Sunday 22 May 2016

3 States

You might have read Chetan Bhagat’s 2 States or must have seen the movie. Just like it has 2 states, I have got one more in addition. All credit goes to my lead, he added a state to my business trip in the last and hence it became 3 states. Yes, this time it was not a tourism trip, but a Business trip. I covered 3 states in 4 days. Every night I used to travel from one state to another. Still I was able to add just 1 more state in my US traveled states list. Rest 2 states were already covered in previous trips. I started from Chicago on a nice Sunday morning and reached first city: Atlanta in Georgia State. When I moved from Airport to Hotel, I understood, it was a blue land and I should be careful out here. I had only one day to roam around and explore the city, but I spent that day with my family. Morning to evening, I was on the phone. Finally in evening I came out and explored the city. The major attraction of Atlanta is its Georgia Aquarium; it’s the largest not only in America but in Western Hemisphere. I have already seen Shedd Aquarium of Chicago, so I wasn’t much interested into that and also I didn’t have that much time to explore it completely. Hence I visited The Coca Cola factory, it was a nice experience. It’s a guided tour with a complimentary welcome drink followed by tasting several flavors of coke all over the world.

It was quite late by this time, everything else was closed. There is a Centennial Olympic Park also in downtown, but some music event was going on inside. Next I visited Walmart to buy a belt as I didn’t have any and I can’t go to office without that. After such a long day, I took a cab towards hotel. I was hell tired so the best thing to relax was to take a hot shower. Now it was around 9 PM, I was worried that I may not get any good meal. Fortunately there were many restaurants around the corner and they were open. So I had Mexican dinner and then joined the daily office sync up call.


Next Morning, I checked out of hotel and took a cab to Atlanta branch office. My office contact lady was all prepared; she showed me entire office and was ready with complete documentation of the branch. I did not had space to carry such a big file, so I left it. She promised me to send it via courier, which I never received but its fine. I had soft copy of most of the details. They also had my name display on their TV which was a nice gesture, liked it. Once office work was over, I moved back in downtown. Atlanta’s another attraction is CNN Headquarters, although it’s not that cool, kind of ok. I completed that and finally moved towards airport. I took a flight towards Philadelphia; if you are thinking that day is over, wait. Next, I took a rental car from Phily to Wyomissing. It was just 2 hour drive but tough as I was seriously tired. As soon as I reached hotel, I watched movie for some time and slept. I guess, I have to watch screen for some time to make me sleep.