New Bangalore Airport Sucks!

This is my 50th blog! This is my last moment in Bangalore, and my flight is leaving soon. Now I need to consider whether to continue my blog or not. I would need to try to juggle my work and blogging time now, since there is no more 1 hour taxi ride.

Anyway, I would like to thank all readers across the world for reading my blog for the past 1 month. My statistic is not that impressive, but at least I know my thoughts are well-read.

It’s September 11 and I am going to board a flight soon. It around 9pm here and I’m in the world LOUSIEST newly build airport – Bengaluru (Bangalore) Airport. Want to know why? Read on….

I arrived the airport at 6:30pm and was informed that the check-in counter will only open at 7:30pm so I went for the only café to get a sandwich and coffee - Café Coffee Day. So I had not choice but try to munch my food slowly to get through my 1 hour. By the way, Café Coffee Day is Bangalore’s Starbuck replacemnet. Their slogan is ‘A lot can happen over coffee’ and the first thing came to my mind after reading the slogan is being choked by coffee.

Trying to spend one hour eating was really hard for me, so, I went snapping photo.

(Above: Where is everyone?)

When the counter opened, I was the first person to queue up (Kiasu person is like that one). But the lady at the counter told me that the system had a problem printing boarding pass and I had to wait for a while. I waited for around 30 minutes and they still have not fixed the problem. Then the lady at the counter told me that I had excess baggage of 7kg. Wow! Where on earth did I come up with additional 7kg? Trying not to argue, and praying my company would help me pay, I gave in and was directed to another counter.

In Bangalore Airport, there was no sign of ‘Excess Baggage’. I walked around the area looking for that sign until I became frustrated and consulted the information counter. The guy directed me to ‘Air India SAT Service Counter’.

I handed in my itinerary with the excess weight information to the girl at the counter. She stared at the for a while; and then asked me which counter I was checking in just now. After that she went disappeared for about 25 minutes. When she appeared, she asked me for my ticket number and I replied that I had no idea because my itinerary was all I used to check in and the lady at the check-in counter directed me to this location. So hearing this, she disappeared again.

When she appeared, she asked for my credit card. I find this part pretty amusing, the latest airport which just opened a few months ago, and this particular lady was swiping my credit card the OLD way – using a bulky machine and place my credit card underneath a paper and swiped it! It took her 10 minutes to master this.

After that, it was another 5 minutes stamping the receipts carefully. And guess how much I needed to pay? 3710 rupee!

I spent almost 1 extra hour for the whole check-in procedure!

So, the next thing is the immigration clearance; but was asked to fill up the departure card. When I tried to borrow from him, he refused saying that he only had one. But no one was queuing up, and he could just lend me the pen and gave me a few minutes to fill it up! I had no choice but to beg for pen from other passenger.

When I manage to fill up the departure card, the counters were closed for 15 minutes!

After 15 minutes, I finally managed to enter the international boarding hall and passed the security clearance.

There are just a few shops inside the hall, such as Duty Free Shop,

Watch Shop

Pizza Hut ( where the worker need to understand that I was taking photo of the shop and not her)


Kingfisher Bar

and etc….

Another thing that frustrated me was that when I tried to connect to the internet, I had to sms for a password. I sms 3 times and no response at all!
In addition, there was no power socket around.

So actually I ended publishing this blog in Changi airport at 7:13am!

My Workplace in Bangalore

Just checked out from Taj Residency, and heading to work at the moment. It has been a long one month stay here; and I don’t know whether it will be my last visit in Bangalore, but if I’m coming again, I guess I could see at least come changes.

Despite the city condition, my office building is exceptionally more advance than my working place in Penang. The area is like a University Campus and combines with the cool atmosphere you could actually have your coffee break under the sun!

Not to land myself into troubles, I would not be commenting anything about my work place, just show some photos.

The campus area

beautiful flowers,

grass, and

water fountain.

Front Desk

Cubicles

My Cubicle

Conference Room

Corridor

Cafeteria

Pantry (I love the coffee machine!)

Volleyball court

Tennis court

Basketball court

One more thing to note, the security is so good that they check for bomb for every car that goes into the area... even my lousy bicycle!

Taj Residency Hotel, Bangalore

Tomorrow will be my last day in Bangalore. Tonight is packing night. I will be missing the life here after getting used to having a driver bringing me around and people cleaning the mess in my room everyday. But looking at the bright side, one more day and I could resume my life in Penang, eating foods that I love, breathing in fresher air and do not have to put up with honking and tipping culture.

I realize that I have not blog about my hotel. I guess it is the right time since I will be leaving tomorrow morning. I don’t think anyone will come and disturb me tonight after all the complains I wrote.

Taj Residency Bangalore is certainly a 5 star hotel. The room is spacious and comfortable as shown on my previous blog and I love the fruit and cookies they serve everyday. Everytime when I call up the front desk or any service desks; I don’t need to identify myself. They will refer me by my name and not by number. It’s a nice feeling actually when people seem to know me, although I can’t make any prank call to the front desk anymore, like this:

Me: (In man mixed with woman voice) Hi! I would like to order some food?
Receptionist: What food would you like to order,Sir. I mean Madam…. I emmm…May I know your name?
Me: It’s a Chinese name. I don’t know whether you know how to pronounce this but let me spell for you F-A-T-T and Y-E-W.
Receiptionist: F*ck you?

There are also some facilities in the hotel. The gymnasium is in the first floor where there are a lots of exercise equipment available.

To ensure everyone’s safety, there is a guard observing everyone’s move. Hope he is not enjoying watching.

If you get bored, there are lots of book around.

But you have to pay to own them.

If you want to cool down, there is swimming pool!

But my personal suggestion is if you don’t look good in swimsuit; don’t ever ever and ever swim there. It is surrounded by hotel restaurant and café, however I don’t think people will sue you if you indirectly cause them to lose their appetite.

If you love alcohol, there is a good bar called Ice Bar

and if you love Chinese food you can have Chef Happy Wong to cook for you. And he is a Malaysian.