, these guys are paranoid. Not only do they take my picture and finger print when I entered their country, we also had to remove our shoes and send them in for Xraying when crossing security check :-s. But it did make me wonder - how do Singapore and others manage to check shoes for 'forbidden materials'?

And well, after the SIA flight, reality was only a short wait away. An extremely cramped aircraft met me at Newark, and I had apparently chosen the day when travelling in the US is always at its annual highest - the Sunday evening of the long Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone is returning home after spending the holidays with family around the country. As a result, there was a 30minute wait for the aircraft to leave the airport terminal, and get its turn at the head of the take-off runway. I'm not kidding, there were 12 or 13 aircrafts already lined up at the runway when we joined the queue. And this is despite there being a separate parallel runway for landings - which was also having a continous stream of planes touching down. Heck, I pity the poor air-traffic controllers that night (mebbe its like that every night for them). And to top it all, it wasn't the nicest weather that evening. After take-off, when the plane crossed the rather low-lying clouds, oh, it was a wonderul sight. Out of my window alone, I could see 5 different aircrafts, at different levels above and below ours. What a sight. Was quite out of the world.

Anyhow, obviously flight was late arriving at Houston, and then we had to walk across 3 terminals (our plane landed at one, but the luggage was being sent to another - dont ask me why) and 40minute taxi ride later, I checked into the hotel at about 1am - absolutely dead-tired. I was awake enough to do some quick math though - I had travelled for more than 22 hours in a span of 24. The most I've travelled in a very long time.

I'm gonna stop writing now, cos I'm at work and have taken too much time off for now. Soon (I hope) there will be an update on whats happened over the last 7 days out here. Until then, adios.