Flight ORD-SanFrancisco

Nov 19, 2006 4:20pm CST

So here I am on second flight to West Coast within a week. I am heading for a core tech/geek interview this time with VmWare. Anyways, its thanksgiving time and people are already heading for places. I have a good week off ahead and this trip is like a cherry on the cake. But the scenario isn't that bright and I shudn't forget that I hav ton of work to complete when I get back to UIUC. Another creatures who wudn't be really excited to welcome thanksgiving are I am sure turkeys :)
The flight this time is really huge for a domestic one, it's 2-3-2 and I haven't seen these for domestic use before this trip. The weather God is having a mercy this time in Illinois. I remember the real cruel winters of last year, I never expected weather to shock me but when you are in Illinois, expect the unexpected. So lets talk about IL a bit more. I would say, its one of the most placid, boring and unexciting states and hadn't it been for Chicago, I think it would stand worse than lets say Alabama or whatever weird state names you've rarely heard of. And yeah, another great thing about IL is University of Illinois :-). I would be writing a separate blog on my beloved university, so lets not deviate from Illinois for the moment. It's mostly flatlands and long stretch of fields as opposed to the valleys in the west or deserts of arizona or volcanoes of new mexico or beaches of florida. Needless to say, its not exactly a tourist attraction and the only city that scores in this dull state is Chicago. Interestingly, Chicago is supposedly the most organized, clean and systematically planned big city of Uncle Sam. Looking into its history, it was rebuilt after being burnt down to ashes in 1871. The foundations of todays Chicago were laid out by some of the leading architects reconstructing the city after the Great Fire. It also scores over most of the other cities when it comes to architectural fame. I've heard that architecture students come to Chicago for studying the buildings and monuments because they vary a lot in their styles. The only other place that comes close in architecture is I guess, the good old Boston. Somehow there seems to be a subtle correlation between these two cities. While Boston is more popular as the 'Europe of America' (this is not exactly the expression, I just made it up to get the feeling across to you), Chicago is more famous for urban and rich architecture.
So, as you see, describing Illinois is mostly describing Chicago. In contrast, I live in this small village county Champaign-Urbana, dearly known as 'Chambana' among the Illinites. Its a peaceful, small place with 90% of the population being students. The other few cities that I have visited during my short stay of 15 months in US are New York, Boston, Seattle and a glimpse of Silicon Valley. I have seen a small part of San Jose in my last trip and I shall be exploring Palo Alto this time. The major site I am attracted to is the classy Stanford. I shall be blogging about it (that's right, dear reader you won't be spared) soon.
I have had my coffee in the flight and I have at least 3.5 hrs more to go in the skies. The windows are closed and its too sunny outside, so nothing as picturesque as my last trip. Since I have nothing else to do and I definitely dont want to sleep, I shall write and write...heehaha(its a devil laughter, who is looking at you, the reader, without any mercy)!
Ok, enough of the flight crap, I'll write something else now.
I have to add this announcement from the pilots as we reached San Francisco, "passengers on left, don't be disturbed by that neighboring airplane you can see, it's a fairly common sight here", well good, I just thought we shall crash together!