Phoonk @ BIAL

Ok. This is quiet old news. This is what happens when I leave some posts in draft for a long time.

Rumours of a ‘ghost’ take off at BIAL
Hemanth C S | ENS – 29 Sep 2008 05:11:00 AM IST

BANGALORE: After capacity constraints, connectivity hurdles and criticism from all and sundry over shabby infrastructure, there is now a problem quite without precedent at the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA).

Rumours have been doing the rounds for the past week that airport staff have been seeing ghosts on the runway. The description of the ghost has been varied: its gender, attire and features all change, depending on who sees it. A few claim that the ghost is a woman in a white saree, while others say the mysterious creature is headless.

A Kingfisher employee who works at the Cargo section told to this website’s newspaper that the ghost, a woman in a white saree with her hair flying loose, has been wandering on the runway. He said this saree-clad ghost had disrupted flight movements. “A pilot of an international carrier had to abort landing after spotting a ‘woman’ with outstretched hands in the middle of the runway. Finally, after two failed attempts, when the ‘woman’ did not move from the runway, the pilot could only land in his third attempt,” he said.

Is this what America stands for?

I read this whole story and felt dazed. I thought many times before putting this stuff on my blog. I know that writing stuff on to the internet always has the risk of it coming back to bite me. I have heard that some people’s blog entries have been reason enough to be denied entry into some countries. But, then the more I thought about it, I realized one simple truth. No matter which country, no matter which land, no matter which faith, a handful of people are enough to cast a bad name on the entire community.

The United States is a country that I love a lot. I respect the American citizens for how they have turned their country into. The history of America is always interesting for me. As in the History, even now some people act and behave against what America stands for. This I guess is one such incident.

At first I thought of posting an excerpt from the original post and add the link to the original post as is my usual habit. But, the sheer nature of this post prompted me to have the entire post on my blog itself. Just in case the original post vanishes….

At JFK Airport, Denying Basic Rights Is Just Another Day at the Office

I was recently stopped by Homeland Security as I was returning from a trip to Syria. What I saw in the hours that followed shocked and disturbed me.

Homeland Security

I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth, he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist. Where was he taking me, I asked him. “You’ll find out,” he said.

We got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport. He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and said, “Over there,” pointing in the direction of four overflowing holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder. When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars with his forefinger. I found a seat next to a man who looked about my age — in his late 20s — and waited.

Omar (not his real name) finished his fifth year in biomedical engineering at City College in June. He had just arrived from Beirut, where he visited his family and was waiting to go home to the apartment he shared with his brother in Harlem. Despite his near-perfect English and designer jeans, Omar looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of people — some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies — had too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

We were in the front row, sitting a few feet from two guards’ desks. They sneered at each bewildered arrival, told jokes in whispers, swiveled in their office chairs and greeted passing guards who stopped to talk — guards who had a habit of looping their fingers into their holsters. One asked his friend how many nationalities were represented in the room. “About 20. Some of everything today.”

No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

ULTra PRT – Sustainable Transit for future

Wow! This is so coool!!! Is this the future of transportation. Guess it will take another 25 years before we Indians start having these luxuries…

Nope, this thing isn’t photoshop. Though it has an uncanny similarity to the cool mobile vehicle used by Tom Cruise in Speilberg’s Minority Report, this thing is already in the process of getting implemented. Check out the pictures below for the construction snaps. To actually experience this… maybe you should visit London Heathrow Airport sometime during the fall of 2008.

Till then, check out their website @ http://www.atsltd.co.uk/

ULTra is a battery-driven, 100-mpg-equivalent, elevated personal rapid transit system with many four-person vehicles. First deployment is scheduled for London Heathrow Airport in Spring 2009, to serve Heathrow’s new Terminal 5. Working as circulator transit for office parks, airports, universities, and other major activity centers, ULTra is faster than a car. In these applications, ULTra makes carpooling and conventional transit more effective, by solving the “last mile problem.”

Here are some snaps of the cool thing!!!