Rohi's Blaag

Collection of my travel trips, random thoughts, experience, knowledge, feelings and anything which goes through my mind.

Friday, December 22, 2006

NRI parents blame India when it is their fault

Saw this in the news yesterday.

http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/dec/20george.htm?q=tp&file=.htm

It is hard to digest that the parents forgot to take the required documents (visa) with them and trying to blame "India" for that. The person on the counter was doing his job and as per rule "he did what was the law" and he is being blamed.

We point fingers at India when Indians do not follow rules and we point fingers at India when they do follow rules. Won't we check our passports many times after we start planning for a trip to USA and how can you expect to enter USA when you do not have any documents on you. Same applies here.

If Paris officials did not check the documents , that does not mean what they did was right. And if that family was not leaving the French airport, I don't think it will even matter to French authorities that whether all documents are perfect.

Any US official would have done the same and if any of us did not have the required visa to enter, we would be deported and no one would have said anything. Why can't we stop blaming India for our mistakes.

The parents are telling their son, that even if we forgot the papers, Indian Immigration authorities should have let us go. What proof did they have that the kids are their own. I am sure, if somebody tries to smuggle kids using this technique then we will surely blame the authorities, why did they let the kids enter India without all the documents. I feel sorry that the kids had to suffer but it way parents fault not India's.

This is the parents side of the story, which may not be 100% true. In general going on a foreign travel without travel document is a big mistake. Deportation is a general procedure in any country in such situations.

In terms of why they weren't given an additional amount of time, this is possibly related to the next available flight back to Paris. Its very likely that had they not been deported when they were, the authorities would have had to find some place to put them up in for the night (assuming the next available Air France flight to Paris was in 24 hours). Since they were not allowed into the country, this would have had to be in the airport or a jail cell connected to the airport, neither of which are very attractive options. This probably drove part of the decision to send them back when they did.

Way to go - immigration officials. You folks did the right thing.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Magnets on our fridge's freezer door


Since the time we started traveling, we wanted to get some momento from each place we visited as a token of remembrance. We kind of felt - magnets will be a good choice as they are available at all the places and easy to display them at home.
Here is a look at how our house's fridge (freezer) door is studded with magnets collected from our trips all over the USA.

Looking at the photo, to the extreme left are magnets from Niagara falls, Las vegas, disneyland and Ski resort at Tahoe Lake. Then the 2nd column on the left, has magnets related to Washington DC ( has all the presidents of US), then Disneyland, Yosemite falls and Lake tahoe. The 3rd column on the left has Pentagon, San Diego Sea world, Santa Cruz.

The 4th column from the left and more of in the center has Yosemite National Park, Napa Valley wine bottle, San Diego Zoo and the Red wood forest. The next row has a dolphin, Arizona (road runner bird), Crater Lake, San Diego Safari park and Oregon caves. One more magnet row to the right has a "las vegas" style beer mug, shots of Las Vegas at day and night.

Enjoy the view.