With all of the time I’ve been spending on planes lately, I’ve had the chance to see a large number of movies I wouldn’t have the time for otherwise. So, in lightning-round format, here are five reviews of movies I’ve seen on small, glowing screens about two feet from my face.

• The Water Horse — I didn’t have sound for this one (I didn’t need it), and didn’t really have a choice as to whether I could watch it or not. 2/10.
• The International — “Hey, our plot doesn’t make any sense, let’s shoot it in a bunch of glamorous locations and hope people don’t notice.” 4/10.
• Watchmen — Meh. Not sure what the big deal was. 6/10.
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — Not Fincher’s best, not Fincher’s worst.  A strange, lovely and–of course–curious film, one I suspect could grow on me. 7/10.
• Milk — Great acting by Sean Penn, although the film seems to skip over a lot. 8/10.

I wonder what I’ll see on the way back.

Despite the scheduling complexity in my life these days–one day this past week had meetings at both 7:30 AM and 10:30 PM–I’m trying to set aside 10-15 minutes every day to write.  So much going on, so little time to write or even think about it.

~ ~ ~

Today is my second Father’s Day as a father, and my first Father’s Day without one.  Not much else to say about that.

Yesterday was Mathias’ second birthday.  We had a small party, and my mom was up in the Cities to celebrate it, along with Ben and his kids.  It was a lot of fun, but to be honest Mathias and Ben’s kids seemed to have just as much fun, if not more, running around the mega mall later in the evening.  (They closed the Lego store.)   Hopefully there’ll be some time to meet up with Ben and his family tomorrow morning before they head back to Two Rivers…

…And before I head back to Bangalore later in the afternoon.  I’ll be gone for a week.  This will be my first trip during monsoon season, so it should be interesting.  I’ll have a really packed schedule while there, but hopefully I’ll be able to get out a little bit, something I really wasn’t able to do last time I was in town.

Last weekend we were in Two Rivers and Green Bay, in what was essentially an in-and-out stop to hit the Day Out With Thomas being held at the National Railroad Museum.  Mathias had fun, but we’ll have to go again when he’s old enough to remember it.

~ ~ ~

I can’t believe it’s almost July already.  It feels like the summer has just begun.  If I have time one of the evenings I’m in India, I may try figuring out when and where Lisa, Mathias and I can go camping.  I better do that soon, as before we know it I’ll be back in school and our brief Minnesotan summer will have faded to Fall.

I thought school being out for summer would mean some spare time for me to get some writing done, get some backlogged India photos up on Flickr, and make some progress on the hundreds of little projects I have going on at once.  So far, not much luck.

We’re in Madison, staying a dog-free hotel while visiting friends and family during the day.  (The hotel is cheap and doesn’t have wifi, so who knows when this will be up.)  The need for the hotel was brought on by Mathias’ allergies, which, now that we know what they are, are bringing a range of unpleasant changes to the Danielson household.  For one, there are the morning and evening allergy-related nebulizer treatments we have to give Mathias.  For two, well, we have to get rid of the resident feline, as well as both of Lisa’s guinea pigs.  We’ve found a good home for the pigs, but for a range of reasons I’m not going to expand upon here, we’re trying to keep Putter close to home in Minneapolis.  I’m working on a couple of leads, but the search for a new home for the kitty is complicated by the fact that he’s a fairly senior cat, and has a track record of not playing well with other members of his species.

Hopefully I’ll have an update on the cat in the next few weeks.  We don’t have a deadline to get him out of the house, but the earlier the better.

~ ~ ~

Beyond that, May has been busy.  My first business trip to India for the most part went very well, and my project there seems to have gotten off to a great start.  I’ll be heading back in late June for my second work-related visit, and may be headeded back once again in late Q3.

Back at home, the next few months are looking pretty booked.  We’ll be heading to Green Bay the weekend of June 13th to visit some friends and take Mathias to the “Day Out With Thomas” tour, and the following week my mom will be up for Mathias’ birthday.  (I leave for India the day after his birthday, Father’s Day.)  I’ll be hitting my 15-year high school reunion in July–don’t ask me why, I’m not sure I know–and sometime in the next few months we hope to take Mathias camping, and, well, take a few weekends off.

Well, Lisa sounds like she’s getting done with the shower, and Mathias is acting psychotic in the way only a two-year-old can–he’s in a big walking-around-the-hotel mode today–so I should go.  Up today: Visiting with Robin and Andy, and hitting some crazy brat festival a few miles from our hotel. Also, later tonight: Brisket hamburgers. (Today is sponsored by meat.) More later.

Now that everyone is back home and pretty much settled in, I’d like to be able to say Mike and Andrea’s wedding was great, but part of me would still like to know who the hell I can punch for everything that happened.  What was supposed to be a small, leisurely gathering to witness and celebrate a new marriage was turned into a day-long rush-and-stop-and-rush endurance test.  Royal Caribbean, who’s Voyager of the Seas was to be the site of the event, definitely bears some of the blame, but the complete lack of coordination and communication by the planning company Mike and Andrea worked with didn’t help.

The schedule as we knew it going in was we were to get to the Port of Galveston cruise terminal around 10:00, and would likely be onboard around 11:00, over three hours before the ceremony, allowing plenty of time for the families and friends to visit and walk around the ship, for the bride and groom to prepare for the big event, and for a certain toddler to take his afternoon nap.  Long story short, we didn’t get on the boat until 1:30, and a number of delays and changes after that caused the ceremony to slip to 3:00, one hour before the non-cruising guests—everyone except for Mike and Andrea—had to be off the boat.  Mathias never got his nap, the reception basically left time for photos and nothing else, and the officiator at the wedding even managed to accidentally swap Andrea’s name for… Lisa. (“She was holding the flowers,” was the explanation we got later.)

Both Andrea and Mathias get extra bonus points for the day,  Andrea for holding it together despite the cavalcade of idiots running amok across her wedding day, and Mathias for dutifully putting up with a second long day of limited sleep time.  (As many parents can attest, a sleep-deprived but patient toddler can be a rare combination.)

~ ~ ~

Our experience trying to park our cars was kind of representative of everything that happened.  We actually scoped out the cruise terminal the day before to make sure we knew where we were going, but upon arriving Sunday morning, with two huge ships in harbor and people everywhere, all bets were off.  We dropped off Mike and Andrea and headed for the parking lot.  Arriving there, we were told it was only for people on the ship, and we were supposed to park in short-term parking.  We headed back to the terminal and couldn’t find the short-term parking, and, still believing that we were scheduled to board the ship in the next half hour, parked on a sketchy-looking nearby street (and by “nearby” I mean roughly three city blocks away).  Upon getting into the terminal and checking through security, we found out the short-term parking was in the same lot as employee parking, it just wasn’t labeled as such.  Not wanting to return to our SUV to find it stripped of its tires and devoid of our luggage, I left the terminal, spent 10 minutes driving through the line of cars in front of the terminal (again), negotiated with law enforcement on parking, and waited through the (now much longer) security line a second time.

The time spent didn’t matter, though, as we still had a full hour and  a half before boarding.  We just didn’t know that yet.

~ ~ ~

In the end we were told there was a large Mexican tour group on the boat, and there were problems with many of their visas, and that boarding couldn’t begin until all the current passengers were “dealt with.”  I asked why that wasn’t recognized when the tour group, was, you know, BOARDING THE FUCKING BOAT, but was told there was no way Royal Caribbean could have foreseen the problem.  Right.

But, in the end, none of that is too important, as eventually we got to see this:

And, hopefully, in a few years everyone will be able to look back at the crazy events of the day and laugh.

I still kind of want to punch someone, though.

Well, the funeral is over. What else is there to say?

I saw a lot of people for the first time in years today, many for the first time since my grandmother passed.  The funeral itself was short and informal.  My mom spoke, then Mike and I got up together, followed by two of Dad’s siblings, Eric and Margi, and my dad’s good friend Rich. There were a few stories I heard for the first time, and part of me wished I could’ve heard my father’s comments on them

I no longer have a dad. That feels so incredibly weird.

After the funeral many headed over to my parents’–or I guess I should start saying “my mom’s”–for a reception.  There was a wide mix of people, and of course there were was a lot of laughter and crying paired with plenty of eating and drinking.  Kids in costumes were running all over the place, and in many ways there was more life in the house over the course of the afternoon than I think I ever saw there.  (Well, maybe except for the time my brother threw that huge drinking party when my parents were on vacation, but that’s a different story for a different time. At least no walls got bashed in this time around.)

~ ~ ~

The house was busy last night as well.  My mom’s friend Darlene was over, as were Ben, Beth and their kids.  Mike’s plan for dinner was scuttled after he learned at least 1/3 of those around for dinner didn’t like shrimp, and so we ordered out from Fatzo’s and ended up having a good time anyway.

After everyone had cleared out or gone to sleep–including Lisa and Mathias, who were back at the hotel–I headed back to my mom’s and she, Mike and I just stood around talking for a few hours.  We talked about all kinds of things–the trip our family made to the Packer’s SuperBowl in New Orleans, Mike planting his Delta 88 out in the middle of a farm field, Dad’s early exploits while working for a scorched-earth car dealership in Green Bay, Dad’s and my trip across the country in a 1950’s Plymouth, pink dollar bills, cribbage tournaments, golf trips, and, eventually, the effect of disability payments on dad and the family.  Looking back, more than anything else, those payments were likely where the problems as we eventually knew them really started, and their ultimate effects were probably seen this week.  If only we knew then.

Before I left, Mike and I sat down for a game of cribbage.  We used a tournament board, cards and pegs from when Dad ran cribbage tournaments all over the Midwest (the last of which, incidentally, was held in the hotel I’m sitting in now).  It had been years since I’d played the official family sport, and quite a while for Mike as well, and we were rusty enough on the rules that Mike had to google “knobs” to see what qualified.  The irony was that our dad was the one who first wrote the rules of tournament play for the American Cribbage Congress, and here his two sons were struggling to figure out what exactly they were.

In the end, I won by a pretty big margin, almost double-skunking my brother.  I kind of wanted it to be a closer game, but unfortunately Mike got one of the most ridiculously bad series of deals I’ve ever seen in a card game.  Cribbage is a mixed game of skill and chance, but last night my win was almost all chance.  We had one of the cardboard bracket boards they used in the tournament days, and to be completely proper about it Mike filled in the results once our game was over.

We left the bracket board, playing board, cards and pegs at the funeral home today, along with a few other items.  When they cremate dad on Monday, they’ll place those things with him.

~ ~ ~

I’m sure I’ll have more to write over the next few days and weeks.  My dad was a big man with a big life, and there’s so much to say about him and everything he did, but for now I just need to absorb the fact that his life is over.

He was only twice as old as me. It still seems that he went way too early.

More later.

Well, I’m at the Chennai International Airport, a vigorously skanky airport if there ever was one, sitting on one of the few clean seats well away from the piles of garbage surrounding some of the trash bins. The coffee I’m drinking is decidedly horrible, but it’ll keep me awake until boarding time two hours from now.  Considering this was the first ISO 9000-certified airport in India, I’d like to see the process documentation they put around their maintenance activities.

Today was the second of two long days with vendors. By long I don’t mean bad, just long. I’m wiped, but the days were very useful, and I now have a better understanding of the capabilities of some of the organizations my company works with. The only question now is how to leverage that knowledge.

From Chennai it’ll be an 11 hour flight to Brussels. After a two hour layover—apparently a dangerously short stop when traveling with checked luggage on this route—it’ll be a nine hour flight to O’Hare. From there, it’ll be a short hop home. With layovers, I’ll be in transit for almost 25 hours. The 14-hour flight that’s AA 292 looks almost luxurious by comparison.

I’m too tired to think now, so I’m going to sign off. Goodbye, India. I’ll see you later.

Monday evening in Chennai.  It’s my last night here.  Tomorrow I’ll meet with vendors, and from there it will be straight to the airport.

India has been an amazing experience.  I’ve learned so much, met so many great people, and have seen so many things.  I am different from when I came here.  On Thursday I’ll return to my regular life, but I’ll never be able to be the same person I was…  And I’m thankful for that.

I miss my wife and son beyond belief, and can’t wait to see them.  For them, and only for them, I’m ready for the trip to be over.  If they were here, well, America could wait.

The next update may very well be from the States. More later.

Sunday morning in Delhi. I’ll be meeting a few classmates for breakfast in about 30 minutes, and then the rest of the day is unplanned. If anything like last night’s trip to the hotel bar, I expect this morning’s breakfast to be extravagantly priced. That’s what we get for staying at a five-star hotel, though. It’ll be interesting to see how prices are on the outside, and how good I am at bartering. We were warned before the trip that bartering was something that we’d be expected to do, and on the drive in our driver told us the same.

So, the big flight from Chicago to Delhi went pretty well, all things considered. For a few of us, our education on India began a bit earlier than expected, outside Gate L8 in the American Terminal at O’Hare. By chance a few of us found ourselves sitting by an Indian professor from the University of Kansas, and we ended up talking for 20 to 30 minutes on a number of aspects of Indian business, especially the airlines. “Indian people are very good at being expensive and cheap at the same time,” he said, referencing a number of examples, including the use of Jet Airways 737-900 variant, a pack-them-in airplane that I may regrettably get to experience when I head to Chennai in a few weeks. He also help guide us into the beginning of a long discussion on proper tipping, a discussion that, for all practical purposes, still continues.

Anyway, the flight was on time, and the staff on AA 292 I must say were professional and excellent. From a passenger standpoint, though, it was one of the most disorganized and misbehaved groups of passengers I’ve encountered. Now, by misbehaved I don’t mean combative or belligerent or anything like that. Instead, the passengers seemed to simply not care to follow instructions or requests from the flight attendants. (Before landing, it took over six sweeps to get people to put their chairs in an upright position. People would put them up and then recline them again.) Then there was the kids sleeping the aisles, the guys spending 15+ minutes in the bathroom, and a lot of bickering over pricing of duty free goods. Trying to keep an open and mind and not be judgmental, I started to wonder if this was par for the course for India-bound flights, but one of the attendants told me told me otherwise after I asked for coffee, but to hold the cream and sugar. “Thanks, that’s easier.”

“It seems you’re working on quite a route.”

“No! It’s never like this. This has turned into one of those flight attendant nightmares… And the flight just keeps going and going and going.”

50 minutes later, we were on the ground. Delhi was fogged in—I was on the wing, and I couldn’t see the end of it until just before we landed, but the landing itself was probably the smoothest and most expertly executed I’ve ever seen. I was dry by that point, too, which was nice. Midway through the flight—right before I was about to fall asleep—my neighbor accidentally bumped a glass of water into my lap, an incident that also somehow shorted out the flight path view on my TV screen. From that point on, I had to look over others’ shoulders to see where we were.

Anyway, the first thing that struck me getting off the plane was how bad the air was. Even inside the airport, I found myself having a bit of trouble breathing. I’ve adjusted to it now, but I’m kind of amazed at the difference in air quality compared to the US. Customs were different from the US, too. I went in expecting a lot of questions, but instead the customs officer didn’t say a single word to me. He just glanced at my documents, stamped them and sent me on my way.

The loading area of the airport was chaotic, and provided the first good taste of driving and traffic in India. From there it was a quick but foggy drive to our hotel. Our driver was friendly and gracious, and took the time to point out the sights along the way—or, at least, what would be sights if there wasn’t any fog. From there it was a quick check in, a Kingfisher with a few classmates, and sleep.

Time for breakfast. More later.

It only took 14 hours to reach the other side of the globe. The world definitely seems smaller now.

So, I’m in Delhi. 14 hours is a long time to be on a plane, but the flight was better than expected. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around our first few hours here, so I’m not going to say much now. I’ll try to post at least once a day moving forward, or at least as schedule allows.

A couple of notes on my entries for this trip: Internet access at our hotel is exorbitantly priced, so entries may not be posted when I actually write them. Also, since most of this trip is either for school or for work, much of what I do and see I won’t be able to write about. (I’m here as part of a class with the U of M, and we’ll be visiting a number of large and small companies and government organizations who are being exceedingly gracious in their willingness to let a bunch of students come in, see what they do and ask questions. There’s an implicit NDA on pretty much every site visit we make.) I’m keeping a separate journal for the class, and am not exactly sure how I’ll handle the two at the same time, so expect some weirdness… Maybe even some class journals with large parts edited out.

Also, since Internet access may be limited, Twitter may be the best place to see what I’m up to.  I may try to get some stuff up on Flickr as time allows, too.

And with that, I’m going to take a quick shower and head downstairs to the hotel bar to unwind with my classmates and discuss what exactly it is that we’ve just gotten ourselves into. More later.

I leave for India in three days.  It’s finally dawned on me that I’m actually going, but mentally I’m nowhere near ready.  I’ve been on so many trips to so many places, but this one is very different.  I have no idea what I don’t know, and please believe me when I say I seriously hate that.

At the very least, though, it kind of seems like I’m prepared.  All necessary papers and reservations are in place, my bank and credit cards have been notified of my travel, and all the little items I’ll need to keep my electronic devices functioning overseas appear to be ready and in place.  I’ll have a phone for work, and as of tonight Lisa and I officially have our Skype accounts working correctly.  (Video calls will make it possible for me to see Lisa and the little one while I’m overseas, as well as allow them to see me.)  My camera equipment is ready, with extra precautions in place for those who may try to make me part ways with it.  (Roughly 10% of those I’ve know who’ve traveled in India have had cameras stolen there.)

Beyond that, well, I don’t know.  I guess I’ll learn when I get there.

~ ~ ~

The Skype test Lisa and I did this evening–me at work, her at home–was kind of bittersweet.  It was a relief to know that we finally had our connections working, and that we’d be able to be in contact while i was gone, but at the same time I was reminded this was as close as I’d be to either one of them for two and a half weeks.  I’m excited and sad at the same time.

The weather looks good for the flights out on Friday, both here and in Chicago.  First I fly to O’Hare, and then it’s AA 292 all the way to New Delhi.