Happiest Birthday!!!

It was my birthday over the weekend. I had not expected it to be much different from any other day. My friend Gary had stayed back after working the last few days in our office here. So, I was just planning to go out and have a good dinner with my wife, son & Gary. Then I saw them baking a couple of cakes, and cooking all my favorite food. I figured we were dining in, which was not a bad option either. Little did I know about what was coming. I was heating up some bread for lunch, when my brother walked in to surprise me!!! He had flown in all the way from Chicago to be here for my birthday. I was too stunned to react when I saw him! I am sure my expressions were somewhat stupid, given how surprised I was! I figured Gary and my wife had planned this, and I started expecting my close friends Madhu and Maitri to arrive as well, from NYC. But there was more to come! Kishan walked in with his wife, infant daughter, parents and mother-in-law at about 6:00 PM. He had driven all the way from Philadelphia for this surprise! While I was still recovering from all these shots of surprise, in walked Janice and Marcel from NJ!!! And finally, Madhu and Maitri arrived shortly thereafter. I ended up having the best birthday of my life, so far! I still do not have words to express how happy I was. I felt happy (of course), honored, fortunate and thankful to see all of them having traveled so far to surprise me. I mean, it wasn’t like I was celebrating a milestone birthday. And I am not a kid either to be celebrating birthdays. But my family and friends made it a memorable day for me.

To add to it all, my wife and son had made a framed drawing declaring me the best Dad, ever! That goes on the wall of my office tomorrow :-)

Gary turns 50 next month and my brother turns 40 in a couple of years. I had told my wife that I wanted to arrange surprise parties for these two events. But I guess I will now have to do something really different to surprise them!

Baltimore Airport

I have been traveling a lot more than I want, in the recent weeks. And I happened to have a short layover at the BWI airport in Baltimore, yesterday. In general, airports tend to have extremely limited number of power outlets that can be accessed by travelers. I usually walk around all over the terminal, and end up sitting on the floor in some remote corner, to be able to charge my laptop. I also get forced to use my laptop's powersaver mode to conserve battery life, straining my eyes to see the dimly lit screen (and it is another big topic that Windows Vista drains batteries within minutes). Anyway, BWI was such a refreshing experience. It had these table-like structures all over the terminal, with 16 power outlets in each of them. And each of those tables had four USB power outlets as well! Pretty much each gate had one such table. My cell phone badly needed some juice and I was only too happy to be at BWI! I hope rest of the airports in the US (and abroad) learn from BWI!