My First Flight

Everthing happened like a dream, my manager called me and said, Congrats man... You are going onsite! It was due to my manager, that such an oppurtunity was created, in a project where there was no more oppurtunity for onsite. A must say a special thanks to Vijay, my manager for making it happen. As like others who get their first onsite oppurtunity, i was also excited and rendered speechless. The workpermit took one long month to be processed. After that things happened too fast, that i struggled a bit to keep me up with the situation. The visa stamping which i beleived would take 22 working days, was just a weeks process when it came for me. So i had hardly a week to purchase all things, shift my things back to my native and prepare myself. It was on the day before my travel that i was totally nervous as i had the fear of leaving back something. I packed up, or else weighed up I should say, everything cautious about the thing that the weight limit in flight is only 20kg. I managed to finish everything by 22:00 and went to sleep for 2 hours.

At 00:05 when i woke up, to my surprise all my tension has disappeared and i along with three of my room mates reached the Airport by a cab. It was my first time travel to airport. When i checked in my luggage, I was literally praying that the weight should be within the limits, but the display showed up as 25.8 kg. To my surprise, they didn't say anything and it was headed to the flight. Hope the early checkin saved me. There was immigration and security check after which i was asked to wait for the flight. It was 04:45 when i was called for boarding the flight... It was a long tunnel like passage, which led into the flight QR277 (Qatar Airways). I suggest that you must see atleast once, the air hostess in qatar airways...! I was a bit disappointed to be seated third from the window, but neverthless i could see outside the window. The flight was moving in the runway very slowly for about two or three minutes... and in sudden, it picked up speed and in fraction of seconds everything on the ground diminished in size. The feeling of take off was like being in a gaint titanic ship found in the amusement park, rocking back and forth. I was literally stuck back to seat and i didnt rather couldnot move anyways. After a while, the flight was stable and there was an annoncement from the captain, that we were flying 11,000 feet above the ground level.

There were displays, rather TVs I would say, for every 3 seats hanging from the top, which displayed all the flight info... It said that the outside temperature was around where the centigrade and farenheit scales meetup... It was an unforgettable experience to be in the first time flight. Then suddenly in the TV, came the picture of something i was very familiar with, it was OSCAR FILMS... I wondered what it has to do with over here... Then I realized that it was the movie Rendu being played up. In the flight, everybody was given a earphone which you can plug into the socket by the arm rest. It was time for breakfast... The air hostess asked eachone, VEG or OMLETTE. I chose omlette and a person near me Mr.Ganesan chose Veg. He is a middle aged guy working in Qatar. He gave me a good company in flight and taught about the things i needed to know in a flight journey. It took 4 hours to reach qatar and in the mean time, i had a good sleep. The temperature was so freezing that everybody was given a red blanket.

As we were nearing Qatar, the flights display once again showed up the altitude, ground map and the flight location, temperature etc. But One thing i didnt understand in the display was the picture of the airplane from the top with a pointer indicating in south west or sometimes west with kilometers display on it. I couldnt figure out what that was, I later came to know in my next flight, that it was the Mecca Pointer...For muslims to do their prayer in the direction of mecca. The landing was so smooth and i arrived at the qatar airport at 06:45 local time. Though it was early morning, the sun was up in the sky and it was a bit hot. Mr.Ganesan commented that "In tamil there is a saying Naai, Panri, Kaagam illadha oore kidayadhunu solluvanga, but in quatar even they dont live..." It was a complete desert except for the city, It is surviving only due to its natural resources... I was for the first time, in a totally foreign land and i was very cautious about where to go and what to do, in order to catch the connecting flight to London...