A night at the Oscars

This was not my first visit since the award, but I had somehow never gotten around to popping the question. We are all movie buffs, and the first time I saw the statuette was at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, encased in a glass box. (Shelley Winters won the Oscar in 1960 for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs van Pels in “The Diary of Anne Frank”.)

The Ray residence was always a special place to visit and I did make the trip every time I went to Calcutta. The occasion this time for the trip to Calcutta was the celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary which also coincided with the silver jubilee of my graduation from IIMC.

December 2007 to be precise.

After chit-chatting with Sandeep dada, Sourodeep and Monku Ma; I sprung the question.

"Where is the Oscar? I want to see it."

The words were immediately followed by a commotion. Several people started speaking at once and a babble of voices broke out. Soon it became obvious that nobody present there knew where it was. Oh my God, have I opened a Pandora's box here?

But they knew the person who knew. Buni knew but she was out running some errands. Before I could say Uncle Oscar, frantic phone calls were being made to her to determine where it was kept, when she would be home and a multitude of other things. My feeble protests ("don't worry", "not a problem") were completely ignored.

We had the customary cups of tea and gossip, and Buni soon walked in. As it transpired, she not only knew exactly where it was, she also was the only person who knew anything that happened in that house! It only took a few seconds for her to fish it out of it's secret hiding place.

It was afternoon in Calcutta, but surely it was night time somewhere.

AK 09-Sep-2012

To my Audience (whoever you are)

I would really like it if you would leave some evidence of having read any of my posts. Thank You.

Tolls in New Jersey

I make lists. Yes, I confess that I make lists. Things to do today. Things to buy. Things to pack. Things to take on my travel.

One of the items that I have on my list is called “local money”. On my current journey to the land of the free, it even included an item that read “take $144”. As I went through my list, I rifled in the box of money I have looking for greenbacks and came up empty.

Now that is pretty rare. I travel to the US often enough that we always have a stash of American moolah at home. The wife did have some in her box of goodies, but I volunteered to leave those with her (she was joining me a few days later) and get some at the bank at Zurich airport.

I forgot. Yes, I did. Not only did I forget at Zurich airport, but I also forgot at Newark airport. As I often do, I kept my head down and walked through both airports. I suppose the fact that I only got out of customs after 9 PM may have played a part. I walked up to the Hyundai Sonata, loaded by bags, set up the Garmin and drove off.

As I hit the NJTP, I went “oh shit!” in my head. The penny dropped. I had no cash US$ with me to pay tolls. No matter, Hertz has the EZ card reader in the car, so I was in the clear. That’s what I thought. But not this one. No EZ card to make it eazier for me. Dang.

My brain went into overdrive. Partly “what the hell am I gonna do now” and partly panic. As I pulled out a ticket from the toll booth entering the NJTP, I started to think how to get to an ATM. After a while, my mind cooled down. As I drove along, I finally said to myself that I was surely not the first person to turn up at a toll booth without money and I just barrelled along until I was presented with the need to pay.

“We don’t take credit cards”.

That was not a promising start.

“I am sorry, but I don’t have any cash. Is there an ATM nearby that I can use?”

“There is one about 2 miles ahead in the Service Area but I have to get your licence and registration details for the toll”.

So it turned about to be quite simple after all. She filled out a form with all the details she needed, gave me a copy and a receipt for $3.60 that I had to pay within 5 days and off I went. The cars that were lined up behind me waited patiently (very un-Swiss) for the 5 minutes or so that the process took.

I found the ATM, my Swiss card worked and I had the money to pay the other $13.75 in tolls for the rest of my journey to Stamford.

Welcome to the US of A.

15th August 2012