Day 0, The Flight, Thursday

The day of my flight, I woke up in my parents' house and they took me to the airport on their way to work.

I paid $614 to Delta Airlines (specifically NWA and Air France) for a one-way 25hr plane ride from LAX, to MSP, to CDG, to BLR (Los Angeles to Minneapolis to Paris to Bangalore). I left LAX on July 15th 10am local time and arrived in BLR on July 16th at 11:50pm local time. The departure from MSP was 10 minutes late, but otherwise every flight was punctual. This surprised both me and Ankit, who says Domestic Indian flights are usually delayed by up to two hours. One important thing to note was that my luggage automatically followed me the entire trip - I didn't have to pick it up and re-check it at CDG.

The BLR "customs" was surprisingly effortless. The BLR airport didn't seem that large; it felt very dead, even for midnight. LAX is usually teaming with people, even at strange hours.

In the US, TSA searched my luggage and left a flyer in my bag saying as much. The main sign of search that I noticed was that they'd opened up one of my Pepto Bismol chewable tablets packages to inspect its contents. I was proud of myself for including a photocopy of my prescription from Dr. Dowty. It was also great that the Redlands hospital prints out their prescriptions instead of having the Doctor write them.

The eight hours to paris were easier than I thought they'd be. Many French high schoolers on the plane were up throughout the night, even though the plane turned off the lights so that the passengers could sleep. The high schoolers plade poker, listened to music, or joked. I stayed up through most of it and read a dozen or so pages of my book. A couple of mothers took time to stand up and walk around the plane with their new borns, and rocking the babies back and forth. There were also some movies playing. The Cabin of a 2-aisle jet is less tense and more comfortable than a single-aisle jet. With all these sights, it was somewhat of a pleasure to be on the plane.

The highlight of the day was sitting next to Peter Weise, a UC Davis PhD student who is studying romantic literature. Peter grew up in Illinois. His disseration will be on how writers from the 18th century wrote about sound. He was traveling to spend time in both Edinburgh and Berlin. In these places, he would visit libraries and inspect some primary sources. In one case, he was going to read the original hand-written manuscript of a writer from the 18th century whose work had never been in digital form.

Peter was in general a cheerful, enjoyable guy. He knew more than functional French. He'd pickup on some of the conversations happening around us and translate them for me. Like my friend Joe, he had spent time in France teaching English. He reminded me a little bit of Josh, my old hybrid Japanese-Iowan friend. After making plenty of banter and telling some great stories, he had a few drinks and knocked out for a few hours.

Apparently, the French colonized many of the Northern African countries, but after this ended, many of the dark-colored Northern African people remained in France and had children. The newborn French Citizens are subject to conventional, even somewhat mean, racism. Peter said that he's repetitively seen French police walk up to African-French citizens and ask to see their IDs. In one case, a couple was out on a date, and the police requested only the black man's identification, but not the white woman's.

Even from just the Air, Paris looks beautiful. There are many small buildings built upon a slightly hilly countryside, and in this way, it reminds me a little bit of Hollywood.

In Paris, in between planes, they made me go through security again before I transfered. Here, the made me empty my water bottles. "It is forbidden" the lady security guard told me.

French is not enjoyable to listen to, but I can understand how a French accent on English is considered sexy.

The C terminal in Charels DuGaulle airport was under construction and there was very little walking space - about 3 meters breadth instead of the 20-30 meters that I'm used to in American Airports.

I took 25mg of doxylamine succinate before boarding the plane to bangalore. I also bought 2 water bottles for ~6 Euros and dumped them into my Camelbak water bottles. Upon landing in Bangalore, these would supply me with drinking water.