"Being Randomly Selected"
I was travelling across to Norway, this week, It was a business trip with my boss. This is my first trip abroad and I have this unique fear of airports and other places of heavy security. I got this unique ability to attract people (let people suspect me as someone). So the party begins right from Chennai Airport. I went into the Immigration Check point, the Immigration Officer 'randomly selected' me and started asking me all sorts of questions (studies, study details, school school details, company , purpose of visit, father's name , occupations, ... every unexpected detail .. )in a parallel corner, my boss cleared in with ease, no questions at all. Next we went had a break . and then we checked into the boarding zone, "Gate no:3 for Lufthansa" , Madhavan, had no problem in going in, but i was the one to get 'randomly selected', the immigration authorities went on to verify my identity, passport, visa, travel docs,etc. the tricky part here is when the asked about the purpose of visit. I said official work ,and they asked the invitation letter, who cares carrying an invitation letter from the same company. I am just travelling to meet my friends at the headquarters, i don't think i never needed an invitation letter, its not a "client visit" in Services terminology, where you need to get invited by some company and so on... i work for a firm and i just travel. but the airport authorities never seem to agree on that. we had discussions, he took all the id cards, business cards, visas (thank god he left my visa credit card with me.) with him to his supervisor, they were discussing about this... just imagine this happening right in from of the airplane doors on your first international visit. Then they came back to me saying, its okey this time but not anymore, next time onwards you should carry an invitation letter with you. All I can say was thank you. He also advised me that authorities do make 'random checks' so i should be careful and have proper documentation.
I boarded on to my Lufthansa, had a good flight across to Frankfurt. got down at Frankfurt. I was waiting for someone to do a 'random check' on me. no one did. then we went on to have some food. roamed round Frankfurt airport a lil bit. and did a lots of things... right when we were about to check in to the Stavenger flight. we had to send our hand-baggages thru the scanner. My laptop got randomly selected now. The security guy next to the scanner said to me "Krishna your laptop has been randomly selected for a security check" . He said that in a tone which sounded like " Krishna you have won a all expenses paid trip to Hawaii on a random lottery"
I went into a room in which the security guy did all chemical tests on my laptop. And i was declared okey and set free. (free to go to hawaii :-))
We had a long ride to the airplane, it was a regional plane, pretty small one. It was more than one hour air -ride to Stavenger. The view of Norwegian coastline from the air is awesome.
We landed in Stavenger, I was waiting form someone to do a random security check on me, but no one did.
I will post on the travel stories on stavenger soon... until then hang on :)
Labels: chennai, Corporater, Stavenger, Travel Blogs
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