Dinner at Taj - 395 bucks

30 Sept 4am
we`re watching the video of 'another brick in the wall' in my room and then i have a look at my watch and tell K(thats they guy who accompanied me on my trip) that its 4. the train i scheduled for 7 and it would take us about an hour to getto the railway station by bus. it would also take us about 15 min(pedestrial) to getto the bus sttand and an average of 10-15 min waiting for the bus. so we suffice that we should laeve at 4:45 am. i quickly shutdown my laptop and get a quick shower. then i pack my laptop case with a couple of books that i borrowed from teh lib. i also add in a comb and a deo and a nice pad from CrossWord that i hadnt used much lately. then it just strikes me that i need to carry some fiction with me. so imoff to O`s room to get a book. he`s sleeping. a quick glance on his table and this book named 'Aliens r Us' catches my attention. back to my room i close the laptop bag and have a look at the watch again . man its 4:50 am already. i dint have a 'quick' shower after all. as soon as i get out i see its raining. hell my laptop bag is a leather one. should i change that bag or what??? i still keep walking towards ankit`s room and he aint ready. hes just coming frm the bathroom. i tell hime its raining and he chuckles. he had told me that it always rains when he goes to mumbai. we discuss taking raincoats with us, but we aslo know that neither of us wants to carry the eXtra load. we leave the hostel at 5 exact. its driZZling now. we take the shortcut through the jungle. its dark and wet and so we`re really walking blind relying on our past memories and teh occasional lightning bolt to assert to us us that we`re on the right way. we reach the bus stop at 5:15 which i think was a good time considering the conteXt that we were in. another 15 mins and theres no bus. then a car stops by and what luck, hes also going to railway station. i think of asking him how much he`ll charge but then i aint. we cramp in with the 2 other ppl already on the back seat and then we`re off. K3G songs are going on. and then the driver starts the AC. when we reach the railway station he asks us for 10 bucks each. man thats bus fare. and for such luxury!!! at 6 am we`re at teh platform. we look for a place to sit but invain. we notice a couple and man the guy was like a beggar, only foreign. i mean i aint understanf these 'goras'. he had worn a short kurta kindoff shirt exposing an inch or so above his belly-button. below he had worn a yallow lungi with all those sanskrit chants written on them. i only hope he had worn an undy!! the train trickles in and we see our seats - SC2, 76 adn 78. frown. we had booked 2S class tickets becasue they were the cheapest(133 bucks frm ahmedabad to mumbai, neat nah???). 2S is second class seating. i though it would be the same as AC chair car, only without the AC. in AC chair car u have independant chairs for everybody with elbow and head rests. this thing had no elbow/head rest. there were no chairs at all. twas only the normal seating arrangement with no sleeper and even narrower seats with lesser room per person. we get into the boggie and that foriegn couple is sitting in the same boggie. somehow we think our seats are next to theres, so we go there and have a look at the seat nos. just missed by 1. our seats are in the next row. we sit down and start browsing the paper that we had just bought. the train drags off from the station and we start feeling bored soon. we have some discussions about webServices, SOA and there usage scenarios, UDDI search engines, and some usual stuff about not having gals and jobs. we keep having a look at the 'gora saheb and mem' behind us and always find them in a unique position. once they were smooching, once he was sleeping in her lap, and once vice-versa. somehow we reached mumbai at 4:15 pm. from BCT we caught a train for churchgate. 5 bucks for for fast and easy transport. there we asked a traffic police guy if we can get a bus to the Taj at Appolo Bunder and if yes, where the bus stand is. he directed us to teh bus stand and soon tehre was a bus with the same number e had muttered(138). twas a double decker bus and i went up to the upper deck. once the conductor was there and we asked him for tickets to taj, he sadi teh bus wont go ther. i ran down and we got off teh bus. then we tried our hand at a taxi and the guy asked us 50 bucks. man we aint giving him 50 bucks that easily. another taxi wallah asked us 20. hollah. 5 mins and we`were at the place. inside we were directed to the 1st floor. man u bet twas a great hotel. it had it all. we reached the registration counter and we were not allowed in. she asked us for the confirmation mail that we had recieved from RedHat and we aint carrying it. and the head there(some gal named I) was such a bitch. she was so rude and all. then i talked to her saying that we had recieved a confirmation from her address. so then she asks us to check our names in her list. to our luck its not there. i was about to say that its not our mistake that our name is not there when there is this ugly fat bastard who comes and shoves us to the side. i feel like going and punching him right in the middle. some mins later this I creature starts shouting that she aint going to allow students. now we`re sompletely outoff our minds. when there is an option for students on the registration page, when u ahve sent in the conformations knowing that they are students what the hell now??? then there`s anotehr lady possibly frm taj who was talking to some othe r ppl. we went over to her and T narrated to her problem. now this was a sweet lady, but the earlier encounters with Ii and that fatso had me out of my brains. i politely blasted her and i think she was shaken. then she asked us to wait for 5 mins or so. she came back saying that she had spoken to redHat and would now allow students. so then we go in after completing a small formality of giving in our names and stuff. as we go in T turs right towards the place where the conference is going to be, but my legs seem to be more intrested in walking towards teh refreshments. so we have a glass of 'khas sharbat' and then walkin to the conference room which seems to be pretty full. they give us a redHat bags which has some material related to them and the sponsors - intel and oracle. first there is some iindia head of redHat who is unimpressive. then theres a case study presentation from the CIO of UTI bank which recently adopted a redHat-intel-Oracle solution for there call canter business. this talk was ok becasue he managed to cram in a couple of jokes. then there was the all worl-wide head of redHat who put in a good show(atleast comparitively) and was pretty informative about redHat EnterpriZe linuX, redHat netWork, redHat Desktop and redHat developers. then there was a presentation frm Oracle and intel both equally pathetic and offTrack. insteaf of talking about openSource what there companies are doing about it and how they are contributing they just ended up advertising themselves, as if no one knew about oracle and intel. btw the redhat worlwide head put up a nice stat that they had submitted more kernel changes than IBM, which incidentally has pledge abouta billion doallrs towards linuX development. then there was question hour and i must say this that indian CIO`s and mangers are a piece of shit. other than a couple of questions related to TCO(total cost of ownership) all teh other questions were pathetic. one guy asked if he could open word documetns in linuX. another one asked them whether they had applied for bsnl-mtnl`s tender. give me a break guys. then it was dinner time. we went ahead and had a small chat with the redHat world head. i asked him whether there was a redHat version for mobiles or embedded systemZ. he frankly told us that they got scared since ther was not standardiZation of hardware and all, so they had backed off. then the guy next to him talked to us about versions for thicker clients of the likes of routters and switches. then i gguess both of us were hungry so we ended it there and were off for dinner. btw these guys were really well mannered. the dinner was the best part. if i were non-veg and if i was a man who had hard drinks then i would really enjoyed. but ima veg and dont have bOOz. so i had to settle with the veg stuff. it took us some 40 mins to finish dinner. the dal was real good. then we had a stroll at gateway of india, whcih my friend T was seeing for the first time. 16 rs took us back to churchgate by taxi. yesh and the redHat ppl also gave us a diary and a dataquest issue.