Part 19 - Your proposal shall be accepted!

My return flight was at 6am in the morning. Had to sleep early but that wasn’t what I planned to do for a while. We returned the rental car at around 10pm; again I had to drive my friend’s car while he drove ahead of me in the rental car. I tried to guess the route but if I were stranded I would surely struggle to find my way back without the GPS. My friend learnt a lesson with rental cars - if you opt to take a rented car with a full tank (they charge you for it) then ensure you return it with the tank almost empty (if not fully empty!) because they will not pay back for unused petrol when you return the car.
Back home I played the Wii for a while till I got bored of it - your hand starts to ache after a while with it.

Your proposal shall be accepted...

I watched a Blu-ray movie - my friend's room was ideal; small and cosy - you could snuggle into bed and put on a movie on the Sony flat screen which was connected to Bose speakers by your side; with the wireless light dimmer control in hand, you didn’t need to get up from bed! ‘Leap year’ was the movie - it was about a girl who goes to Ireland where they had the tradition that on Feb 29th a girl can propose the guy. Well a girl can propose on any day but their tradition says that a guy has to accept the proposal received on 29th Feb. A storm forces the plane to land elsewhere and she gets another guy to drive her up to make her proposal in time. She and the cab guy develop a friendship that starts in you know what - it starts with a fight and during the course of the trip they become buddies. There are some nice comedy scenes in between and in the end she decides that it is the cab guy who is the right guy for her - as expected. Not a great movie but my friend got this because it was filmed in Ireland - a beautiful country that he had visited once.

I wonder if there was some tradition like that were the girl has to accept a guy’s proposal! Would be interesting and amusing I guess :-) It was midnight and my friend was sound asleep in the neighboring room. I brushed and jumped into bed. A perfect weekend.

Flight back to Boston

We reached the airport early in the morning - it was my friend who woke me up. My eyes were groggy as I stepped into the airport and I picked my seat on the machine which printed my boarding pass. As I headed towards the departure gate I noticed a huge queue waiting for security check. With the time ticking down I wondered if I should’ve started earlier. I looked around to see if there were other people from my flight - I scanned boarding passes and felt a little comfortable when I found a person behind me with the same type of printout.

It took almost 15 minutes for my turn; this was a full body scanner that they had - I peered at the device after having crossed it. When you stepped through the machine there was some indicator on the screen that flashed - it wasn’t a full body xray but probably something like a full size metal detector.

A lot of people waiting in the departure gate for this return flight were people I had seen 3 days back in the flight to Baltimore; all of them spending the long weekend here. The flight was on time; the scene from the flight was beautiful - the sun rising over the city. Back in Boston I had to wait in the airport for almost 45 minutes for my bus. My office laptop had a little charge left and I logged in using the free wifi. My Monday was just starting out but my colleagues back in India were winding up their day - I chatted for a while via the instant messenger before I ran out of charge.

Took the bus, then took my car to home and then got ready quickly and drove back to office - I was quite comfortable with driving in the US now. I rushed into office with just 10 minutes to go for my presentation - phew, what a start to the week.