There is no sense in getting all flustered about it, God has it all worked out. Right? I mean, everything happens for a reason. You sit next to someone on a plane and end up realizing that you two have more in common than you ever thought. Who woulda thunk it that two random people destined never to ever be sitting next to each other on the same plane, somehow get their flights delayed, and one gets upgraded to First Class, and sits next to the other and end up being really great friends. This happens everyday, around the world, but has it ever happened to you? Not yet? It won’t be the same sappy story but some other morphed version of it, I promise. Just keep your eyes open, and believe.

Right now I am lacking sleep and think I am seriously delusional. Sitting in this uncomfortable plastic chair at gate B36 is making my ass sore. Not enough tushie cushion in the world can save this ass from the 4 hours I’ve been sitting here. I guess eating a chicken quesadilla and a “famous” lobster roll for lunch wasn’t too good an idea either.

We all have our moments of insanity where nothing in the world makes sense, but then we remember we have our friends and family to lean on to regain that guidance.

(Top Right)
Name: Guptah
Type: Pufferfish

Name: Neil
Type: Hawaiian Moray Eel

Name: Lychee
Type: Lion Fish

Still suffering from a week old cold, which I think I caught back in Vegas, I struggled onto the Monday morning flight. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? I brought it back with me apparently. I plopped down into my seat next to a guy who had a hard look about him. He was on his way home. See, the severe winter does that to some people. They develop these shells and even though they don’t mean to show it physically, it’s quite apparent. Explains a lot about certain people that were in my life in the past.

I had just convinced the flight attendant that I was “Okay” to fly that morning, not true. I was just recovering from the cold, not true. I was just going to be there for a day or two, again, not true. It was definitely the crooked smile and dark sunglasses I had on that did the trick, or I hope.

I lay in bed, with Tylenol Flu Nighttime in my system trying to fall asleep. I thought I was going to die. I heard a bang on the wall; I think my coughing was keeping the person in the next room awake. I tossed and turned and I could not fall asleep. I had the same routine for four consecutive nights: go to work in the morning, struggle, come back to the hotel, eat the same room service dinner, fall asleep, wake up at approximately 3 AM coughing, fall back asleep; Not fun.

Each night it progressively got worse. The dinner was the part that I wasn’t looking forward to. See, I had recently decided to turn vegetarian. Well, not completely. I would still have seafood, but eventually I plan to cut that out of my diet as well. So far, it’s been two weeks. Two tough weeks. Did I mention that this week was the toughest since I was sick and I couldn’t leave the hotel to go get anything different? Janet, the lady who answered the phone for room service, knew me by name after the second night.

“Good Evening Mr. Pardasani, we have the same menu as last night, would you like me to ask the Chef what he can prepare for you tonight?”
“Yes please.”

How convenient.

She was so pleasant. By the time Thursday rolled around, I just had to do something different. One of my friends from Miami had moved to Chicago and was in the area. He stopped by and we had dinner downstairs at the “Harvest Grill”.

“Hi, my name is Janet are you having dinner with us tonight?”

Who woulda thunk it, the same lady that answered my phone earlier was the one taking me to my table here. Have you ever sat and tried to picture what people’s appearances are, over the phone, according to their voice? Bad decision. I had pictured a lady in her 30′s, maybe, recently married, a young daughter, and short and slim. I met, a lady in her 40′s, gray hair, reeking of smoke, 40 pounds overweight and 6 foot plus.

I sat and chatted with Tom about many business ventures that we could concentrate on over the next couple of months. See, he is the kind of person I would think would apply for a spot on the show “The Apprentice”. He gets it done. I’ve got ideas, he’ll find a way to get them implemented.

Monday – Salmon with asparagus
Tuesday – Salmon with mashed potatoes (not bad)
Wednesday – Linguine with Salmon (made by the chef just for me – VERY GOOD)
Thursday – Fish and chips (yuck)
Friday – TGIF !!!!!! (Airplane food)

So I’m supposed to fly back to Miami on Saturday. I wanted to spend Friday night in the city hanging out with Tom and Jason. Jason just got back from Vegas a couple of days ago … and apparently had a blast. I was going to meet up with him to catch up. I think God just wanted me back in Miami as soon as possible because as I was about to pack my luggage on Friday to head to the city, I received a call from American Airlines.

“Mr. Pardasani…?”
“This is he.”
“We regret to inform you that your flight for tomorrow has been cancelled.”

Shit. This was the only word orbiting inside my brain. I was trying to change my flight to Friday earlier in the week because I wanted nothing more than to be home for the weekend. Unfortunately it was costing me about $500 to change my date of departure. Screw that. Here I am faced with the same dilemma.

“Oh no, we are now allowing passengers to change their flights without any cost so that they can get home before the storm arrives tomorrow.”
“Thank you Lord! When can you get me out?”
“Today at 5:50 PM we have a flight and I will upgrade you to First Class at no charge.”

Was this finally my break I had been asking Him for all week? I was suffering with this cold all week, entrapped in my hotel room, eating the same food, and now a break? I’ll take it! :-)

I called Tom, cancelled our plans for the night and made plans to hang out in Miami next time he was down. Called Jason and cancelled going to a Bulls game, yea I’m a HUGE Bulls fan. I’ll get another chance. Plus Jason and I have plans to go backpacking through Europe sometime soon so hopefully that will happen!

Time check: 2:30 PM. Flight time 5:50 PM.

Packed my luggage in a hurry, got a late checkout last night just because I knew today was going to be a rough day.

“I need to get to the city, the quickest possible way.”
“Sir, you can take the Blue Line to the city and it will cost you maybe $1.75 or you can take a cab and it will cost you about $30″
“Which is quicker?”
“I think a cab should be quicker, plus you will get to go exactly where you need to go. I’m on a budget so I would take the train”
“Please get me a cab, I need to get to the city as fast as possible.”

Was I crazy? I love shopping. Have you ever shopped on Michigan Avenue? Heaven! My cab driver was awesome…. I reached Salvatorre Feregamo and told him I wanted him to meet me outside of Aldo in 30 minutes.

Time check: 2:57 PM

I walked into the store and knew exactly what I had come in to get. I had received a gift about two years ago, a wallet. It was from this same designer. It has to be one of the best gifts I have ever been given. Thank you. I decided it was time for a change. Where did I start again? “Letting go of he past is sometimes the toughest thing to do for most people.” I picked out this beautiful brown leather wallet, paid for it and continued with my speed shopping.

Time check: 3:13 PM

I stepped into Burberry for a minute and there was nobody available to assist me, so, I left.

Walked into Aldo and I was in my zone. I love shoes. My motto is, if your feet don’t feel good … then the rest of you doesn’t. Most therapists would agree with me because every time I go to a massage therapist and they work on my feet, the rest of me automatically feel good.

I ended up trying on about four pairs of shoes and buying one. I bought a pair of Aldo boots. I don’t own a pair of black boots yet, now I did. I walked out of the store and there was my cab, waiting.

What a wonderful world.

Not only did I make it back to my hotel to pick up my luggage on time, but also I made it back to catch the hotel shuttle to the airport. Thank you cabby!

Waiting for my flight to depart I ended up at the bar. The old lady behind the bar asked me for my ID and I was honored. I love people carding me. Makes me feel like I am 18 again. Not that I’m old or anything. Had a Sam Adams and a basket of fries. I can’t say that this was the healthiest of trips I have taken but definitely it was worth it.

I sat there and I re-collected all of the happenings for the week. It was definitely a week of letting go of the past. Did you know that sometimes when bad emotions are kept suppressed, they find their way out of your system one way or another? I definitely felt like this was the case this past week. I was in Chicago, close to Indiana, every movement and breath I took reminded me of my past. I dread coming to this part of the world. I can go as far as to say I HATE it. Orlando is another one but we will leave that for another time.

Changing my wallet seems like such a trivial thing to most people, three hours later it has already made a tremendous difference in my life. My flu seems to be going away finally. Maybe my emotions found their way out that way? I definitely feel better. My thoughts are headed in a more positive direction. My outlook on life is a lot better.

I’m coming home Miami.

Ciao

My brother had mentioned to me that he was going to Vegas for CES. For those who don’t know, CES stands for Computer Electronics Show. I decided to tag along in order to better understand how the industry is progressing and to see what I had missed over the last couple of years. See, I’ve been focusing on computers and telephony and have lost touch with the electronics side of the business. Not that it’s a bad thing, I do enjoy what I am doing; I have indeed learned more over the past three years then I ever did in my four years of college. However, don’t underestimate the power of going to college. Many people are skipping the college stage and going directly into the real world. Even though that may seem like a great idea: they are being paid a pretty penny and not living at home with their parents, they miss out on learning the values and social skills that college inevitably instills in you. I know for a fact that even though I was ready to go into the real world directly after high school, I was not ready mentally. I just described my feelings about the concept behind The Apprentice reality show this season.

I go off-track a lot don’t I? I land in Vegas and the air smelled different. It was a familiar smell. It was the smell of the inside of a… what is it? I can’ t figure it out right now but it’s on the tip
of my tongue. Restaurant? No. Hotel? No. Strip club? Bingo! I knew exactly what I was getting myself into right there.

I took a shuttle to the hotel where we were staying and met up with my brother and cousins. It was nice to be around familiar faces again. I had spent the last couple of months around… myself. I’ve been trying to get myself back on track, back to a position where I could finally look myself in the eye and move on with my life.

We all made plans to head down to the casino after freshening up in the rooms. Guess who ended up going, my brother and I. I have to say, one of the greatest people to go out with in this world is my brother. He is definitely one of a kind. If you’re not having a good time, he will make sure you do. If there’s some pretty girl in the room, you can damn well make sure he will go talk to her. Remind you of someone? Yea … I’m that person but have suppressed those feeling for a long time and am now letting go. Welcome back Kishore!

Gambled our night away on Thursday night.

Friday morning we headed down to the buffet. My God, I have got to say, it was the worst food in the world. I have never tasted poorer food at a casino. Even the casino boats that leave from Port Everglades have better food and we know how bad the food is over there.

CES was our mission for the day. What a sight. Every new piece of electronics and technology was in the palm of my hand. I was in the right place at the right time. I walked through the wireless section with my cousin Vikash and pointed out all of the new phones that were going to
be released in the upcoming weeks and the ones that would work in Barbados and the ones that he would be interested in. I had been jonsing one of the IMATE phones for the longest while and I had finally gotten a chance to hold it. Not a big deal. I am glad I did not get it. This is what the show is for.

Walking through the isles, I thought up another business idea I would like to implement in Barbados. I know a ton about home theaters. Customizing home theater systems. Why not build a business on that knowledge? Great idea, hunh? I wish I were back in Barbados. I wish I did not have any obligations to this country.

We spent the rest of the day at CES, went back to the hotel and B-lined it for the Casino. I had organized tickets for the seven of us to see The Blue Man group at the Luxor. We’ve all seen the Intel advertisements with the guys with painted heads. After the show, we had to get the soundtrack, the music was amazing, especially since it’s played on a sound system that is probably more expensive than most of our houses. The use of colors and physical accuracy, stunning! Comical, yet serious, enough to make you think about some real world issues. Casino. The night was young and I said I was going to call it a night. I had been exhausted from my work back in Miami and I had not slept the night before either. I turned in early, 5:00AM.

I squinted as I heard the hotel room door creek open. I watched my brother stumble in and fall onto the bed. Daylight. 8 AM? I went back to bed. Woke up two hours later to my brother snoring. I was off to see the Eiffel Tower, Paris. What a country! We saw something we liked, copied it, making money off it, yet Freedom Fries exist?

I stood there in awe as I stared above. It was raining outside but in here all I saw was the perfect blue sky and just the right amount of puffy white Cottonelle clouds. The Salmon at Le Café Île St. Louis was delicious. After a liter of Evian and after phone calls to family, I was ready to start my day. I found out that AVN was in Vegas that weekend as well. Look it up. I had 2 hours to go through the AVN convention. I didn’t care, I went and accomplished, closed the place down. My roommate is the one to blame for this influence in my life. See, he’s addicted. He should really seek therapy for this; otherwise he’ll need Coke bottle goggles soon. :-)

I screwed up by not taking my charger for my camera. I ran out of batteries! With no digital camera I was ready to walk out of the convention, maybe to buy one. On my way out, they were giving away cameras! Luck was on my side, for sure.

On my way back my brother calls, he just woke up. I’ve been trying to get through to him all day and I knew he was back late that morning so he was going to be exhausted. We got room service for dinner and headed to The Bellagio to see “O”. I had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. I was introduced to Cirque Du Soleil a couple of years backby someone whose family is in the theater business. Needless to say that this was one of the many things that rubbed off onto me and I love.

Perfect red stage curtains. The “La Nouba” show in Orlando has this part of the show where this performer, we called him Superman, was suspended by a deep red fabric. He used it to “fly”. Zooming across the stage in mid air the fabric fluttered like as if it was his cape. When I saw the curtain at the Bellagio it definitely brought back memories of that part of my life. The definition of happiness wasn’t exactly clear to me then. “O”, or rather eau, the French word for water, was in abundance since the stage was a pool where acrobats performed Olympic standard dives from the ceiling and synchronized swimming acts which allow ones senses to bring music a visual element.

I guess this was the night where everyone else went to bed early and I stayed up because I didn’t get back to the room until 8:30 Sunday morning. I ended up going to club Rain and partying my heart away. That’s all I’m going to say about that. :-) This was now my sleep day and my brothers work day. As he hobbled back exhausted from CES we knew we were going to have a rough night. We had to pack, check out, catch a bus to the airport, catch the red eye, rent a car, go home, get ready, and go to work.

I actually worked that day; except for the twenty minutes I spent ogling over the AVN pictures in disbelief. Was I really there? I can now say that Vegas is definitely a unique and wonderful experience. My brother and I are already planning next years trip.

Zai jian

One of my craziest trips has been to Muncie, Indiana. I won’t get into much detail about that one since it happened a couple of months ago but here’s the gist of it. Went to work in the morning, decided that evening to take a trip there, went to the airport, bought a plane ticket, got on a flight to Indianapolis. For those who do not know, Muncie is about an hour and a half drive from Indianapolis. Landed around 9ish, rented a car drove for an hour and a half, tried to rectify the issues at hand, went to bed at a Days Inn, got up 2 hours later, drove an hour and a half back to Indianapolis, got on a flight back to Miami around 7ish. Landed, went straight to work. Yes, a toothbrush is permanently packed in my backpack with my laptop everyday when I go to work.

Now that you understand the overnight syndrome I have, I can carry on with my Chicago trip. So I had this trip planned for a while now. One of my good friends, Natalie introduced one of her really good friends Jason to me. See, Jason is a young entrepreneur like me. I could really learn a lot from him even though he has fewer years than I. My main objective for this trip was to meet Jason, meet the people in his life that have made him better and could eventually make me better.

I stepped out of the airport and it felt as though someone punched me in the chest. I felt like I was running a hundred miles per hour the way that cold wind was hitting my face. I wasn’t moving. I had luckily invested in a very nice coat from Sisley (a clothing store in Aventura Mall, Florida) about a year ago but had never had the opportunity to wear it. “Thank you.” Finally managed to flag down a cab and proceeded downtown where Jason lived.

Walking into the flat I saw these two beautiful statues, which were supposed to be for his mom, but they were cracked. Actually they were broken. Nothing a little superglue couldn’t fix. My opinion on broken stuff that can be fixed is that it gives it character. I received a very nice gift once, a leather toiletries bag engraved with my initials. It’s beautiful. Unfortunately, on a recent trip some hairspray spilled and the leather now has spots and is pretty much ruined. Character.

One person doesn’t really need that much room to live, especially if they are traveling a lot. The flat was a studio he had moved into a couple months ago. Pictures all over the place, Hawaii, Thailand … Barbados soon maybe? Next to the television in a glass cabinet there were memoirs of previous jobs, EbaY, Natural Golf, a Golf program he used to sell and more pictures. When I mean he is a successful young entrepreneur … I meant it.

In the corner, something you really do not expect in a studio, a salt-water fish tank. I wish I could remember the names of the fish but unfortunately my memory is horrible. I’ll try and find out; maybe I’ll add it to my next Chicago trip entry along with a picture. The tank was custom made by the owners of the flat for that specific corner. And Jason was lucky enough to inherit it. I use the word inherit loosely since the price paid for the tank and fish was significantly lower than he can sell it for today. He’s a businessman recognizing an opportunity and taking advantage of it.

Coming close to 2 o’ clock in the morning and realizing that we had been speaking about business, personal lives and battles and how we have survived so far, family, our moms and how much they mean to us, selling RV’s on EbaY, everything you can think about really, I made my bed on the pullout mattress on the floor and went to bed.

Waking up at 6 o’ clock was tough. Even more tough was walking out into the cold that morning. I had an appointment that morning with someone Jason had recommended. It took about six good hours for me to get out of there. Eventually I did, with good news nonetheless. I was elated!

Took a cab downtown, met up with Jason and had lunch. Remember this is just before Christmas so I was lucky I was taking up his time when there isn’t much work going on in the office. At least that’s what he told me, I know I’m pretty busy this time of year in my office.

After lunch I took a cab to O’Hare, waited around for about four hours and hopped onto a flight back to Miami.

All in all Jason’s not a half bad person, no matter what Natalie might say :) . I had a really good time and the trip was definitely worth it. I got great news and can now proceed with my life and concentrate on bigger and better things. Maybe even do some business in the future with Jason. I’ll be back in Chicago soon … work related next time but I’m sure I’ll have more interesting stories.

Mahalo