Why airlines should allow canoes....


Raise your hand if you've ever been in a city without proper drainage during monsoon season.

If you haven't, you're in for an interesting experience. It's about 1 PM here in India and here is what has happened so far today (on my way to work)....

I'll start out by saying that it absolutely poured all night and is still raining pretty hard. For those of you that know what Indian rooftops are like, I'll say that ours had 6 inches of water...the drain was obviously not working. Water was dripping from everywhere and making the marble slippery. And we're not even outside yet.

So I figured that I was tough and could ride my bicycle to work. That is one decision I will regret for awhile. First thing I see are new rivers forming on the sides of the roads. There are even some new lakes in the fields and at corners. I get out on my bike and immediately start getting soaked...no problem, right? I get to this point where the puddles is covering the whole road and what do I hear? a motorbike engine revving up. I was like "don't even think about it," even though I feared the worst (as you can probably guess, my quote was the family version of what i really said). Wooosh! The guy drenches me with his bike. I seriously wanted to drop my bike and run after him cursing and yelling like a lunatic. I did plenty of cursing...just not the running after the guy part. I kept going along the road, only to find another river. Everyone was turning around at this one point, so I turned around and went home too.

Get back, change clothes, talk to my roomies, and get pictures taken of my sorry a$$. Then I decided that the weather wasn't gonna beat me on this day, so I went back out...this time on foot.

There are 4 ways to get to my work. I walk up to the first one, only to find about 1 foot of water between me and the other side of the street. People were taking there shoes off and walking through it...I could only imagine the glass I would step on and the insuing disease I might get (it happens, ask my brother). I knew the second way was already a raging river, so unless I had a power boat.... The third way is quite a detour. I walked through the "Indian" part of town (there were sidewalks, believe it or not) only to reach the newly formed river again. My last chance was to do a big loop around the water. One floodway I crossed had water in it that looked like chocolate milk...yummy.

So I'm finally on the right side of the street going the right way. Water is just everywhere, causing all sorts of pandemonium. What do I see in the parking lot of my work? About 3 feet (1 metre) of water. Cars were floating, people on bikes were stuck, and the cows were runnin' for dry land. One cycle-rickshaw driver managed to brave the water and peddle two ladies right up to the steps...I hope he got a good tip. Naturally, I walk upstairs to the office and find it to be locked. I go back outside, only to see my boss on the other side of the lake trying to figure out how to get on my side. After about 20 minutes he managed to make it.

All would have been fine if Air China would've let me bring my canoe from Canada....