The return...

So... here I am sitting at the Toronto airport waiting to be airborne. As has happened earlier on my way here, I reached the airport very early! My flight is scheduled for 6.15 pm. I thought I have 3 bags so let me go early and reach in time so that I have no hassles. So I plan to reach there at about 3 pm in the afternoon. I arrange for the limo to pick me up at 2 o’clock anticipating it would take about an hour given the bad weather and impending traffic.
At about 1.30 when I am thinking of going and finish the check-out formalities at the hotel, I get a call from the limo driver. He says he is early as the weather is not too favourable and there are inevitable delays in this weather. Anyways by the time I finish all the formalities and have my luggage sitting in the car trunk, its about 1.45.
We start. What I see on the way is that there is no traffic and there I am at the airport check-in counter at 2.40 with too much time at my hand!
I had not thought I’d say this any time but I am glad that the rep at the counter could not operate the new ticketing system! At other times I’d be probably irritated at having to wait at the check-in counter for 25+ mins but not today. Today I am happy that the rep is cursing a system upgrade and that nothing works as it used to. All this is because of e-ticketing. Who would have thought. But I am glad for this hiccup and user complaints and more so that I (and the software we develop) am not responsible for this! Now that I have said this, I am musing, would it be any different for the customers we develop software for?

Cavalcade of Lights

What do you think about going to an open air theater at 7 in the evening and listening to a concert albeit not knowing the singer or having heard her songs before? Oh and I forgot to mention its -6 deg celcius and with wind chill feeling like -12. Crazy eh?
I did that. Singer was July Black, a Canadian performing artist. Occasion: prelude to Christmas. Location: at the Toronto city hall, where the official Christmas tree of the city is. It helps that this square where the performance was, there was an ice skating rink. I’d have liked to skate but given that there were nobody with us who could skate and me being so prone to falling, I dropped out of that and settled to just listen to the music. It wasn’t too bad, with cup of good hot chocolate to keep me warm.
After the concert there were fireworks. Amazing too. I’ll leave you with some pictures!

Toronto's official christmas tree.


the stage

fireworks - in the background is the new city hall buildings