Snow World – Across Time Zones, the World Changes [ II ]

Above the Atlantic Ocean
We used to have a CEO, who used to regularly send company updates to all the employees during a period when my company was not at its best. The interesting part of the mail was that most often he used to mail from some flight during his journey from one part of the world to another. It has been a dream from then onwards, to compose something from the flight. So here it goes … :)

The Atlantic Ocean is not far away. It is just around 9 – 10 kms from where I am typing this section of my blog. 9 – 10 kms directly down from where I am sitting. This part of the blog is being composed on board the North West airlines NW 0042, on its journey from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. It is dark all around but I am trying hard not to sleep so as to minimize the effects of jet lag.

Ok ! Now that I have satisfied one of my long pending dream, let me get back to the blog! ;)

Walking in the Snow
One of the best part of the life in Netherlands is that the people are health conscious by default. Most of them would either walk or use cycles for commuting from one place to another. The public transportation is so good that one need not even worry about owning a car or other vehicle unless there is lot of journey involved. Though I was staying at Amersfoort, I preferred to take the train daily to Barneveld. The train had just 2 compartments and was a “stoptrein” that ran from Amersfoort to Ede-Waginengin. The distance from Amersfoort to Barnveld was covered in 10 mins. The day when I landed, there was a cold wind blowing from some direction and it threatened the stability of my bones. At the office, the mention about the cold climatic conditions was shrugged away by the talk of how the climate had changed over the years. A lady at the front desk mentioned that it was years since she had seen a real snow in Netherlands. “No Snow in Netherlands!!! Even Hyderabad has snow 365 days in a year (and 366 for leap year) **Snow World** !!” – I thought to myself. What she did not know was that I had set my foot in Netherlands and good things were bound to happen! Ahem!! Good ???!!

The training started on Tuesday and as I was taking my class through the colorful presentations that I had created using various shapes, fonts, animations, etc (everything apart from sensible content), I could see that outside the window, some particles were fluttering down from the sky. It was as though a battalion of goblins were parachuting from the sky! Someone suddenly shouted – “Here comes the snow”. It was the first time I was seeing snow. I was really excited on seeing he first particles (or drops ??) of snow. Now I wonder, if I am getting excited for my first sighting of snow, would there be limits to my excitement on the first night!! Ahem, not the right time to think with a babe sitting one seat away from me!

The first day of snow was really exciting. On the way back to hotel, there was snow all around and I was walking through snow on the roads and snow falling from the sky. If there had been a beautiful lady then, I could have called her “Snow Beauty!” – bad kadi!
The second day was not that exciting. It was boring as there was nothing but snow and it was white all around. I just wondered, if the experience would have been better if the snow flakes were colourful, of varying colors, rather than the dull white color! Then we would have had colorful snow-man, and it would have ignited lot of creativity. But from second day onwards, snow was a boring thought as it restricted all kinds of movement and limited my movements to a great extent.

Ok then, my battery is running down and it is time to take a break and continue with the blog once I am back in India. Oh !! 24 hrs more before I get good food !!! India, here I come 