Important decisions in our lives are often made after long and protracted ponderings, involving hours of weighing down the options. But sometimes they are made instantaneously, almost as if someone else, unknown to us, is shouldering the trouble of brain storming on our behalf. The sinusoidal waves that define the mind had hit yet another low in that mid summer afternoon of late April when I was suddenly faced with the prospect of taking up a sabbatical. I had received an invitation from Professor Heuy-Dong Kim, Professor with the School of Mechanical Engineering of Andong National University, South Korea to be a researcher under his guidance, courtesy my friend Dr. Rajesh. And the response was instantaneous and there were no second thoughts, as if it was pre-programmed by the 'Coder' for me as I was badly in need of a change. Increasingly suffocated by the probing inquisitors whose suggestive remarks were making one wonder if the life so far was a failure as it was not going the conventional way, it could also be nothing more than a natural reaction of any creature with the basic instinct for survival to seek the nearest emergency exit. The nature creating spectacular displays with clouds in the sky, the change in tone of the pair of little sparrows that frequented the tree trunk near our balcony, the friendly auto rickshaw driver, although unaware of my imminent departure, eulogizing the life in the ‘God’s Own Country’, all seemed to remind me of what I am going to miss. But this time, there was no going back. For the first time in almost three years, all my books got back to their entitled places in my shelf, the order was restored and it was much easier to find my way inside my room. It was almost impossible to take them along or leave them as they were. In the run up to the departure there were several other interesting sub plots which could be accommodated sometime later as separate stories.
Erasing all that was unnecessary, I boarded the Silk Air flight from Trivandrum on the midnight of 29th of May, 2008, on my way to Daegu in South Korea, on what could be another important phase in my life, totally unmindful of the fate that awaited me there. Giving me company was my friend and colleague Lijo, leaving behind his own share of bitter memories. The flight was the same MI 497, Airbus A-320, which had taken me to Singapore five years ago. We reached the terminal 2 of Singapore’s Changi International Airport in around four and a half hours and took a sky bus to the terminal three to board the Singapore Airlines Flight SQ 16, Boeing 777-300, on way to San Francisco via Seoul. Treating ourselves to a few sips of the Singapore Sling and a couple of movies on the screen before us, we reached the Incheon International Airport in about 6 hours at around 4.40 pm Korean time. Prof. Kim had sent two of his students to the airport. Dr. Suryakant Nagdewe, an alumnus of the Indian institute of Science and IIT Bombay and PDF at ANU and Mr. Min Sung, Masters Student, received us and helped us to board the express bus to Daegu from the Air Port.
We reached Daegu in another four and a half hours and were received at the bus station by the Professor himself at around 10 pm. Professor Heuy Dong Kim is a tall and well built man, in his late forties and easily picked up my bag, weighing around 20kg with one hand! We were first taken to the Daejoo Machinery Company Limited, where Prof. Kim is the Director, Research & Development. Now that was a pleasant surprise to us, for although Prof. Kim had mentioned in his earlier correspondence that we will be initially working from this research facility, industry-institution interaction of such proportions was unheard of in our country where it remained mostly on paper or restricted to a few elite institutions. After having a look around the various facilities in the company we were taken to our abode, a two bed room, wooden floored apartment with bath and kitchen on the 11th floor of a fifteen story building, where I went to sleep at around midnight local time, exhausted and tired, nearly six thousand kilometers away from my friends and loved ones and my frustrations, disappointments and bitter memories, hoping to witness the new dawn in my life in the 'land of the morning calm’.
