Milestones

Merry Christmas to all my family, friends, and loved ones! I have been having a fantastic winter vacation, and everything has gone according to plan so far. Today marks a milestone birthday in the family - yes, our baby has turned 16 today! It seems as if it were just yesterday, but the inexorable passage of time has brought us 16 years forward to the present, and we recall with gratitude to God, every single one of those years. From his first birthday in India, and his second to his seventh in America, and then the eighth birthday onward in Canada, we have had a fantastic ride through the years, by the immense grace of God. With the advent of the milestone 16th comes the inevitable rite of passage for every teenager, the process of getting one's driver's licence. Wow, where did the years go, I ask myself?!?

To mark the occasion, we attended a beautiful candlelight service at Olivet Church last night. The ambiance was so serene and evocative of that long gone Christmas Eve in Bethlehem when the Christ Child was born. The sermon was so meaningfully delivered, from the point of view of the innkeeper's wife - "Make sure to always make room for the Savior!" - and we returned to the twinkling Christmas lights at home, so upbeat and full of cheer and optimism in our hearts. It is my fervent hope and prayer that God enable my son to reach many more milestones in life, and I wish for all my friends the love, hope, and peace of the Christ Child, the joy of Mary and Joseph, the light of the Star of Bethlehem, the faith of the shepherds, and the wisdom of the Magi, this Christmas and always!

Winter Break

I feel like a child, now that I'm off work for the next 17 days. It's Winter Break, a time to relax, rejuvenate, and recharge my batteries. Every year, around this time or so, everything seems to drag just prior to the holidays, and all of us, myself and those around me, seem to long for the holidays to begin. The dark days of winter seem to have something to do with this mood, but the bright lights of Christmas promise a lot of cheer and merriment just around the corner. Had a fantastic time yesterday at work, with lots of joyous carols and partying and potluck food, and everyone was beaming in anticipation of the much-needed break that was almost there.

My plans are simple - to sleep in every single day, have lots of R & R, cook some delectable food, enjoy an occasional glass of red in commemoration of the holidays, and catch up on my winter reading. I have downloaded Adam Gopnik's "Winter" on my iPad, the much acclaimed CBC Massey Lectures for November 2012, that are both broadcast and published simultaneously every year. I also have downloaded Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein, plus subscribed to the National Geographic, one of my favorite magazines, on the iPad - enough to keep me happy and sated for the winter. Throw in a day trip to the US for some shopping, and also some eating out, and I'm all set to enjoy my holidays. Here's to me and a fun break, a fantastic way to cruise to the end of the year!

Sinless in Sin City!

Whether you want to live a little or live large, Las Vegas is the place to do so! With milestone birthdays in the family this year, we decided to make a splash in Vegas, and on the long weekend in November, we made a beeline to Sin City. It is called so, apparently for all the pleasures it has to offer, and the decadence of it all hits you the moment you land at the airport. We had been there 10 years ago, but boy, what a change the city has gone through in the intervening years! With larger and newer casinos on the Strip, Las Vegas has something to offer every one of its visitors - excitement, escape, and everything all at once, before you can pause for a breather! This was OUR time, so to speak, so we decided to stay at one of the ritziest resorts on the Strip, take in some shows, and do the tourist thing, all in all, but as sinlessly as possible, mind you!

Inside The Venetian, with its natural-looking fake skies

The Las Vegas Strip

The slot machines at the airport terminals give you a fair indication of what Vegas is all about, and if you're not wary of your gambling urges, you might find your wallet getting thinner as soon as you land in this gambling destination. After a lame experiment or two at the slot machines, just to get into the spirit of it all, we made our way out of the airport to take the shuttle to Mandalay Bay Resorts where we were going to stay. On our drive, we found the city as electrifying as its neon signs, and the huge lobby of the resort was awash in over-the-top Christmas decorations, each one of them so unique, artistic, and compellingly appealing to the eye. Our Strip view room on the thirtieth floor was a delight to stay in, and it took us no time to realize that the resort was a self-contained world in itself, with its fascinating shops, luxurious spas, artificial beach and wave pool, decadent eateries with world-class chefs, and entertainment galore, not to mention the gambling opportunities for gaming aficionados.

Airport slot machines

At the Shark Reef Aquarium, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

We are not the gambling or drinking kind of tourists, but just walking along the Strip and taking in all that each casino had to offer was an entertainment in itself - the musical fountains and the splendid conservatory at the Bellagio, the gondola ride complete with our serenading gondolier at the Venetian, the musical extravaganza of The Lion King and the underwater magnificence of the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, the rocking blend of music, dance and acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil's Viva Elvis at the Aria, the luxuriant rain forest cafe and regal lion habitat at MGM, the delectable buffets offered by all the resorts, the incredible splendour of the Luxor and Caesar's Palace, the medieval charm of the Excalibur, the mind blowing shopping experience everywhere - all these and more made our stay in Vegas a memorable one. Construction along the Strip is still continuing to boom, and who knows, maybe ten years later when we revisit Vegas, we may have to redefine ritz and glitz!

The Charm Of Hotel Rooms

To those of you who think that hotel rooms are impersonal and lacking in charm and warmth, let me assure you that they are far from that. For the diehard traveler, hotel rooms are a haven of relaxation at the end of the day, and a place to chew the cud of their wanderlust in. When the daytime adventures come to an end in a new place, and those legs beg to be put up after hours of wandering around and taking the sights in, there is no better place on earth than a cozy, comfortable hotel room. They are a home away from home, however temporary that might be. I consider my stay in hotel rooms as an extension of my whole travel experience, imbued with its own characteristic magic and romantic charm.

I have stayed in very many hotels in North America these past 15 years with my family, and one thing we always do as soon as we check in is to take a picture of our hotel room before we actually start using it and mess it up. Thus those pictures have become an intrinsic part of our travel adventures, and bring back fond memories of those fascinating places we stayed at. Be it in ritzy, glitzy Vegas, or magical Disneyland, or mountaintop retreats, or fabulous getaways with killer ocean views, every single hotel room has an undeniably unique charm to it. I love to take a tour of the room and check it out in detail, while the kid loves to roll and tumble around in bed and test it out. The husband watches us with amusement, and if there's a fantastic view through the window, then he too gets caught up in its charm. Please see below the most recent one we stayed at in Las Vegas.

At the Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas

Our room on the thirtieth floor

A view of the Strip from our room

Yet another view from our room

It has always been my wish to run a cozy bed and breakfast after my husband and I retire, one particularly for book lovers. I dream of this place being somewhere in the heart of nature, in the countryside, or on a mountaintop, or on the oceanfront, a place where handpicked guests with a passion for books retreat to. I see myself sitting along with my favored guests, quietly devouring our books, and sharing with each other what we've read about. On a hot summer's day, we would take our books out into the garden to be read or go out on nature walks or just putter around in the garden by way of relaxation, and on a cold winter's day, we would sit snug by the fire, reading to our heart's content. On a stormy day, we would sit by the windows, watching the storm raging outside, or would snuggle under the covers in bed, with our books for company. In addition, I would love to invite writers to my cozy retreat and have them read aloud from their works to my guests. How idyllic that sounds, not to mention that the background for my dreams is a hotel of sorts! Wishful thinking it might all be, but I'll take whatever is a reality right now. Here's to more travels, more stays in hotel rooms, more room service, and more indulgences to come!

Airport Hassles

Travel junkie that I am, I long to take off for parts known and unknown. The lure and magic of distant destinations draw me irresistibly, and weeks before my actual date of travel, I start dreaming about my trip, totally succumbing to the anticipation and excitement building within me. Needless to say, the romantic within me comes alive before I travel somewhere, be it to a far off location or a place a short road trip away from home. When it comes to a long vacation to a far off place, the excitement builds up fast into a crescendo and I feel I am going to burst with the feeling of it all. Then the actual day of travel arrives and we leave for the airport to catch our flight, and boy, what an anti-climax the whole experience turns out to be!

Post 9/11, travel regulations and airport security screenings have become so excruciatingly strict and tight that they can deflate the excitement of even the diehard romantic in nanoseconds. It all starts with the park and fly routine. Finding a parking spot for your car at the airport becomes next to impossible and you keep driving around and around to the point where it makes you wonder if the entire population of the city is flying out that day. Finally, you do snag a spot at the farthest end of the terminal, and when you go in from the zero degree cold outside for your security check inside, you find your body temperature has automatically risen because of your blood boiling at all the obstacles you are made to go through by the security personnel.

Jackets and coats are taken off, shoes are removed and so are belts, pockets are emptied - cell phones, keys, coins and all, laptops, iPods, iPads, cameras and handycams are out, cleansers, gels, and shampoos have already been shoved into the checked in baggage, and just when you think you've done everything right and are going to sail through, the security officer spies the make up bottles and tubes in your handbag and takes you out of the line for a more thorough physical examination of your handbag. He just wants to make sure that those mini bottles don't have potentially lethal chemicals in them that can light a fire on the aircraft. Then there was the time that I was travelling to England for a wedding and was carrying some gold jewellery in a cylindrical bangle box with gold chains stuffed inside in order to minimize the number of jewellery boxes I was carrying, and it apparently looked like a rudimentary bomb on the x-ray screen that I was taken aside for a thorough check. It all ended up with the women security officers oohing and aahing over my jewellery pieces, which only goes to show that women are women everywhere, whatever their position might be!

On one of our vacation trips to mark a birthday in the family, the kid bought a few souvenirs for his friends that included a couple of snowglobes. After we had checked in our bags and were going through the final security check near the boarding gate, we were told that the snowglobes couldn't be taken in the hand baggage and had to be checked in. I suggested we just dump the globes in the trash, but the kid was adamant that his friends needed them, so the husband had to go all the way back to check them in, while the kid and I were standing like lost souls, eyeing the serpentine line waiting to go through security, and see if the husband had made it back to the end of the line after all. After an extra 30-minute wait, he did eventually join us and we made it home without any further hassles. At times like those, all the draconian rules of airline travel make me rethink the wisdom of leaving home in the first place. And that lasts for some time, until the travel bug bites me again and the excitement starts building up all over again. I never seem to learn, anyways!

Tough Years

I look back on my teenage years and recall having sailed through it without any of the major angsts that today's teenagers face. Life in those days was less competitive, and parents were not at their children's throats or breathing down their necks, egging them on to study day in and day out, and achieve anything that was beyond their capabilities. Parents had a more genial take on what their children did or achieved, or at least mine did. Children too never talked back or rebelled when their parents stepped in to to steer a misguided child back on to track. It's a whole different ball game altogether these days.

It's a highly competitive world now where children have to be on top of the game in everything. As it is, the teenage years are difficult ones with hormonal changes and all that, and add to that the pressures of having to do well at school, get admission into a good university, find a decent part time job, and fend for oneself outside the parental home, many teenagers today buckle under the stress and need a helping hand. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, dating woes, addiction to social media and online gaming, etc., etc., compound their misery, and many teenagers get derailed, much to the consternation of the parents. Teenagers need all the understanding and support that could possibly be extended to them, because these are the rough years of their young lives, and once they are able to get a handle on things, they will eventually settle down and see the light of day.

Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs"

I have just completed reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and how fitting to have read it on my iPad! The book was certainly a compelling read and virtually "unputdownable" because of its celebrated and mercurial subject. Steve Jobs has long been one of my heroes, and this book served to bring home the fact that not only was he a creative and business genius all rolled into one, but that he was also very human in his flaws and failings. I discovered that my idol had had feet of clay after all, metaphorically speaking, but it endeared him to me all the more because of the way he made his mark in this world and the universe at large, despite all his flaws as a human being. Isaacson has rendered a powerful account of Jobs' humble origins as an adopted child growing up in a middle class family in the Bay Area and his meteoric rise to becoming a tech titan in Silicon Valley, a quintessential American story of a working class kid being shot into the echelons of wealth and fame and orbiting the stratosphere by virtue of his eye for design, quest for perfection and uncanny business sense.

The appeal of the book (other than that it comes from an author who's adept at writing biographies) is because of all the never-before-known information about the man who had kept his personal life a closely guarded secret his entire life, right up to his cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Isaacson has done a credible job of validating his information from multiple sources, thus providing us a varied, comprehensive perspective of Steve Jobs' personal life and career. The disclaimer that Jobs' gave full control of the book to the author seems quite incredible, given the fact that the subject of the biography was a control freak who needed to have a hand in every single detail of the products he created. The photographs included in the book have been well-chosen, drawn from every phase of Jobs' life, from his babyhood to the pinnacle of his career - another aspect that helps bring the subject closer to the reader.

Many incredible facts about Steve Jobs, the man, jump out at the readers, one of them being his nonchalant attitude that no rules whatsoever applied to him. His having driven around a Mercedes without licence plates and always having parked in the handicapped spot in the Apple parking lot is just one example of his I-am-above-all-rules attitude. His lack of empathy, his unkind treatment of waitresses, the brutality with which he fired people if he felt they were not A players, his constant berating and yelling at the Apple engineers, his outright refusal to give out stock options to friends who'd been with him from those garage days in his parents' home, his reality distortion field, his compulsive dieting and extreme veganism almost bordering on an eating disorder, his refusal to have surgery after his cancer diagnosis, his criticism of anything and everything that did not please him - these and many more reveal a supreme arrogance in the man who was bent on changing the course of the universe. One just wishes he could have done that more graciously and compassionately, and been a good, kind human being in addition to having been an innovator, creative genius, and entrepreneur nonpareil.

Great read and highly recommended!