Week of 16th - 19th Oct: Pretty nice week. Went to a Budday party of a lil girl out here. An Indian family. The guy is also working with Sukanta's company. Met lotsa Indians there - mostly southies - Telugu and Tamilians :)

The rest of the week went off with nothin much to tell. Except for that a new dude came into town. He is from AP too.

Just gettin set for Diwali now :) And yea... goin huntin for the gasket of my pressure cooker. Its out and not finding one easliy! phew! Wish me luck!

This was an interesting weekend!

Oct 13th: Friday: Came down to the office today and quickly did some email'ing. We then set out to Pretoria to submit my copies of my educational certificates for SAQA evaluation. This is the first step in the work permit process (oh prior to this we got a copy of my passport attested at the Police station in Jo'burg).
Pretoria is quite different and older than Jo'burg. In Jo'burg you will find a mix of all kinds of people - Africans, English, Dutch, Our very own Desi's and more. Pretoria is more African dominated :) and seems a little older and more popolated. Its the capital of SA and all Govt offices are located there. We will go back there someday to look around. It was damn hot that day.

Sukanta is good with maps and we managed to find our way to Pretoria quite easyily after droppin off Haricharan ( a SAP dude from Hyd) to the Joburg airport(He went back to Hyd). Yea, locating the office on Arcadia road was a bit of fun coz I bungled the building number :) it was 1067 and I kept lookin for 1068 :) lol. Luckly pati noticed it and we managed to go and submit the papers. It hardly took 10 mins and sukanta got back his certified papers.

We then went to an Indian store called "S Jivan", and then went looking to find Harinath (another dude who works on SAP, from Hyd and stayed with sukanta in the guest house at gallo manor). Picked him up and got back to Joburg. It was 4 something Pm already and we were starving. Had some food at Mac Donald's and then came back home. We were dead tired. Had dinner and crashed.

Oct 14th: Saturday: I made roti's with bread flour :) lol. Came out pretty decent :) We then went to Sandton City, which is a huge shopping mall :) and office building. Spent sometime there... there seem to be a lot of sales on Diamond stuff out here :) lol very pretty stuff :)
Later we went to Makro (which is like costco but not as reasonable as Costco :) ) and did some home shopping. Went back to Gallo Manor and spent the rest of the evening there.

Oct 15th: Sunday: We went to Lion Park :) It was a very nice place to go :) Lions roamin around and going right next to the car :) he he. I will post some pictures soon :)

Oct 10th: Tuesday: Nothin much today.... I think I should keep my blog smaller going forward else people who read it will be living my everyday life :) Oh yea... I did notice a good amount of differences in things out here from in India .... I will list them out.. like for instance a "traffic signal/light" is referred to as as "robot"! :) cute!

Sep 29th was when I was told that my visa came through and now I can travel. This whole visa business took over a month. Phew! On 30th Sep dad collected my visa from Baba (rahul panse)'s MIL and brought it. My tickets came on Sunday 1st Oct. I was a little worried when I got to know I was to travel Ethiopian Airways.....rest in details.

3rd Oct: My IA flight was at 9pm from Hyd to Mumbai. Praveen was there to see me off and so were ma and dad. I checked in allright, and ma also kept her cool and did not really cry out there. I think she must have after she got home. Ok..the first bit was when I went through for security check, the cop there was insisting that I cannot take my bagpack and the trolly as handluggage. Only one can be taken he said, but luckily another dude there said it was ok and let me pass. Once through, I waited in the departure area where I met this girl (ShahiRose was her name) who was travelling to Uganda, and what luck on Ehiopian airways. I was so relieved that I had company. Reached Mumbai and called Raj Kishore. He said he would come to the International airport. We collected our baggage and got in line for the shuttle to take us to the In'tl airport. It was smooth. Got there and then found our way to the Ethiopian airline terminal which was at Gate 2C (as were most other airlines).

4th Oct: By the time I got to check-in it was past 12am on 4th Oct. I was worried a lil coz I had exces baggage of 5.5 kgs. The guy at the counter told me that I had not confirmed my tickets and quickly called his superior. The superior came there and let me know I was to confirm my booking 3 days in advance and as of now tickets were available so he was letting me through and I had to pick up my boarding pass to Joburg from Addis Ababa airport. No issues with luggage, infact he asked me to put in my trolly too as it was just 1 handluggage allowed. It was good that I had put it through scanning (done for check-in baggage)so I could just put in my luggage and just prayed that it would reach safe.

Raj, swetha and Advay were waiting for me. I spent a good hour with them and then proceeded to immigration). Oh! in the meanwhile ShahiRose was worried about her baggage too and an airport worker had told her he would get her through if she paid him 2k rupees. Luckily she did not have to pay this dude but had to pay the Ehiopian airlines counter that same amount. Cool!

She now found me (yea but was callin me Gayathri! for some reason :)).We went past immigration and yea, I made sure I collected an export certi for my digi camera and went to the waiting area. After a very short time we were asked to proceed for the security check. Got through there and waited at the waiting area. Gate # 6. The flight was to depart at 3.50 am and the boarding time was 3.05am. It din board on time though :) I met a Bengali lady on the bus (to the flight). The flight was not too full and I was on seat # 23F, right next to the Wing! I always get seats next to the wing dunno why! Anyways! the seat next to me was empty and the next seat was taken. Oh yea, the flight was small had just 3 + 3 seating.
Ok! all set, the flight ET611 was getting set for taxi'ing, when suddenly all lights and the TV transmission goes off, the auxillary unit which provides electricity to the aircraft failed - some start huh! luckily, the ground staff was called in and the problem was fixed and we were quickly on our way. I said Bye Bye India (for a while) and tried to get some sleep.....but that was difficult ofcourse :)

Woke up in the morning... I had no clue what the time was with all the time change. We were given breakfast (like a nut I asked for veggie which was full of masala, I should have taken the EGG bfst - next time!). Ate a bit and then managed to sleep for a while. Soon we approached Addis Ababa.

Addis is a hill station I gathered (from the Bong lady on the flight). It was colder here than on the flight :) good I was wearing some warm clothes. Ok.... as soon as I could get out, I managed to get to the counter where we had to pick up our tickets. Took forever there, I was worried I would miss my flight. We had reached Addis at 7am instead of 6.35am and the next flight was at 9am. With no clue of the time, I rushed to gate #5A for my next flight ET809.There I met this lady who was a retired professor from Delhi university and a Sardar who was travelling to Jo'burg on business.

This was a bigger flight. It was a 2 + 3 + 2. I had the seat number 14F (was an aisle) but no one next to me so managed to sleep a bit. The video system ofcourse was not working :) I had read about this in the Ehiopian flight reviews :). Had lunch on the flight and then got set for the landing.

I was in Jo'burg!!!! ATLAST!!!!!!

The airport is quite huge. On reaching the immigration counter, I was just asked which place I came from and the lady just entered some data into the system and I was out :) My luggage took a while to come but I was just so relieved it turned up allright. Went through customs and in my rush, forgot to add my passport number on the form. Luckily the guy there was nice and just asked if my suitcase had only my personal stuff. I said Yes and he let me pass. I was on my way out, to see my husband after 3 months .....yea it was exactly 3 months ago that I last saw him (July 4th).

Sukanta was there waiting, with a bunch of white roses for me. :)Was nice. He had the driver Ernest along with him and told me that dad had called already and so we called dad and let him know I reached safe. Mom was also there. Then sukanta told me that they had met with a small accident on the way, while the two of them were fine, the car took a decent trashing. It did look a lil sad. Both Ernest and Sukanta were worried what Nandini (the BOSS! and who owned the car) would say. Ernest was so worried and scared that he managed to lose his way trying to get us to the office. We managed to find our way though after an hour :) and reached home.

Home is a 2 bed 2 bath apartment on the 1st floor. Apartment # 94 in RiverView complex. Pati made some soup and toasted some bread. I had a shower and had some soup and slept off for a while. I so need to catch up with my sleep. Woke up a while later, pati had made some nice dal and hot rice. Ate khaana and stayed up a while talking.

5th oct is our first wedding anniversary. So pati wanted to celebrate it at 12am.....but I was so dead tired, that I could not stay up, so we decided to light the candle at 11pm itself.
At 11.30pm pati lit candles, poured some champagne into cute glasses he had got. We toasted and then he gave me my gift...a chain in white gold with a heart shaped pendent. The pendent is an outline of a heart and had diamonds in it :) beautiful. :)

5th Oct: Thursday: woke up late :) (nothing new!), did some unpacking and then had a shower and did pooja. Had lunch and slept off for a while. The guys came home in the evening (Harinath and Haricharan),they got us a bottle of champagne and a rose plant as a gift. Harinath belongs to Hyd (kingKoti) and Haricharan from Miryalaguda, AP. Harinath drives and haricharan is the navigator. :) We went to the Ram Temple at Marlboro drive and then got back home. Made some khaana(I made sambar - came out ok) and did dinner and they left. So it was a quite an simple anniv :)

6th Oct: Friday: Woke up at an earrly 6.30am and got ready to go to office. Earnest was not gonna be at work so Harinath was driving us to work and then he and Haricharan left to their work place at Pretoria. Sukant showed me around the office and caefeteria. We had breakfast there. Checked email and caught up on a few chats. Met Nandini, she wanted to know if I had my laptop (strange... I din know I was to have one!:)) Said she had a job lined up for me..on Busness modelling for a client company. I spent some time with Nolita (who also works there) and she took me through what Business Modelling was, using elearning as an example. It was interesting coz then we got sukant also into the conversation and realised that the documentation needed to be cleaned up :) We will do that next week. Had lunch out there and then in the evening Naveen Rao (another Indian dude who works for the company too at a Client place) was came down to check out our apt as he was looking for one.
Friday eve, both the Hari's came down and we went down to Rivonia square for dinner. A chinese place. Well! what can I say, no more chinese food out here for me :) Got back home and made plans for the next day.

7th Oct: Saturday: Woke up at a decent hour and got ready quickly as we had to go to Pick N pay to get some groceries and medicine. It was what I thought like CostCo of the US but apprently not. Macro is supposed to be bigger and like CostCo. Interesting, we spend 1 hour at Pick N pay.... wonder how much tme we will spend in Macro ;)

Came back home and made chicken pulav, turned out allright. We then went to Gallo Manor, Nandini's old house and the place where these guys stay. Pati also stayed there before I got to Joburg! Got some rest, watched Kidzee Sa re ga ma, had dinner and then went to watch the movie "you me and Dupree" (I think thats what it was called) at Village Walk, Sandton.
8th Oct: SUnday: Spent most of the day cleaning. Sweeping and swapping the floor. I think the brooms we use in India are a lot easier than the ones they use here ;) Tired us out really. In the evening the guys came over and we made some khaana. Spent some time, oh yea, I tried to drive and realisd that I really need to get the hang of using the gears (not like the 4456 I was used to :)). Doesnn seem very hard though, lets see, need to start drivin around soon.

9th Oct: Monday: Start of another week....sukanta was "unwell" so we stayed home. Sorted out and organised clothes and other stuff and now kinda set. :) Also got my passport and education certificates stamped by the police. This is the first step for the work permit process. Got to get to work tomorrow... Need to go to Pretoria during the week for the rest of the process :).

There are other intersting differences between this place and India as I noticed so far... but that in the next posting :)