18 June
2015
17 June
2015
My good deed of the day…
I know this looks like an Italian painting (except for the modern lady handbags, perhaps) but it is a real photo taken with my phone. The backdrop of the story goes in the following way:
Natasha, who goes and stays in a dorm and takes classes in different colleges every summer often makes friends from very different cities and countries every year. Being a person who values people and relationships with people over just about anything else in this finite time on this beautiful earth that we have fashionably named “life”, I am always a little bothered when she does not keep in touch with many of those friends after summer.
Conversely, you can only guess my excitement when she declared that she was going to meet a friend that she had not seen after one of those summers – I forget whether it was Duke or Brown – when we visit New York. Karina (called “Karina with a K”) was going to visit her wherever we stayed. Except the whole plan fell thru at the last moment due to her dad’s office travel plans.
I was not feeling too good about leaving Sharmila and Nikita to visit Time Square by themselves but I did tell Natasha that I will take her to wherever her friend lived. Which, as it turned out was a two hour hike with three trains involved in between. But, it was okay with me – as long as she realized that life is all about the human relationships. Everything else is too materiliastic to be worried about.
The train finally pulled into the Ridgewood station. And we arrived at the agreed upon meeting point. As soon as we started coming out of the tunnel, she spotted her friend at the top of the flight of steps. They ran as fast as they could towards each other and hugged each other hard.
Separated by a year in age, brought up thousands of miles away, they came together for a few weeks a few years back and then this afternoon, there was the moment where they saw each other again!!! The tunnel lighting was not good. But that is the best picture I could get of that powerful moment of strength of human relationships.
And here I am waiting at a nearby bar, biding my three hours as they catch up with themselves…
17 June
2015
Making random friends on the way…
We were on our way to Verona. On the way, somebody needed a bio break. So, we took the first exit off the highway. It was a totally old, broken down village. Most of the buildings were dilapidated and it was clear that the best days of the village were behind it.
As we casually trolled the streets, we found one small place with a sign saying “Bar” and even more enouraging sign saying “Open” (in Italian). Why a bar was open so early in the morning was something beyond me.
In any case, we went in hoping to find some clean bathrooms. And I am glad that we did. Not only did we find clean bathrooms, but also we got to make friends with the owners of the bar. There was really nobody there other than them. I depserately wanted to find out more about their village – so I went up and tried chatting them up. But there was a problem – they could not speak English at all. And I could not speak Italian or the language they were talking to each other in. I gave “Ni Hao Ma” a shot in the dark and they excitedly responded!! So, I figured they were Chinese – but that is pretty much where my knowledge of Chinese ended too 🙂
Eventually, I got our driver to be the go between (to translate between English and Italian) and found out that they were from Hanzhou district near Sanghai. Husband and wide emigrated to Italy seventeen years back and after learning the local language, started a small coffee bar. Which has now become the bar that we were all at. Apparently, most of their business today is from the workers from a couple of old factories nearby.
We all had some Italian capuccino and took some pictures of them. Unfortunately, they did not have any cards for the store (yes, it was that remote a village in Italy!!).
If I ever go back to Italy, I would love to go back there and spend more time with them. Very nice people.
17 June
2015
What good is a trip to the Big Apple?
17 June
2015
Have not seen this in quite some time
Early in the morning all three are up!! And dressed up!! And walking outside!!! Not a very common thing.
That is one advantage of body clock being six hours ahead I guess!! Also the attraction of all the dogs they knew they were going to see in Central Park!!
Last leg of vacation started yesterday in New York…
16 June
2015
That was an interesting route we took today…
In twenty years of transatlantic flying, this is the first time, we did not take the Great Circle route. In fact, on our way to Italy, I remember the route took us thru the familiar arc and over London. Today, it appears that we are taking a “straight” route back !!
All the frequent fliers over the pond, has this ever happened to you? What could be a possible reason not to take the shortest route of Great Circle? Possibly very strong winds? Anything else?
16 June
2015
Real life puzzle from Italy
Here is an interesting puzzle that we faced in real life a few days back. We had come back after a beautiful day in Verona and finally we were all ready to retire. Next day we had to leave for Rome early in the morning and that posed a logisitics issue. We had four rooms in our resort – one for our daughters, one for Sunil’s sons and one each for the set of parents. Now the resort we stayed in gave us only one door keycard for every room. Once you entered the room, you had to put in the keycard in a slot next to the door and that triggered the power in the room. Without this, the lights and AC wouldn’t work.
The issue was that while the adults were ready to sleep a little after midnight and wake up early, the kids were notorious for sleeping much later and showing no signs of getting up till 10 am. No amount of knocking on the heavy doors had helped in the past.
The puzzle was how to wake up the kids early next morning. We needed to enter the room. But the keycard was required to be inside – else the power would not work. Thus we could not possibly enter the room.
So, as a first shot, I yanked out the key from the power slot and put in a paper card of the same size. That would not work. I put in a credit card. That would not work either. (If it actually worked, obviosuly, the parents would keep their kids’ room keys with them and use them to enter the kids’ rooms next morning and wake them up). Later I found out from the resort folks that indeed only a hotel card would work for the slots. Apparently the hotel cards had a chip inside (not the magnetic strip) – which is what they programmed when they gave us the keycard. The door cared about the room coding. The slot reader however, did not care how the chip was programmed – it just needed to detect a chip in the card at the right place.
We were way too lazy to come out of the building and walk up across the resort to the lobby to pick up extra cards.
BTW, Sunil had a bright idea that let one parent sleep with one kid that night – which would have worked, but the kids immediately voted the idea down. But we did find an elegant solution.
Can you solve it?
16 June
2015
Happiness still is…
Reliving that walk in Costa Rica in pitch darkness – the four of us singing old Hindi numbers – just like college days – and scaring the beejujus out of the hapless iguanas (check out http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=4160), this time too, we sat out one night, way past midnight singing our favorite old numbers. There are no iguanas in Italy and there was some faint light in the vast green lawns… Like last time, the most voluble chorus was for “Pyar hamein kis mod pe le aaya”…
16 June
2015
Some quality time with a long time buddy of mine…
16 June
2015
