Weekly notes 45/2024
Table of Contents
Thumbnail image: The new (well, not so new) designed Terminal 2 at Kempegowda International Airport has interesting decor.
What’s been happening #
We started our week with potentially my final concert of the year. Jo has another K-POP artist concert at a later date. We went to see John Butler perform at the City Recital hall. I came across John Butler with his incredibly awesome song Ocean that I have referenced under my prior Music of the week and to catch him live is not something I would have wanted to miss. John Performed his latest instrumental album, Still Searching plus a few other songs including Ocean. To see an amazing guitar player such as John was quite incredible and to have two percussionists join the stage and perform with him was even better. This was one of the most amazing recitals that I have been to yet and would highly recommend checking out his show if you ever get to see him live.
It’s also time for our vacation - Jo and I flew to Mangalore last Saturday via Bangalore. We’ll be in Mangalore for a couple of weeks and looking forward to the break! We flew to Mangalore from Sydney via Bangalore. The onward flight from Sydney to Bangalore was pretty uneventful. We had paid extra for the exit row seats and that made the travel a little bit comfortable as compared to the standard economy seats. We had a cabin crew member sitting right infront of us during take off/landing and had some interesting conversations with him. He was also curious to know whether we had paid extra for the exit row seats - apparently another traveller was arguing with him on why she couldn’t get the exit row seat. I mean, like come on, seat selection is something that you do when you book your ticket, or even later on… Anyway he was pretty nice to us and just as we were about to hop off the plane gave us a big bag of timtams, cookies and pretzels as appreciation for the ticket information! We landed in Terminal 2 and it was pretty empty - given that it is quite unusual for international flights to land midday meant that we were able to complete our immigration and customs formalities in about 10 minutes.
We had a 5 and half hour layover in Bangalore and spent the time in the VIP section of the 080 Lounge. I was pretty sure none of my existing Indian cards were eligible for lounge access, so went with the paid lounge access since we had a lot of time to kill. The VIP section was expensive (when purchased in INR - about 3500 per person) but worth it - the VIP section was cordoned off from the main section and had plenty of empty space, tables and lounge seats and more importantly, very quiet and good service.The food at the lounge was pretty good and we also had table service and an a la carte menu. I ordered a Mysore masala dosa and filter coffee for myself which Jo ordered a plain dosa and a Kerala Pepper Chicken.
As we were having our food, Flighty kept announcing the various delays of our incoming flight to Mangalore, so we decided to stay in the lounge till the aircraft landed in Bangalore. This ended up being a 40 minute delay in the end. This is not the first time Flighty’s saved me a bunch of time and quite happy with the app. The flight to Mangalore was straightforward and once landed, we picked our bags and went to meet my parents who had come to pick us up at the airport.
Come Sunday, mom made Mangalore Buns (known as just buns in Mangalore fwiw) for breakfast which was rapidly devoured down. Mom had also made a fresh batch of banana chips that I had with tea mid day. We’ll have some family visits later today and this week, and I will do a beach run as well. Look for my next weekly note!
Music of the Week #
Colors is a fantastic song by American psychedelic soul band Black Pumas. The song’s got everything - fantastic voice, great backing vocals, some killer riffs and a keyboard solo to finish it off. Great track if you like soul!
Link of the week #
Have you ever wondered why electric trains (for example the metro/subway ones) make funny noises, or a crescendo of notes while starting? This fantastic video dives into how electric trains work and why they make interesting sounds.
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