Thirteen - 13

I was flying to Helsinki in April, Friday the 13th. When I checked in Online, I found my seat number was 13F. When I reached the airport, the gate number for the flight was 13. Ominous?

Lucky for me that I think 13 is my lucky number.

Then I pondered on this a little longer. The flight was full, so all of us were fellow travellers who must have believed 13 was our lucky number, and more so me and other 5 travellers in Row 13, than anyone else.

So much for 13!

Crazy signs! A lesson in simple English!

Many of you will remember my blog with this picture!

SAS Radisson is obviously organising some Quests

Yesterday, I went to drop Praveen (Aricent) at the airport as he was returning to India.

On the Finnair counter was this notice:



Sadly, old habits die hard. When I see mangled English text, it sort of riles me.

The traditional mistake of Finns writing English is that they capitalize You and Your, etc. This capitalisation is only when referring to God (and in India, one's mother). Another common mistake is te absence of the definite and indefinite articles as tey do not use them in Finnish.

Another traditional mistake in this notice is the misuse of the "arrival to" instead of "arrival in".

But the two really classic and hilarious mistakes in this notice are "morningsift" instead of "morning shift" and "immidiate" instead of "immediate".

Another possible misuse is the use of the word "shall" when it should be "will".

The use of "I shall" and "We shall" is when you use it as something may be done in the future. If you are intending to emphasize that the action will definitely be taken in the future, the use should be "I will" and "We will". This is exactly the opposite in the case of You and He / She / They!

I pointed out the mistakes to a really very charming girl who was at the Finnair check-in counter. She loves Indian Food, is friendly and helpful. If you find her serving you, only when your bags are REALLY overweight will she charge you. But then some of you guys do really have a weight problem! :-)

This sign is most important for our friends as most off you coming through either Frankfurt of Paris are having your baggage held up somewhere, causing yourselves a great deal of hardship. It is best that you check at Helsinki that your baggage is put on to your Oulu flight!.

Our journey to India

We left Oulu only by 1 pm on Friday afternoon as there were so many loose ends to tie up. It snowed heavily most of the 600km. I was glad I had got the winter tyres on and the drive was uneventful. Couple of stops for Mika to smoke his cigarrettes..

We stayed at one of Raantel's apartments in Helsinki. Although we have had it for a month we have not had any residents in it. Annikki, Mika and I were the first to stay there. It was not yet ready, so our friends, Ganesan and Levi, must have had have a tough task on Sunday making it ready for the two Indian software engineers who were to arrive on Sunday.

On Saturday I met with Christian, had lunch with him at the FORUM while Annikki and her sister, Anneli went to church. Then we went to Sello, the huge shopping complex in Leppavaara. It is just too big to be convenient. We found nothing we wanted there. There was no service in either PRISMA of the K-Citymarket, which were both so huge that all the Prisma's and Citymarkets in Oulu would fit into these! Later I had time to visit Ajith and discuss a possible visit to his Ayurvedic Rest Centre on the Kabini River on the border of Karnataka and Kerala.

We had to leave at 5:30 am for the airport so I ordered an Airport Taxi, leaving the car parked outside our apartment for Levi to park at one of other apartments. the Taxi came right on time and for € 32, we had a convenient ride to the airport. Certainly a service to be recommended.

Despite my telling Annikki, she insisted on taking some tubes of hand cream etc., which were larger than the allowed size. Sure enough she had to give them up quite unwillingly at the security. All the soft drinks and juices Annikki had saved for the air journey had to be thrown away! (Hope she has learnt the lesson!)

The Finnair flight to London was not very comfortable as the space between the seats was so small. We certainly hoped for larger seats and more leg room on the British airways flight from London to Mumbai.

London Airport is HUGE. We had to take a bus from Terminal 2 where we arrived to Terminal 5, where the international and domestic British Airways flights depart. The coach journey was 10 minutes.

We had to go through another security before entering Terminal 5. Really terrible. Just because I left my watch on, I had to encounter a full public body search.

We wondered what benefit all this was as a determined terrorist would know HOW to beat this security process. We were amazed to see a little 10 year old girl having to undergo a body search! A complete sham.

The departure gate for our flight needed yet another journey in a fast train from one part of Terminal 5 to another. There we waited for our flight which was a another full one. To our dismay the seats were narrower than the last flight and the leg room between the seats was even tighter.

Luckily the in-flight TV had some great British and American comedy programmes and a couple of drama TV presentations, plus we were served two meals and time went fast -the eight hours flew away and we were in Mumbai. Annikki enjoyed herself watching the flight path on the TV all the way from London to Mumbai! To each his / her own.

It was 20 past midnight on 19th October 2009 when we disembarked. More on that in my next blog posting.