Wow. After a long couple of flights, I made it. The flights themselves were quite ok. The seats were not bad (window on the right on the first one and aisle on the left on the second one), but not terribly comfortable. But that’s alright.

The layover was short enough and the slowest part was the last 4-hr stretch. Dammit, it seemed like each minute was moving as slowly as an hour. But haven’t we seen that before.

I could not get any cellphone signal at Seoul airport, but at Bombay, it was able to pick up AirTel and I was relieved. It does not update the date and time, but big deal - I already exchanged 10 SMS messages with my brother from the time I landed to the time I came out of the customs area. Good stuff, I like it.

Immigration was surprisingly quick. There were quite a few people, but they had many windows open, so it was quite smooth. The bags took a while, but not too long. Ultimately, I was home only at about 4am! Chatted for a bit with everyone and that made it 5.30am. Of course, as usual, there was food and drink made available at that time too!

Decided that I wanted to get out of jetlag syndrome from day one itself, so did not go to sleep at all, and in fact watched some of the Australia-New Zealand cricket match. It was so hopeless, and so one-sided that I really did not want to watch it. Then it struck me that we could go play squash! So that was decided - to play squash at about 8am.

We did go play from 8 to 10 or so and came home and had the traditional Sunday breakfast of Idlis! Yay! Also had sweet lime juice after a long long time, which was refreshing. I loved it.

I tried to stay awake, but the India-South Africa match was so boring that it made me fall asleep :-)

I slept for a bit, had lunch and then slept till some family came to visit. Two cousins and two aunts came by and then my parents-in-law with my brother-in-law also stopped by. It was good fun to chat with everyone. I felt bad that I did not call anyone and they not only called me, but also came by. Tsk Tsk.

Have to catch up with friends, but first things first. I am here for my visa as well as for weddings. The appointment with the consulate is tomorrow and after that, I have to go shopping for a shirt for my suit, and maybe tie and socks.

The passport situation is weird. They send it by courier in 3-4 days, but typically, apparently, it takes 2 days or so. So we cannot go to the place of the wedding till we receive the passport because unlike the US, the couriers don’t leave a sticky note saying they will re-deliver. There is no re-delivery and even if there was, since we plan to be out for a week, the re-delivery will not work. So we have to wait in Bombay for the passport to come back from the consulate and then only go and start the wedding revelries.

A big and long week ahead. Deep breath!