Preety, Rhea and I just reached India last night traveling from San Francisco via Newark, New Jersey and here are some thoughts and traveling tips with infants specially long distance like the one we just did.
Our trip started from San Francisco in the morning. We had a Continental flight from San Francisco to Newark at 8:30 in the morning. So we needed to get up and get to airport on time. I had checked in online and when making the reservation for the flight I was assured that I had a bassinet seat from Newark to Bombay so I was happy. I even reconfirmed that at San Francisco airport. The flight from San Francisco to Newark however we did not have any bassinet or even seats with leg room . We thought given the grander scheme of things it would be ok to have Rhea in our lap for the first part of the trip.
The surprise came when we reached Newark. At the gate we were told that we did not have a bassinet seat and it was a common mistake that the reservation folks make in thinking the flight from Newark to Bombay is a Boeing 747 while the actual aircraft is a Boeing 777. At that point we were just annoyed with the airline and we tried to argue a lot with the ground staff (which I must say at Newark was NOT AT ALL courteous or polite. On the contrary they were outright rude in some cases) about getting a seat with the bassinet but they couldn’t do that cos it was already assigned to other infants traveling on the flight. Then we found out that the first class bassinet was not occupied and asked them that given the situation they should upgrade at least Preety to that seat so we could use the bassinet for Rhea. Of course that didn’t happen. So we boarded the flight and the seats we had at least had leg room. So that was a positive. Preety and I were both wondering how we were going to manage for 15 hours with Rhea in our laps. It turned out ok but both of us were dead beat when we reached Mumbai. Another thing that I noticed with the airline is that the staff weren’t as helpful specially with an infant as I would have expected. I have heard really good things about the staff on oher airlines like Singapore airlines and how helpful they are with infants. On the contrary when I asked them if I could use the crew rest area since no one was using it so that we could put Rhea on the seat and sit next to her while she was sleeping. They outright said “No that is reserved for crew only”. So disappointed I didn’t bother to ask them anything else for Rhea. Bottom line make sure that you SURELY have a bassinet (don’t know how though) for traveling with an infant.
Some tips -
Travel light. Make sure you have enough clothes, diapers, wipes and another essentials for your infant. Do not take more than you need in your hand. We made the mistake of carrying 2 laptops, diaper bag a hand bag and some food for Preety (which was necessary as she is on a restricted diet).
Plan on traveling without a bassinet. Another couple that were traveling on a flight to Delhi carried their car seat so that if they didn’t get a bassinet they could use the car seat. While not ideal it is definitely an option at least to get some rest yourself.
If possible try to find out the bassinet seats on the various aircrafts and make sure that you get those seats.
I attended the CommunityNext over the weekend and here are some observations. A lot of applications are available today for Facebook users. The best one that seems to be getting funding as described by one of the VCs in a panel, Naval Ravikant, are ones that are “Simple, Social, viral, Gather user data and universal”. If your Facebook applications have these features then you don’t even need to go asking for funding. He will come “begging you” to take his money. There were a lot of the application developers that were presenting what they do with their apps, what the strategy is to take it forward as well as “monetize” it. The common theme seemed to be advertising. In some cases there were partnerships with some companies. For example Universal Studios partnered with the “Free Gifts” application developer to make the “Sydney White” gift available via his application. The common message from all the application developers was that “Invites are dead”. People don’t pay attention to applications where users need to be invited. Some of the applications that developers talked about were – “Grow a Gift, Where I have traveled, Food Fight and Rock U”.
Lot of the “companies” developing applications for Facebook have 1-10 people companies. More likely 1 or 2. They don’t want to run and manage all the infrastructure by themselves and are all looking for hosting. Most of these applications use PHP and a database like MySQL. Very few applications use Ruby or RoR. The more popular ones that are growing rapidly need scaling, load balancing and storage space that can grow over time but don’t necessarily want to pay for it upfront.
Overall, there seems to be a lot of excitement about the Facebook platform. A lot of angel investors to some seed funding companies are putting money into it encouraging people / new companies to build applications targeted solely for Facebook.
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After joining Facebook earlier this week, I am convinced that the FaceBook platform is a better social networking tool for both personal and professional use. It beats hollow other social networking sites like Orkut and even LinkedIn. It has more than connecting and leaving messages. It is a platform that lets others develop applications for use. Great examples of these are Dopplr, places I have visited, integrating with delicious and a lot more.
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We had our daughter – Rhea a little over 4 months ago and since then we have heard a lot of our friends that are also expecting and they keep asking on what things they need to be getting to be prepared for when the time really comes. Since both Preety and I have been telling this to them I thought I would blog about it and just point people to my blog entry. So here goes.
- The first and most important thing is to get a car seat. In looking for one we went to a lot of stores and asked them to allow us to try out a sample base in our car. Most of them allow you to do so when you give them your id. This is very important because not all car seat bases fit in all cars. So please try it out in your car before buying / putting in the registry. For us we couldn’t get almost any car seat to fit in either of our cars so we ended buying a new car
. A good site for data on car seats and what is compatible with what car models is http://www.carseatdata.org. I personally really liked the travel system we got. It is the Chicco Cortina travel system. It is a little expensive though compared to some of the Graco ones which are supposed to be equally good. Make sure that the car seat is installed in advance before you think you will have to leave for the hospital.
- Next you need to get a crib. Getting this soon is a good idea as you first need to find the place you want to put it and next it takes time to assemble and usually requires more than one person. Though it can be done by one. This really is a personal choice with respect to color, budget, etc so no recommendations here. Also if you live in a two story house and are not comfortable leaving the baby alone in the first few months you may want to consider getting a bassinet / portable play yard to use downstairs. Again a lot of choices here, no real recommendations other than try to get one with a mobile that is battery operated so you don’t have to wind it every couple of minutes .
- Next get a monitor system. Again a lot of choices. We use the one from Fisher Price and quite like it.
- Wearable blanket I think is a great thing to get. Again this is a personal choice but I highly recommend it especially for new borns. We use the Halo sleep sack.
- Clothes – don’t buy too many as they grhaow out of them very fast. I know everyone says the same thing to every new parent but you can easily go overboard with the excitement of buying for your new born baby as we did.
- Bottles – if you plan to go back to work you will need bottles – there is a lot of variety in buying bottle. Generally what is recommended is to buy safe plastic bottle like Born Free or use liners like the way they have with Dr. Browns, Playtex etc.
- Bottle warmer – again lot of choices. No particular recommendation.
- Bottle dryer.
- Play yard, bouncer, swing, changing pad etc are things that you will need eventually but not from the get go. So depending on your convenience buy before or later.
- Baby Bjorn – this again is a personal preference. There are a lot of baby carriers out there. So try it out to see what fits best before buying / putting in the registry.
- Burp cloths, wash cloths, hooded towels, soaps, shampoos, lotions, receiving blankets, sheets.
- Diapers and wipes – get a lot. It is never enough . We went through almost 80 diapers in the first few weeks. We chose to go with chlorine free diapers and wipes. In the first month we even did a lot of cloth diapers.
- Thermometer – don’t get the ear thermometer. Either get the 3 in one (ear mouth and rectal) or get the thermometer that you can use rectally.
- Nail clipper.
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Ok I am a little late in blogging this as I have been busy with my daughter Rhea, but Australia did win the world championship for the third time in a row. My prediction was right and for those that commented on my previous blog about NZ, SL winning or about law of averages taking it’s toll, sorry they are the best team in the sport at this time.
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Which ever way you want to call it – hat trick or 3 peat, Australia IMHO is all set to win the world cup for the 3rd time in a row. It would be the first for any team to do it if they can pull it off. For a team that has won 18 straight matches in world cup it seems like there is no team that can come close to beating them. South Africa was the only team that came close and they too lost by 83 runs. While I like the team, specially after India’s exit from the tournament after the first round, I hope that the other finalist gives them a tough fight and gives the viewers a good match to watch.
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The last 3 weeks have been a hectic one – apart from having to release the product that I am currently working on, we also had our little baby girl – Rhea Mordani. Our little angel was born on March 10th 2007, at 7:55 p.m (1955), weighed 7 lb 4oz and was 21.25 inches long. Both the mother and baby are doing fine.
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Typical as it is with any new thing that you pick up in the world of software you start off with the traditional “Hello World” program in that particular language. So to continue in that spirit I thought it would make sense to start my blog as well with a “Hello World”.