It is a must here to keep the windows rolled up, hand sanitizer close by, and no touching of ENT (Ear/Nose/Throat) all along the trip.

Both our computers got hit by Murphy's Law. Back in Monterey they had minor problems but never were show-stoppers, but all that tossing around during our travel and both our laptops failed. The local Sony service told us outright that without the recovery disks they will not touch my laptop as it was not bought in India. The Dell support was much better but luckily the laptop has started working again.

India is known for it's IT (Information Technology) expertise but we cannot find the latest version of Microsoft Word. We have designed some greeting cards but they are all in the latest version of Word, so our printer cannot print them yet. He is trying to locate it and has been going all over town.

Sangita's niece (6 month old) also had her naming ceremony so it was a joyous family reunion for all her family here in the Calcutta suburbs.

Blog date (Oct 25, 2007)
Phuket Internet
We were given an hour free of internet with our hotel package at the Sunset Beach Resort in Phuket. Imagine a chain smoker being allowed only 1 smoke a day, how can that work out? In Monterey our computers are 24x7x365 hours on the net and we are constantly monitoring our emails and doing net stuff.

We expressed our displeasure right away, and told the front desk folks that we want to buy unlimited net access for the full duration of our stay (5 Days).The front desk clerk quoted a price of 800 Bhat (1USD == 30 Bhat). We did not want to pay that much and he could read that on our faces and right away halved it to 400 Bhat.

On the 4th day, the net stopped working, Arijit went and complained to the desk clerk and he was willing to give only an hour more, but we wanted full access, finally he agreed and requested that we give him the unused portion for his personal use (which Arijit agreed to right away).

Tsunami Recovery
A little know fact is that the largest contributor to the Tsunami efforts came from YOU, the American private individual. They contributed more than any other government, country and even Uncle Sam. Phuket was a small beach town and the money has now poured in and it is turning into a metropolis. The shopping malls are like here in the US and all major worldwide brands are selling their stuff there.