I wanted to provide some life updates before I get started on blogging about what’s going on with this new trip. Next month will be 5 years from when I was diagnosed with cancer (read all about it here). After my chest surgery to remove “Derek” my tumor, I was told by my surgeon that I’d be able to scuba dive within a year of recovery. In August 2021, Joanna and I went to the big island of Hawaii where I signed up to do a night dive to see manta rays. I wasn’t able to descend into the water because I was all up in my head and wasn’t sure if I physically was able to do it yet. I canceled the dive but was still able to have a good time snorkeling at the surface. Flipper, the dive master, was super nice and invited me to come back and he’d work with me to figure out if it was a physical thing or a mental thing.
We came back to the big island January 2023 with our friends Mike and Martese. I signed up for a daytime refresher dive to ease back into it and am happy to say that it was a completely successful dive! A few days later we did the manta ray dive at night and while I was really nervous about overcoming what I saw as a big roadblock in my life and recovery from cancer, it was also a completely successful dive where we saw two 20ft long manta rays come out of the darkness. Looking back, I really should have eased into it like I did this time versus jumping in and expecting things things to work like they did before with such a long break between dives.
I try to keep this blog updated when I leave the country (or whenever I get cancer…) since it’s so time consuming each day to put together. Just wanted to share this small win in my recovery with you that I was able to get one step closer to getting back to my life before I got sick. I’m 5 months away from when I had my surgery and will be considered “in remission” and cancer free!
So I’m in India! Why the heck am I here you ask? I’ve been on my project for about a year and a half and last December I got promoted in role and my responsibilities have been elevated where I’m helping build a team in India to partner in our IT efforts. It’s been a career bucket list item for me to travel internationally because it feels like work recognizes the efforts I’ve made and wants to invest in me to travel and further build relationships in person with our off shore team.
This trip has been in the works for at least a year to visit our office in Mumbai but was pushed several times. June 2022 became November became March became May. I’ve done my best to be patient, but Kimberly said the other day “I can’t wait for you to finally go on your trip so you can stop talking about it” haha
For those who have checked out my blog in the past know that I love staying in hostels and traveling as cheaply as possible. Now that I’m in my mid 30’s things have changed as time and comfort have taken a higher priority. I saw this instagram post and hate to admit it’s me now.
The travel itinerary was to depart MSP on Thursday at 5pm, arrive in Amsterdam on Friday at 8am, leave AMS at 12pm, and arrive in Mumbai at 2am Saturday, about 24 hours to get from here to there. To further implicate myself with the instgram video above, I get to fly business class for this trip and have access to the Delta and KLM lounges. There is a brand new Delta lounge that opened up 2 weeks ago in the G concourse at MSP. I heard it was huge and had a self serve gelato machine so naturally I came to the airport early to take advantage of the lounge access. I started with the coconut and then a mango flavored one, both were delicious.
Boarding was at 4 and I settled in my very comfy seat with lots of leg room and big screen tv. I feel like this is going to spoil the rest of my economy level travel going forward but I’m going to enjoy every minute of this because I don’t know the next time I’ll get another chance to go on a work trip like this. Delta even sent me a dinner menu a week ago asking me to pre-reserve my meal. Options were:
- Braised beef short rib
- Roasted chicken thigh
- Spinach and artichoke rotolo
- Miso sea bass <- what I picked
- Farro Risotto with pork
The Menu was what I chose to watch while eating dinner and it just made things really weird when paired with the fancy meal I had in front of me. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll probably know what I mean.
I’ve been meaning to migrate other trip blogs into this main site but just haven’t had a chance to sit down and do that. Thankfully, the flight had free wifi so I started moving my 2014 trip to the Philippines over. Before I knew it, 8 hours evaporated and we arrived in Amsterdam. We had a 4 hour layover here so we bee lined it to the KLM lounge. I scheduled a shower just to refresh myself. The process was pretty fancy, there’s a touchscreen kiosk where you scan your boarding pass, it gives you available times to reserve the showers, then emails you a QR code. When it’s your turn, you walk up to the shower room and there’s a QR code scanner on the door to scan the code.
It’s always nice to take a shower before/after a long flight. This lounge was huge, I got some breakfast and worked on blog updates some more until it was time to board our flight. The plane was delayed about an hour but eventually we were let on board.
I would say this KLM seat was even nicer than the Delta one. Felt newer, cleaner, and roomier with a bigger tv screen. I was really impressed with the lead flight attendant who came to personally welcome each of the business class passengers and to check if our journey was at all affected by the delay. Food was even better here, I don’t think I’ve ever had Dutch food but the meal was very light and fresh. I might have to add Amsterdam to the travel list. The headphones were kind of cool where they magnetically attached to the AV system.
Roman is one of the managers traveling with us and he commented “You sure document and take pictures of everything don’t you?” I told him the more he brings it up, the more pictures I’m going to force him to be in with me during this trip 🙂
One super cool thing about flying KLM business class is that they give you a small ceramic house at the end of the flight. This has been a thing since the 1950s and I was told they are modeled after real Dutch houses. There are 103 houses in their collection and they’re actually full of Dutch gin if you pop the cork covering the chimney. I guess I’ll have to fly business class with them another 102 times to collect them all!
We arrived in Mumbai at 2am and got through immigration fairly quickly. I think I got a total of 1 hour of sleep throughout the entire trip because I wanted to shock my body into sleeping when we got to the hotel. The travel doctor prescribed me ambient but I didn’t want to run the risk of sleep walking through the streets of Mumbai if I took it. I did manage to finish moving my 2014 trip to the Philippines and 2013 trip to HK, China, and Seoul, check them out if you’re interested.
We’re staying by Powai Lake which is near the office. The hotel room is pretty nice and will be home for the next week. I requested to stay an extra 2 days so I can explore the city a little bit before heading home. It was actually $1000 cheaper for me to fly out on Saturday night vs Thursday night when everyone else is leaving. I ordered room service at 4am because it was 2:30pm at home and I didn’t want to wake up hungry. The Chicken rogan was delicious with the crispy parantha, I assumed it came with rice like it does at home but you have to order that separately.
The next month is going to be a little crazy as I’ll be here for a week, I’ll get home next Sunday, then Joanna and I are going on our make up honeymoon to Japan 10 days later for 2.5 weeks. Lots of blog posts to come!
That ceramic home is a nice touch.