From the cockpit

The pilots are happy and the view is absolutely amazing. Am I dreaming? Am I reading National Geographic? No, I am working and I keep pinching myself because this is so much fun. We had a great time in Georgia and it was because of the beautiful places that we saw but also because of the nice people who set it up for us. Much appreciation has to go to Oksana Gumashvili, who helped us find the nicest restaurants to eat at and the best places to go and set us up for the rafting tour, etc. She is well educated, speaks 3 languages (Georgian, Russian and English) and has a wonderful personality that helped us really enjoy our second trip to Tblisi.

We are back in Delhi now and it's hot, a little humid and threatens to rain every afternoon, but hasn't since we got back. Yesterday while out and about I just wondered how so many people got to this place (somewhere between 17 and 22 million) and find it a place to call home. Since I got back, I think my power has been going off about 25-30 times a day. Of course our apartment complex has backup power but it takes a minute or two to kick on and the air-conditioners have to go through a 2 minute off reboot cycle every time it happens. I finally got control of my TV and internet by buying two separate uninterruptible power supplies to keep that all going. A couple of times I have been on the treadmill in the gym when power went off and you can break a leg, literally. I think someone warned them so now they have huge backup power supplies for the treadmills in the gym. I don't know if America ever went through stages with this kind of growth and expansion but people tell me that the city where I live (Gurgaon) didn't exist 10 years ago and five years ago my apartment complex would have been in the middle of a farmer's field. I think it would be a great place to invest in real estate.

Anyway, Ashish and I are back and trying to catch up on laundry, errands at the bank and other places and get ready for our next trip. Unless something develops, charterwise, we are doing a simple company flight to Hisar, India on Thursday. It's a 25 minute flight Northwest of Delhi and then we will be overnight. Hisar was recently made famous on the International News circuit because there is an Indian doctor there who is doing in-vitro fertilization on elderly couples who want heirs to their family farms, etc. I think it was a 66 year old lady who gave birth to triplets that put the city up in lights. It's our boss's home town and his brother uses the plane a lot to commute back and forth to Delhi and Hisar. They always put us up in one of the company guest houses and it's pretty nice. When you get away from the big city, the TV quality goes down simply because there isn't a need for all the English channels out there so it's down to about 5 channels, one of which is CNN.

Our planned trip to Tel Aviv went to the Global Express because the charter schedule changed on it and it became available for this rather long trip for us. I am disappointed because I was looking forward to that but hey, the pay is the same and now I don't have to worry about flying over the Middle East again and who is trying to shoot at me.

I noticed after our trip over Kandahar last week that it made the news again as a roadside bomb killed 8 people, including 2 American soldiers. When you look down from 8 miles high, you just can't see this stuff and I wish all the political disputes would just go away. I was talking to an educated Indian at a party last night and he said that America equipped the Taliban in the early 80's to fight the Russians so now that they are fighting us we have only ourselves to blame. The only one who has ever conquered these people was an Indian (Sikh) ruler back centuries ago. Since then, no one has ever ruled them. We'll have to see if American firepower and will power can change that or not.

Karen is making progress in Pennsylvania with all the open issues we left behind on this hurry up job in India. The drivers here keep asking about her and the kitties are missing her because they are torturing me for attention.

Hope you all are doing well. I'll be in touch.

Dan