Time: May 7-13, 2023
Place: Las Vegas, Detroit
Company: Alone
Highlights: Well, Informatica World is a conference that happens at Las Vegas annually. Back in late 2022, we had given few topics for presentation, and one of the topic got selected. Also, my name cropped up for presenter. I was a bit apprehensive at first but then warmed up to the idea. We had sufficient amount of rehearsals, and that kind of gave me the confidence.
Since I was going to LV, I thought I might as well visit my brother at his new house in Detroit since there was no other agenda of meeting other colleagues in other parts of US. So, worked with the travel agent for BLR-LV and DET-BLR itinerary. Unfortunately, the agent being amateur gave confirmed tickets via London Heathrow which would necessitate me to get a transit visa. So, had to have number of late-night back and forth discussions with different agents to set it right. This was an additional headache to an already tense presentation that I was practising. Anyways, all's well that ends well, and I was all set with my new itinerary of BLR-LON-LV and DET-Frankfurt-BLR, and LV-DET was my personal ticket.
All three of us (wife, daughter and myself) left house and I dropped them off at the Railway station as they headed out to Hubli while I proceeded to Airport. It was a weird feeling, one that of being alone, since I had always traveled in flight with wife and daughter since last 12+ years and the tradition of holding hands during take-off/landing has become embedded in the bloodstream now!
Reached airport, and it was my first time at the Lounge. Had my fill, got on the British Airways flight at 6:30 am. Incidentally, this was the same flight that I had boarded on my first trip to USA too, back in 2005! Smooth flight to London, easy immigration and had good lunch at the Terminal, and proceeded to LV. One more smooth flight to LV. Watched movies on both legs.
After 6.5 years, I was back on US soil! Felt like home-coming. Never imagined I would be back though, and that too in Las Vegas, of all the places!! Taxi took me to my hotel - The Venetian. Although I had walked through this resort as a tourist multiple times, I had never stayed here. It seemed so luxurious and grand. The staff was not so homely though. The room was very spacious and had a separate place for work (with table) and sleep, which is not something I had experienced before. It was late, and I was tired, so headed to sleep after a brief call to folks back home.
The next three days pretty much had a similar routine. Wake up early by about 6, refresh, dress up and head to conference for breakfast and attend multitude of sessions. When I got tired, came back to the room, relaxed, prepped for my own session, and head back again, checkout the room where I was supposed to give the speech, do a dry rehearsal, etc.. Some of the sessions were very fruitful. There were enough things to do in the conference, attend partner booths, participate in quizzes, talk to customers, answer their questions, speak to my own colleagues to give product feedback, get a headshot, grab some freebies (!), attend my team's scheduled talk shows, etc.. In addition to all of this, we had kick-off calls by the CEO, a Women-in-Tech talk show, an inspiring motivational speech by Amy Purdy (her tale was mind-blowing), an interactive conman show of pickpockets, etc..
While most of the first day (8th) went in prepping myself, my own talk show was on 9th. On 10th evening we had an evening party by the pool. The evenings of 8th was just spent by myself, just had light dinner with whatever snacks I had. The evening of 9th was spent with my colleagues - had an Indian dinner within the resort itself, and then went out of the casino into the Strip with the thought of going to watch the Bellagio fountain show but got sick of the drug/cigar stench on the pavement, so headed back to the room. By the way, I could hear the rumble of the volcano show in front of Mirage from my room every hour from 7 pm onwards. I finally ended up seeing on the evening of 10th.
I checked out on 10th by noon and kept the luggage with the concierge, and in the evening we had a nice evening happy hour with our department head which was later followed up with the aforementioned party by the pool. I left early to catch the flight to Detroit, which was late by more than an hour.
On 11th, reached Detroit early morning where brother picked me up from airport, dropped me at his home and went to work. I freshened up, took some rest after breakfast and caught up with my mails. Evening, went out for some shopping and chat at a local Indian eatery. Chit-chatted at night for some time and headed to sleep early, although I could not get sleep till midnight.
Woke up early on 12th and got ready/packed to depart after breakfast. Bro got back from work and dropped me at the airport once again. This was probably the first time I entered an airport on an international trip with just an hour to go for boarding, thanks to my brother who was late. But I was calm somehow, whereas usually I am very finicky about being on time, and many times even before time to factor for exigencies! So, there was no queue at the check-in. I breezed through everything and even waited for the boarding to start. Rest of the journey on Delta back home was smooth. Transit at Frankfurt was long, so slept nicely. Also the gate change was too far away, had to take a bus. Flight was smooth, had chosen the penultimate row seat so that I could comfortably push-back my chair, since there was none behind! Reached BLR on time and home sweet home. Few hours later, the very next day morning, I went and picked up wifey and daughter from the bus stop as they too returned from Hubli!
A short one-week trip to US thus ended. It was an enriching experience all-in-all (both professionally to have attended the conference and given a tech talk and personally to have visited by brother's new house), and it felt good to visit US one more time, after such a long hiatus. I did wanted to go to SF to see HQ and also catch up with pals but it was not to be, at least this time. Fingers crossed for next time...
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