The Few Month Itch

I need to travel.  The last time I was away was in April.  I miss it.
The the joy and anxiety in packing a suitcase, the hustle and bustle of the airport, the possibility of having a drink in an unknown locale, the thrill in driving a new road, the anxiety of sleeping in a strange room, the oddness of finding a spectacular bargain in a most unexpected place, the excitement in trying new dishes, the newness, the expectation in meeting old friends reciting in yet another foreign place, the strolls in exotic promenades.  I miss it.
At to my dear amusement so does my little A.  He said the other day that he was yearning to fly in an airplane again.  Then, the other night, when I told him about our upcoming trip next week, he shouted "finally!  SFO again".  And then was profoundly sad when I told him it was going to be a car trip not more than 5 hours away.
I was pondering again how my main motif to work, first and foremost, is the ability to travel and to vacation with family.  I would be delighted to find my little angle is also one day yearning for travel as much as A does and as much as I do.

A and I en route to Edmonton, AB - June 2012

A in cockpit

My First Train Ride in the USA

I am on board on Amrak, Pacific Surfliner, from San Diego to Santa Barbara.  Departing right at 4PM, on business class for $62!  The commute is supposed to take about 5 hours 40 minutes.  We shall see.  I have read delays with this train but so far smack on time.
I am going to take time site seeing while we still have daylight.  Then I have a ton of emails to catch up with.
San Diego was nice this trip.  We got here Thursday afternoon and I had to meet a customer than night.  I worked on Friday too but then we got to take A to Legoland and Sea World and he had a blast.  He rode the Mini City Car Ride in Legoland 7 times; the ride he couldn't get on last year since he was not fill 6 years old.  He rode the coasters a couple times too with daddy.  I was the bystander for most of the rides; ok, all of the rides except the Sky Rider in the Sea World.
We got to meet my dear R.A. Her mom had brought me a pearl set from India which was so sweet of her.  She then gifted a hand knitted blanket to the baby girl.  It was fantastic catching up with her, try her great Chai again, and just chat even though too short of a time.
We had brunch at Cafe Chloe in the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego.  Totally recommended.  Great food, nice ambiance, and polite and welcoming servers.
A and I really liked San Diego like always.  Hard to leave now.  Especially since M and A left by plane back home and I am on my own to Santa Barbara.  Well, baby girl is keeping me company so quietly for now :)

En Route To Budapest

Going to the East Europe for the first time.  Budapest.  In the middle of February. Have been in the plane for hours already.  I have a headache, feel completely dry, and can't sleep.

The baby is moving.  Oh it is the sweetest thing.  I have started feeling her move since early January.  It was then two weeks ago that her movement got strong enough one morning to be felt from outside; her first strong move was felt by her dad actually as it was a Sat morning; Sat, Jan 26^th to be exact.  In this flight she has moved strongly a few times.  I think my sitting down idle has made her want to be active. I cherish her company.  Absolutely love it.  Thank You God!

An Unexpected Trip to Paris

Work summoned me to Paris.  It was a couple hectic days with early morning raise, metro rides, hospital visits, and case summaries.  All the work part ended up being super good, thank God!  Made all the hardships of the recent months feel rewarding.
Paris was cloudy and rainy and colder even perhaps compared to Odense.  But it was busy none the less, particularly many pedestrians despite the cold, which is one feature I admire in big cities.
I learned how my life style in US is unhealthy and against the rhythm of my body.  I need to feel the air on my skin, cold or hot, and I need to walk.  In my life in California, I need to carve out time for such walks while both in Odense and Paris I had to walk, a lot, and it all felt good and natural even more so on my pregnant body.
I got the opportunity to spend the last evening with friends and relax.  It was such a great pleasure.
My last transit via Frankfurt was uneventful.  Even though the security guy on US flights seems not to have changed, I was familiar with his borderline rude gestures and interrogations.
The business lounge and priority boarding lines can be quite interesting sometimes, as if when some people gain status they lose common sense of society and rights.  For example there was a lady ready to board the plane and was insisting that she was the beginning off the line.  But she was not even standing behind the gate but rather further away.  Plus her seat is predetermined, there wont be any loss or gain whether or not she is the first on board or the 10th.  That was enough for me to pray that she was not my companion in the eleven hour ride.  Thankfully, she was not.  And even better, my companion ended up being a young and polite gentleman who was also a product manager with technical background. We got to chat about work and societies and politics and movies and foods. It was easy to chat with him.  His companionship made the trip feel shorter and more pleasant. Plus I could sleep a few hours in the flight which was what my body  needed desperately.
I got to watch Hemingway and Gellhorn (TV 2012) which was a nice coincidence to the leisure book I am reading, The Paris Wife.  It was enough to know Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen were staring in it and that it was about Ernest Hemingway, my new passion.  I really enjoyed watching it.  I got to know how writing was a challenge even for greatest writers like Hemingway in the book I was reading.  Then, in this movie also, Martha Gellhorn said once "there is a lot happening [in the war] but when I sit down to write, nothing."  I liked it, although not even a emote comparison but I had felt the same thing exactly many times.  The other coincidental matter about the movie was the depiction of the Franco era in Spain.  Funnily, I got to hear about this part of Spanish history through Dr G.G. in Denmark over the 2nd day lunch.  Made me wonder at the world connectivity even at such trivial level.  Or is such matters like hearing the story of a fascist via person born and raised in a communist country and then watching it in an american movie really that trivial?
Wars.  And all the boys and girls who watched their mothers die in front of their eyes living their tiny little hands stained with their innocent bloods. "little by little I am getting really angry" as Gellhorn sited from a young boy in the war.
It should have been really tough and dark living in 1920-1945 era in the world with all the enmities and famines.
Now the reality of this time is the enmity against particular religions.  Such a pity!
On the subject of love Gellhorn said "the greatest enemy of love is boredom" and not jealousy.  Made me wonder.  Hemingway had written to Gellhorn "love is infinitely more durable than hate"; why is that?  To me, hate is not the opposite to love, hate is an excess anger, and hence can be coexisting with love.  But the opposite of love?  I think it is disappointment.
I took the 280 route back home which was indeed a pleasure.  Particularly since it was sunny in California after a week of rain, mist, and clouds in Odense and Paris.  The good music I was listening to made everything even more likable.
Now out to a carved out time to walk in the fade sub of this Sunday afternoon.

Last Night - Odense - Denmark

I was impressed with Odense in this trip spending 3 nights here.  It is a calm and green city.  We walked from hospital back to hotel both today and yesterday which was a 30 minute walk.  This got us an opportunity to observe the city and the people a bit more closely.

The city is humid, and naturally green.  The buildings are mainly old but well maintained.  There are many strange status and fountains around the city.  People walk a lot, and bike a lot, even now which is winter time.  There are special bike bath everywhere and there are many Christiana's Bikes around the city, some even carry their kids and baby's in the front cabin.

It seems like the handy crafts are still valuable here.  I observed a sewing shop with many sewing machines and people working on them.  And many many yard shops.  Apparently people knit a lot here because they were all very crowded too.  Also wood works and straw utensils abundant in the shops.  Kids appear relax and I found groups of kids chatting or walking or even sitting in a cafe having a snack by themselves.  No sign of paranoia as I am used to observe in kids in US.

People are not rushed.  They walk and bike and leisurely go through the shops.  I was impressed how the cafes were crowded, always parties of two or more, and all the time chatting!  I observed many women groups.  It was real fun to watch. In the restaurants and cafes waiters and waitresses are friendly but they do not smile.  And they wont check on you unless you ask for it.

I did not see many foreign looking people I must say.  Even though one of the neurosurgeons in the hospital is actually Persian. But not many black-haired people in the street I must say.

All in all, after a work assignment accomplished successfully and satisfactorily, I am happy with the city and ready to leave for Paris tomorrow.
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First Morning - Odense - Denmark

I turned off the lights at 12:45 AM and got up at 4 AM local time.  Now, that is called a good night sleep!!  Of course I am being sarcastic in case you were wondering.
I gave up hope at 6:45 and got up and worked some.  It is 7:35 AM and the sky is pitch black!!  I saw a couple school kids heading to school on foot.  It should be hard waking up and heading out while it still feels like the middle of the night.
We are meeting with colleagues at 8:30 for breakfast so I made a cup of green tea to carry some more work.  Talk to you later.

A Business Trip to Denmark

Got upgraded from San Francisco to Frankfurt: My first First Class experience.  Indeed more convenient!!

I have been traveling by care and plane and train for almost 22 hours now with very little time on the ground. When I stand up I feel like I am still moving actually.  But finally I am in Odense, Denmark.  We met with two other colleagues for a quick and rather bland dinner at a cafe 30 feet from the hotel.  There is mist in the air which is a fine experience after many rains back home lately.

My body is really tired but my brain doesn't want to shut down.  I had to work some too after dinner but thankfully it was a fruitful experience although made me even more alert.

I got to watch a movie and another half a movie in the first leg of my travel.  I jot down some quick notes in the plane about them.

Hope Springs (2012)
Meryl Streep was as lovely as ever and had a nice performance and like always, reminded me of my dear G.K.
While watching, however, I found tears in my eyes. After 10 minutes into the movie I was asking myself why I was watching this. It was about an unhappy dull marriage of 31 years. The couple were used to routines of a bland life and even had separated bedrooms. They were essentially sharing a house but not a life.  But the lady, the old woman in the movie, she wanted a "marriage"; she wanted to be kissed. She wanted to make love and feel wanted. She loved her husband but all that dullness had made her wonder about the vows.
She wanted a new marriage. She decided to give it a last shot and enrolled in "an intense marriage counseling" in a remote town in Main that cost her $4000 of her savings.

At one session in the counseling when she was not accompanied by her husband she said she was lonely but she was not sure if she would feel the same if she was alone.

Granted, at one odd moment towards the end of the movie among the wife's disappointments the husband realized how he was losing her, finally! And things got happy again.

Again. They were happy at first it seemed. They wanted each other.  But they had lost it in the process.

That is the odd irony that made me cry I guess.

Liberal Arts (2012)

Didn't get to watch it through and now it feels like a lingering thought thinking about it.

A 35 year old guy living a dull life in New York is summoned back to his alpha mater college in Ohio to the retirement party of his favorite prof. It was funny how the movie "showed" his feeling about being back to a place he used to dream anything was possible as a college boy. A college girl he meets is talkative and spontaneous. She is talking about a class she took last year "that changed her life". Yeah! I remember those days. Those that lives could be changed; those days bloated with possibilities.

All the ideas in the young minds. All the idealism.

I miss that!

Not that my college years at IUT were anywhere close to the liberty of this college in Ohio. Far from it on the outside. Note also that I was studying engineering and these are liberal arts students with art and novels and music. Yet, we had lots of fresh ideas too, and sky was the limit when I was in college as well. We had books that changed our lives and music that motivated us to be creative.

 Music indeed changes ones perspective of the same thing.

There was Phantom ad on a bus in one scene in New York.  And the dude found the he loved opera.

To be continued after/if I watched the whole movie.

And the bell rang 12 times.  I better try to get some shut eyes even if not shut brain. Godnat as they would say in Denmark.

Las Vegas

After 12 years I came back here on vacation even though work has brought me here a few times in between which does not count.  I think in A's eyes this should look like a Nickle City or Chuck-e-Cheeses but for grown ups.
I truly do not enjoy gambling.  Haven't stopped at one station yet.
Today we walked, and walked, and walked almost the whole day.  I hope I have shed some extra pounds (beyond what is needed for the baby) today.
What is really nice about this trip though is how family is with us.  It is great from all angles.  Many partners to chat with, many occasions to laugh, and several people to watch A at any time.  He seems really relax and happy.  I am so happy for him.
What is the nagging thought ruining my so called "vacation" is "work".  I woke up thinking about it and am going to bed after working several hours non stop on it.  Everyone tells me to relax and enjoy but I can do neither although I try to at least enjoy the memory of it all.

New shoes

I am in my room, a brief scape from the conference. Every thing is fine about the conference and the hotel. I am in Dessert Spring Resort in the town of Palm Desert, CA. The hotel looks nice, had not much time to explore it yet. The conference is good, have met a couple of nice people. BUT:

My dear M and A are not with me which takes all the glow from all the pretty stuff.

And I made this terrible mistake of buying a new pair of shoes and bringing them with me as my dressy shoes. Turns out the beautiful curve at the back is too stiff. Both my feet are bruised and bleeding now. I am going to put on my sneakers with my formal dress now. I just might swallow any funny look at my shoes. Or no body might even pay attention to them, right?

I have to run down. There is another talk I like to participate in. Oh, and BTW, I got the most surprising look from an attendee about my Iranian background, being educated there as a woman, and being here. Will tell you more about that later.

this week

We are going to go to Europe enshaalaa. This is really exciting! Moreover, we are going to meet friends and family there which is even more exciting. I was determined that I was going to visit my friends in Europe this summer, and here we go.This proves how we can persevere to meet each other.
There are a lot to be done before we leave though. Managing the stops and hotels and car rentals, reviewing the traveling books and maps, listings and shoppings, ... these are all required. Moreover, we proudly have a toddler tourist among us and we should foresee his needs and also reduce our expectation from this adventure intensely. To add to the complexity of this coming week for me, I need to take the necessary steps for going back to work, this time as a working mom: taking care of Arman's day care, his transportation management, my working wardrobe, and some necessary studies and reviews.
I am sure it is going to be a nice vacation before my start date at work; the calm before the storm!