Paris to Oslo

(Contd. Bangalore to Paris)

The journey was more or less okayish except that it was really difficult to sleep on such a long duration flight. I remember how uncomfortable everyone around was as and when I woke up late nights and observed, the girl next seat was struggling with the blanket to let it embrace her from tip to toe and so was I.

It was around 2pm IST, the flight arrived here at Paris airport. Believe me Paris looks ecstatic at least from the top view. Wonderful Landscape, structured residential areas, beautiful curvy roads, greenish background and several lakes around. May be any place looks the same from within the plane window but the neatness & calmness portrayed by the landscape is worth the view and since the day was cloudy it looked even sexier. For a moment there was a flash on my memory of the olden days when a sadhu baba (usually local fortune tellers) looking at my palm said, "Tere haath mein videsh jaana nahin likha" (there's no line on my palm that would ever lead me to a foreign land) and then i smiled & looked outside again.

I had to spend some 4 hours on the airport, initially I thought its a good amount of time, may be I can easily go around the city for sometime but an immediate second thought suggested me to explore the fashion & beauty within airport's premises itself, the sole reason was the thought of my wallet factor (with just 160 Euros in pocket and the Visa card still inactive), it was not a wise step to go for.

Somehow reached the Terminal where I had to check in. Looked around for about decent 2 hours before taking a nap. The hairs of the people actually caught my attention, by the way they are the people working at the airport, the security personnels and of course the passengers included. The stylish hair cuts for which we pay a hefty amount back in India am sure people here manage to get it without any cut itself. The messier your hair structure, better is your style and its not just the language restricted to the young kids but applies to the people of all ages. Quite a fair deal, isn't it? But with all the observations, all I concluded at the end is 'Paris indeed is a fashion city'.

It was the time to check in, at the entrance a big English-men pointed me to several plastic bottles lying on a table, they all were half filled with some sort of liquid, either water or soda or some sort of wine. I actually couldn't understand what exactly was he trying to say and I just uttered a loud 'NO', he then let me inside, I still din't understand what exactly was that but he let me inside, what else matters!

Anyways that big rucksack was through the security check now and their gadget finally alarmed them of something unethical i was trying to carry inside. I know it was little scary & my breath was down to see a team of personnels rushing towards me. The bag was opened, they spread every damn thing out on the floor and there came two bottles which I had packed with extra care in plastic bags and then rolled them with the big cloth pieces. All of them pointed me to unfold the packs, i just kept following and there came two glass jars containing the Mango pickles (An Indian in Norway had actually requested me to bring two of those Priya Pickle bottles). I tried my level best to make them understand that its something that we eat with food but all in vain.
Result: Either leave the bottles with them or put them through the check-in. I din't want to leave those bottles hence followed back to the check-in counter. Soon as I put the rucksack (6kg) for check-in, the person here also warned me about the 22Kg(s) that I've already loaded at Bangalore, so whatever I check-in now is gonna be paid and that too in Euros! Well with a quick thought i decided to check-in the small shoulder bag with just two of those bottles, which weighed about 2kg(s) which should cost some 70 Euros.

Wow! pickles cost just 130 INR. and the transportation charges were approx 4000 INR. And when I asked the guy about the cost, he said, "Thats okay, You now need not pay anything" That was strange but in my favor of course, so theres nothing wrong :). One thing is clear that such cases do happen outside India also or may be my heavenly stars tussled with his and hipnotized him, no to charge anything from me. May be who knows! If such things happen in India, we could have easily related the incident to some or the other emotion that the person must have gone through but what should I relate this English-men with huh?

Alright, while trying to check in again, that English-men again pointed me to those half-filled liquid bottles, this time I decided to decrypt the mystery behind these bottles and followed my intuition, I thought may be we can pick up some of the bottles to carry inside the plane, I was thirsty by now, so I said 'Water Bottle! Give me one water bottle!', to which he replied, "No, No, its not allowed". It was then it clicked to me that the liquid is actually not allowed inside the plane, therefore, he was actually asking the passengers to leave their liquid bottles out on that table itself but by the time i understood, i noticed a few kids already making fun, about what? ... that I wasn't really sure!

Finally everything was through and I could actually board to the flight #2374 to Oslo.

How good are these online surveys?

That certainly means that I too got a digicam in my wardrobe. I never thought that I’ll do the research on the model of digicam after getting it purchased.

Alright, now I have an Olympus FE-170 model (also known as X-760) which I chose over all other brands & models on the display, solely for the reason that it was the cheapest available then but yes it did look good too. This camera looks very much like any other digicam(s) available in the market.

According to the Flickr survey done across a brand of cameras available in the market, this model ranks 17^th among the different models available within Olympus brand, which went some way to convince me that it wasn't a big mistake purchasing this one with the budget in hand.

There is also an exceptional growth seen in the user base of this camera over last year. The graph below should make this rather more clear.

FE170 Usage this year

no. of users

It so happened that I had to move to lillehammer next morning and my senior manager asked me to complete the basic shopping in Oslo itself coz Lillehammer is not a big or even a happening town. But since it is a small place, I anticipated better sight seeing there compared to the urbanized look at Oslo, hence, a digicam was quite inevitable in the pocket.

Since my Visa card was still inactive, therefore, this camera is by the courtesy of my manager again. That evening he picked me up to visit a shopping mall named “Lefdal”, which claims to sell the stuff the cheapest in Oslo, having found the price cheaper compared to them elsewhere, be sure to receive the 150% of the amount you pay for the item.

Cost of Camera - 1495 Kroners (10.5K INR)

256 MB memory card - 399 Kroners (2.8K INR)

Camera Cover - 99 Kroners (700 INR)

A total deal within 2000 Kroners (14K INR)

But many a times things aren't they way as they look. I went through several links finding about the model but most of the description were quite amateurish. Its was only after reading CNET's insider view, I understood how several of these surveys can actually be misguiding.

What CNET Says: FE180 is much better a choice with just a $30 differences between the models. Lets look over at the major differences.

1. While both are automated, the FE-180 uses Olympus's TruePic Turbo image processor. The FE-170's unbranded image processor is the main cause of its performance woes.

2. The camera takes 5.7 seconds from power-on to first shot and every shot thereafter suffers a wait of 4.8 seconds without flash. With the onboard flash enabled, that wait becomes an even-longer 5.5 seconds. Shutter lag was almost as painful, taking a full 1.3 seconds from shutter release to shot. These numbers are more than double when compared to FE-180, which offered a 1.6-second shot-to-shot time and a shutter lag of just 0.6 second.

3. While the FE-180 displayed very good white balance with tungsten lights, the FE-170's tungsten shots looked almost like old-time sepia prints.

4. Also FE180 comes with two rechargeable batteries and a wall charger against the alkaline batteries with 170.

Thus, the lesson to be learnt here is that sometimes spending a little extra can go a long way and never research on whatever you have done already, it only leads to disappointment. Had I purchased FE180, I'd have read the comparisons with its daughter versions, hence, disappointment is inevitable.