Boston Tea and Tennis Party, September 2009
It has almost become a yearly ritual for this tennis nut to make a pilgrimage to New York for the US Open during late August and early September. We usually went earlier to watch the qualifying matches because we could see the players up close and the qualities of tennis were quite high. The best part for watching the qualifying rounds, however, was that they were free of charge! Another attraction for attending the US Open is the authentic Chinese foods which are sorely missed in Nashville but can easily be accessed in Flushing, which is only one subway stop away from the tournament site. Of course we also took advantage of the fact that Melvin would usually be out west participating in the music festival at Angel Fire, New Mexico, thus we could stay in his flat in Manhattan without paying exorbitant amount of hotel fees in the city.
However, we did not go for the qualifying rounds this year because a high school friend of mine, Gary, volunteered to take us to Boston to play tennis with his wife’s uncle, Ken, whom I met in a military boot camp in Taiwan nearly half a century ago. In Taiwan, all male college students must undergo 2-year compulsory military services upon graduation unless you were lucky enough to get a waiver. Fortunately I was awarded an exemption because of my severe myopia; still I was required to go through four-month long military boot camp training before being allowed to study abroad for advanced degrees. At the camp I had the good fortune of acquainting with a stiff-upper lipped gentleman (not of the British kind but of the Japanese Samurai type!). This guy impressed me greatly with his occasional browsing of the Time magazine during his leisure hours. He had been to the States twice and had a Master’s degree in meteorology from the University of Michigan. He was then an instructor at the renowned National Taiwan University. At that time my command of the English language was so pitiful that I would have hard time understanding a sentence of that magazine even with the aid of a dictionary. Thus, I idolized him to no end and he was the only one I still had a vivid impression from that camp!
About two years ago during the US Open season, Gary invited us to have dinner in Manhattan with some of his family members. During the meal he chanced to mention that his wife’s uncle used to teach meteorology at the National Taiwan University. So I queried to see if he could be my idol at the boot camp and voila he was the one and only! In this way we got reconnected, thus Ken and I have been emailing back and forth since and I found out he also plays tennis. One day in July a snarl mail from Gary arrived in our mailbox and in it he suggested that if I would attend the US Open this year he would take us to Boston on September the 4th to see Ken and to play tennis with him there. I jumped at the idea because I would then have an excuse to visit my niece Joyce and her husband BY near Boston and to stay in their luxurious house in Lincoln! And this was how the Boston tea and tennis party came about.
9/2/2009: Arrival in the Big Apple, supper with Milo and Karin.
The flight from Nashville to La Guardia was uneventful and we arrived in New York ahead of schedule, quite an unusual feat these days. We then took a taxi to Melvin’s flat and had a simple lunch nearby before settling down to watch on wide-screen TV some US Open matches which were already well into the second round. We were also anxiously waiting for the arrival of our sweet grandson Milo and his mom from West Point. This would be our only chance to see him because Karin’s school had already started. They came around 6 and we rode the subway together to the restaurant recommended by Karin but when we got there we found it to be no longer in business. We walked back along the street to find another restaurant called ‘Saigon Grille’ which was about ten blocks away. Milo had boundless amount of energy, he would keep running from behind to touch and scare me. By the time we got to the restaurant he was tired, hungry, and ready to eat. We had a decent meal and when I was about to sign the bill with my credit card he said he wanted to do it. I told him he couldn’t because he didn’t have a credit card. To my infinite surprise he responded matter-of-factly that he could use his mother’s! He was only 2 and ½ years old and my advice to his parents would be ‘watch out!’ Afterwards Karin took Milo to stay at her parents’ house in New Jersey, and we went back to the flat to watch more tennis matches.
9/3/09: A day at the Open.
Since this would be the only day we could devote our full measure at the US Open, we woke up early in the morning and were at the subway stop around 9 a.m. Armed with the Metro day passes which allow unlimited subway rides, we took the #1 train to Time Square and then transferred to the #7 train. Instead of getting off at the USTA tennis center, the site of the US Open, we went one stop further to Flushing to have our Chinese-style breakfast. After the bellies were full, we purchased some take-outs for our lunch because the food-stands at the US Open site were unreasonably expensive. At the box office of the Open I had to decide whether I should only purchase the ground pass ($60) or adding Arthur Ashe Stadium which is an extra $15 that day. Cognizant of the fact that the first match at the Stadium was the ever-so-consistent #4-seeded Dementieva against a 17-year old American teenager who got in by a wild card privilege; I made the fatal blunder of not spending the extra $30 for the Stadium seats thinking it would be a washout. Upon entering the site and at the American Express booth we picked up free radios which allow one to clip on one’s ear and listen to matches at several other courts. While strolling around the ground watching matches at various outside courts, my ear was tuned to the play-by-play action in the Stadium. It turned out the match was not only exciting but appeared to be a gigantic upset in the making. Unfortunately all gates to the Stadium were guarded and I had no way of gaining entrance to witness the biggest upset of the tournament. So the take home lesson for me: Do not underestimate anyone and don’t be too stingy or you might miss something huge and come to regret for the rest of your life!
The American teenager subsequently defeated the million-dollar screaming baby Sharapova and Amazon-like Petrova, whom were all seeded players. Along with her first Russian victim in the first round, the American teenager Melanie Oudin had suddenly become the giant killer, downing four Russian ladies in a row! Unfortunately the Cinderella story was eventually ended at the quarter final level by a 19-year old Dane Wozniake who reached the final but was defeated by Clijsters, the mother of an 18-month old baby girl! These and the profanity-laced outburst to a line judge by Serena and the lost of Roger to Del Potro in the men’s final were some of the highlights of this year’s US Open.
In the evening, we were back to Flushing again but this time was to have dinner with my cousin Kathy and her husband. This was to make amends for the invitation mishap to Irwin’s wedding, I phoned and told her about it but somehow Irwin forgot to send out the invitation to her. After the dinner we took the subway back to the apartment and watched the night sessions of the Open on TV before hitting the hays.
9/04/09: On Road to Boston and a get-together dinner.
Gary and his wife Su came to the apartment to pick us up around 10 a.m. and we were on our way to Boston! Su brought along stuffed rice balls and drinks, so we had a lunch picnic at a rest area on one of the highways. We had a very pleasant drive mainly on parkways which were lined with soothing green trees. We reminisced about family stories of Ken, Gary, and some mutual friends, and before you knew it we were in the Boston area! We managed to find Joyce’s house without a GPS, quite an accomplishment indeed! We were welcomed into her impressive house and had some watermelons before Gary and Su headed for Ken’s house in Lexington which was only about a 10-minute drive.
In the evening Joyce and BY drove us to the “Bernard’s Chinese Restaurant” which was located inside an upscale shopping mall in the suburb of Boston. We were later joined by Gary, Su, Ken and his wife to have dinner there. I was the host of this get-together dinner because I wanted to express my appreciation to Ken and his wife for their invitation to come to Boston for a tennis party, to Gary and Su for their red-carpet door-to-door car services, and to Joyce and BY for providing us with free room and board during our tenure in the Boston area. We had a nice dinner with dishes especially selected for us by the manager whom BY knew quite well, as he dined and wined his firm’s clients there quite often. Despite the restaurant’s name the dishes turned out to be quite authentically Chinese! So the Boston Tea Party got to a belly-filling start.
9/5/09: Tennis in an air force base and a Taiwanese dinner feast.
After a nice breakfast prepared by both Joyce and BY, they dropped us off at Ken’s house. We then packed into Ken’s van along with his tennis-playing Taiwanese neighbor Dr. Lee and headed for the tennis courts. The reason we had to get into Ken’s van was because we needed his ID/credential to get into the restricted base where Ken had devoted his lifetime doing weather research for the air force since receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan. This airfield had been used in landing the presidential jets for various historical occasions in Boston, such as Obama’s attendance at the recent Edward Kennedy’s funeral services. Later we also found out that Dr. Lee’s sister was a classmate of Katherine in college and they are related to the now retired head of the National Academy of Sciences in Taiwan who was known for his considerable prowess in tennis. We played some doubles with Ken’s six other old tennis buddies in a bubble which was actually quite nice since the gates could be rolled up to let in fresh air, blending in both indoor and outdoor advantages. After the tennis, Ken took us to have some sushi in a Japanese restaurant for lunch. We then went back to Joyce’s place to have showers and naps
In the evening we all went to Ken’s house for a Taiwanese feast. We started by each attacking a big Maine lobster as an appetizer. While we were enjoying our lobsters outdoor on the deck, mosquitoes were also busy sucking bloods from the ladies with tender skins and higher body temperatures. So we retreated to inside the house to enjoy the rest of the feast. We sat around a dinner table full of cooked vegetable, meats, shrimps, and crushed peanuts and they were to be placed on thin wrappers with high tensile strength made of a special kind of flour. It’s a Taiwanese delicacy and was quite tasty. We were then treated with some delicious home-made desserts prepared by Ken’s wife, an excellent cook. Would you believe she once demonstrated oriental cooking for Julia Child, the American icon of French cooking?!
9/6/09: Tennis in the park and dinner in a nice Japanese restaurant.
In the morning we along with Ken and BY went to a park to play some tennis. There were ten courts in a very nice setting with generous dose of tree shades. Risking a divorce, Katherine and I teamed up to play against Ken and BY. Katherine stood up quite well to the gentlemen but they soon discovered where the weak link was and exploited it relentlessly. I am ashamed to say I missed most of the balls coming my way and as a consequence lost in a 3-set match, still the morning outing was very enjoyable. After dropping Ken at his house we went back to take showers and rested a bit. Then I recalled a friend of mine during my years in Vancouver, Canada while I was doing post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia. He was in fact my office mate working with the same professor and he now is residing in the Boston area. I gave him a ring and he was surprised and asked me where I was and ‘Lincoln’ was my reply. He said his office was in Lincoln and he just happened to be on his way to his office to do some work despite its being Sunday. So he came over to BY’s house and we finally met after about 40 years. We had light lunch together at BY’s house and did some more catching up. It turned out he has been working in a research lab inside the air base where we played tennis just the day before. After a couple of hours’ pleasant chats we bade farewell and he went back to the air base to do some work.
Joyce and BY wanted to be the hosts of this evening’s farewell dinner in a nice Japanese restaurant and they invited Gary, Su, Ken and his wife to come to the house earlier around 4 p.m. Upon their arrival I suggested that BY gave the guests a grand tour of his grand house. It turned out BY helped design his own dream house so he was able to explain to us the intricacies of various architectural subtleties of the house. We started with the basement floor which housed the activity rooms including an entertaining center with video projector and a theater-sized screen, a billiard table, a guest bed room, a golf practicing area with a net set, and a professional ballroom studio complete with a wall mirror. Then we moved up to the ground floor which consisted of a grand entrance facing the wedding-style spiral staircases, a large kitchen and eating area, a formal dining room, a TV area with Karaoke facilities, a music room with piano (a baby grand, by the way Joyce is quite an accomplished amateur pianist), and a well-stocked library section which is my favorite. The next floor is the living area which Joyce refused to let the guests walk through (because of tidiness or lack of it?) except for a very nice spacious room above the garage with a big desk, leathered sofa, and some video facilities. The house is quite magnificent in the eyes of this hillbilly from Tennessee, with about 9000 sq. ft. of living space and very elegant decors. Although I was aware of the fact that BY graduated summa cum laude from his university class in electrical engineering, I didn’t realize he is such a multi-faceted talent. He thrives to excel in everything he does, be it academic, business, dancing, singing, golf, or tennis. If there were to be a minor complain from me it would have been his inability to converse in Taiwanese despite his being born and raised in that island. Even this was soon forgiven and forgotten with his wonderful rendition of Taiwanese love songs singing duet with his Taiwanese-speaking partner and outshining her! We had so much fun in the house that two hours had quietly gone by without notice.
At around 6 p.m. we packed into two cars and headed for the Japanese restaurant. The foods were excellent and the waitress friendly, just happened to be another Taiwanese! Ken and Joyce ordered some ice-cold Sake (Japanese rice wine), I thought Sake had to be warm and was also surprised that the mild mannered Joyce could out drink her uncle yours truly! It must be the effect of Sake that Ken started to loosen up and talk more freely, so I follow suit by talking nonsense and kidding him around mercilessly. I imitated his Samurai air while reading Time magazine or playing tennis. I kidded him about his strange courtship of writing love letters to his future wife who was still in Taiwan in English rather than in Chinese or Japanese which they both were well versed. Fortunately Ken was in good spirit and a good sport about it all. So we had a riotous evening together before our return to the Big Apple next morning.
9/7/09: Return trip to the Big Apple and dinner with some high school friends.
At around 8:20 a.m. we got all things packed and ready for Gary and Su to come pick us up at 8:30. Thinking there were still 10 minutes to spare I decided to go to the toilet to do my last bidding: to discharge some of last night’s delicious foods. After a few minutes of struggle I could feel something on the way but before it could see the daylight I heard the chiming of the door bell, so I immediately stopped the process and ran down the stairs to bid farewell to Joyce and BY and headed for NYC.
We took a different route back because Gary wanted us to meet some high school friends living in the New Jersey area for lunch. It took about 4 hours to get to the restaurant and when we arrived we discovered that there were 6 classmates along with their spouses. The foods were too plentiful for a lunch and I volunteered to pay our own shares but they refused. I felt somewhat uneasy because I didn’t know some of the people well enough to feel comfortable having them share the costs of our meal. I felt a certain sense of imposition on them even though I didn’t have such compunction towards my niece Joyce because unlucky for her I am the only A-gu (uncle) she has on her mother’s side! In the evening Irwin and Aya, who was carrying our second grandson due at the month’s end, came all the way from Brooklyn to have dinner with us in a Thai restaurant just across the street from the flat. We were glad to see Aya doing fine and showing no fear of the impending childbirth.
9/8/09: Watching US Open on TV.
We could have gone to the US Open today, but judged from the exponential rise on the ticket price as the final drew closer we decided to stay in the flat to watch the matches in the comfort of sofa and big TV screen. We bought take-outs for lunch as well as supper and spent the whole day in front of the tube. Actually it was quite enjoyable and I was thrilled by some exciting matches. Next day we flew back to Nashville, thus ended the splendid weekend in Boston and resumed my boring daily routines at home! There is, however, one fall-out from this otherwise very nice trip, i.e. the frequent reminder from Katherine about the virtue of a big-screen TV and I have no choice but to practice my selective hearing from time to time!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Short Trip to India
The Trip to India, June 2009
Why India and why in June?
The short answer is ‘saving’ and the longer one is the fact that the magnificent image of Taj Mahal has been haunting me for ages and I vowed to view it in person within my lifetime. So when I saw the special discount offered by Friendly Planet on a week-long visit to India termed ‘Taj Mahal Express’ ($999 including round trip airfare from JFK) which appeared in the Travelzoo Top 20 newsletter, I jumped right in. The newsletter is put out weekly by Travelzoo.com, highlighting some of the travel discounts offered by various vendors each week. I signed up for the newsletter years ago because I was awarded a free share of the company’s stock for doing so and I was dreaming of getting rich one day! Unfortunately I have no idea where my share is and how much it is worth right now! I picked the departure date of June 8 because the French Open would end on the 7th! It seemed a perfect vacation for this tennis nut before the start of another grand slam (Wimbledon) a week after my return and there would be time enough to nurse the jet-lag upon my return! To my infinite dismay, however, a few days after I paid for the tour in full a more attractive offer with exactly the same price and with better accommodations along with free optional side tours was being offered by another travel outfit called Smar Tours which also appeared in the same newsletter! Well, that’s life and I had no choice but to swallow the bitter pill!
A respite before the long journey.
Since our one and only precious grandson Milo (but Aya is giving us another one in the Fall!) lives in New York, we made every effort and excuse to go see him whenever we could, lest he forgets the grandparents living in the distant Nashville. So we decided to go a couple of days earlier to spend a weekend in NYC. We stayed at Aya’s place and had a couple of meals together with our immediate family. Aside from seeing Milo and having a proper rest before the long journey, we also enjoyed watching the final of the French Open on TV witnessing my favorite player Roger (my alias in the tennis club!) capturing the elusive clay title for the first time with tears of joys in his eyes, nicely culminating the two weeks of tennis which I followed religiously! I also followed the final rounds of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition via its webcast and learned of the awarding of gold medals to a 20-year old blind pianist from Japan and a 19-year old Chinese pianist studying at Curtis. On Monday Melvin picked us up from Aya’s flat and dropped us off at JFK for our long flight to Delhi via Air India.
The non-eventful long plane ride.
The flight from JFK to Delhi was about 14 hours. Thank God it was a direct flight; otherwise it could have taken us the whole 24 hours! Nothing much we could do in the plane except watching movies. Fortunately the movie selections were not bad, with some old classics and recent releases. So the 14-hour stretch was taken care of by watching 4 movies, occasional naps, and meals. As to the Indian food, I was well prepared on that score. Realizing it could be a problem with my body adjusting to foreign foods with strange spices, I had the foresight to train my stomach getting used to them. A month before the trip we went to Bombay Palace, an Indian restaurant in Nashville strongly recommended by an Indian professor of theology at Vanderbilt and my occasional tennis nemesis. The first time I got a terrible diarrhea which kept me awake the whole night rushing to the toilet. Not ready to give up, we went the second time a few days later and it improved considerably except for the occasional pungent farts released. The third time was the charm and not even one single fart, pungent or not, was generated. So the Indian food on the plane didn’t bother me a bit and I passed the test with flying color!
It is hot!
I don’t mean the Indian spices; I am talking about the weather! We arrived in Delhi with great anticipation and were met by the local representatives of the Friendly Planet. The first thing hit you when you walked out of the airport to board the bus was the suffocating heat, it was around 110F! The heat was almost unbearable for the entire trip especially during the outdoor walking tours under the scorching sun and Katherine would rather forgo seeing some interesting sites than suffering the terrible heat! Fortunately the bus was air-conditioned and after the ½ -hour bus ride we checked into the LaLit Hotel which was unexpectedly luxurious with the bargain price we paid for the tour. It turned out June is one of the hottest months and thus we have come to India during the off-season with the bargain price!
Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur
. These are the three cities we visited which constitute the Golden Triangle of the northern India. Agra is best known as the location of the Taj Mahal, the single most important sight a visitor to India can see. This structure was ordered built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child. It took some 20,000 laborers 22 years to build using white marbles decorated with elaborate patterns of semiprecious stones (heavy Persian influence). A reflecting pool adorned with classical gardens lay in front of the magnificent building. We also visited Agra Fort, built under the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1565, containing numerous palaces and a white marble mosque. Itmad-ud-Daulah’s tomb also known as the ‘baby Taj Mahal’ was another site visited and it was the first Mughal structure totally built from marble.
Jaipur is famous for the unusual rose-colored sandstone architecture that gives the city its nickname, the Pink City. The early 18th-century Jantar Mantar is the largest and best preserved of the five observatories built by astronomer Prince Jai Singh II. The prince had the huge stone structures built to measure time, chart the declination of celestial bodies, and predict eclipses. The other attraction was the City Palace/Museum, which was once a beautiful royal residence. We also made a photo stop at Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, Jaipur’s signature building and is famous for its beehive-like structure. However, the highlight of the Jaipur visit was the elephant ride up the hill to see the 18-century Amber Palace and Fort for which I have photos to prove it!
Delhi is the capital of India and actually consists of two separate cities. The old city of Delhi, which the Mughuts built and lived in; and New Delhi, built by the British and expanded since independence in 1947. We visited Red Fort, Qutub Minor, and India Gate. The Fort has Diwan-e-am and Dwan-e-Khas where the king granted audiences to the public and to important people, respectively. Qutub Minar is a tall and magnificent structure built by Muslim King Qutub-un-din Aibak in 1199 A.D. India Gate, a 42 meter high structure is a war memorial in honor of soldiers who died during the second World War.
Some memorable personages and coincidences.
There were a total of three buses hired by the Friendly Planet to transport us around and we were with the #1 bus. Since nearly all of us learned about the tour via travelzoo.com, the demographic make-up of the group is very representative of the US population. Unlike the Vantage Tours we had taken before which are mostly geared to older and more affluent populace, we had a younger and more bargain-seeking crowd on this trip. There were about 25 people in our bus and we got to know some of them better during the course of our tour.
We established a bit of kinship with an expatriated Iranian couple from Texas because we were in Iran about a year ago. He was in the Ph.D. program at Texas A & M University with a teaching assistant post in the Industrial Engineering department and nearly completed the degree requirements when the Islamic revolution (about 30 years ago) started in Iran and the American embassy occupied and hostages taken. Shortly after, he received a letter from the University informing him that his service was no longer needed. Out of desperation he started buying some used cars and refurbishing them for resale, even though he knew very little about car engines at that time. Slowly and surely he got a foothold in that college town and eventually ended up owning a big junkyard and a sizable car repair garage. Later on his wife also opened up a child-care facility and operated for a few years. Now they sold their businesses and are wealthy enough to own a house in Esfahan (a beautiful city in Iran) and commuting back and forth from Texas. The couple started traveling because their two daughters are now happily married and residing in the States. We were all anxiously trying to find out the election result in Iran on Sunday; unfortunately our hotel in Jaipur didn’t carry CNN or BBC World News. Thus we had to wait until we got back to Delhi to find out the sham result!
And then there was a young man of oriental face seating a few rows behind us. When our local guide walked past his seat in the bus he started talking to him in Hindu, quite a strange sight indeed! As a matter of fact he carried a big Hindu dictionary with him on this trip. At another occasion I saw and heard him talking to the Iranian couple in Farsi and someone told me he knew 7 or 8 languages. Later on we chanced to talked to him in private and found out that he is a 5th year medical resident at the UCLA hospital and his parents are Chinese from Hong Kong and are now living in New York. The reason he could speak Farsi is because there is a large population of Iranian Jews in California and LA in particular which he had constant contact in the hospital! When we told him we were from Nashville, he said “my god, I went to Vanderbilt Medical School!” He knew of Dr. Stanley Cohen, Katherine’s boss at the medical center and a Nobel Prize winner. What a small world and what a coincidence! So one night when we three were having dinner together in a restaurant, being the white-haired elder I felt obligated to take care of the young and bought him a dinner.
Talking about coincidences, at the farewell dinner (the only free meal provided by the Friendly Planet) in a nice restaurant in Delhi, I was sitting in front of a young black lady from Martinique (the birth place of Napoleon’s Josephine) who is currently teaching French and Spanish in a Virginia high school. I asked her where she went to school in the US and she said ‘State University of New York at Stony Brook’. Then I recalled asking the young Chinese doctor earlier why he decided to go to Vanderbilt Medical School and his reply was because it offered him a full scholarship. Thinking that he might have graduated with summa cum laude from some university, I asked him where he did his undergraduate and he replied ‘SUNY at Stony Brook’. And I also recalled that one of the ladies in the group is an engineer working for Raytheon in Massachusetts making Patriot missiles and I remembered asking her if she graduated from MIT but she replied in the negative and pronounced herself to be a graduate of SUNY at Stony Brook. So I single-handed brought those three to have a mini reunion in a restaurant in the faraway land of India and the city of Delhi, what an impossible probability of having 3 out of a group of 25 to graduate from the same school!
Street vendors and the ugly Americans.
Since we had been to places such as Brazil, Cambodia, and Egypt we were pretty much used to the aggressive street vendors selling gifts to tourists. Yet the ones in India seemed much more tenacious and would not take ‘no’ for an answer. It appeared that the persistency is directly proportional to the extent of poverty in a country. But some in our group got upset at times and yelled out loud ‘NO!’ or ‘get away!’ to their faces. The lack of compassions and rowdy behaviors reminded me of the book published years ago entitled ‘The Ugly Americans’! We were indeed terrible ambassadors for our country! If you were a skillful bargainer like me, you could get some good buys on gifts from this huge and colorful country. I believe I got some good bargains, rescuing Katherine from paying too much on some items.
So here it is, my report on our short and interesting trip to India (actually only 5 days because we lost two days on air flights!).
Why India and why in June?
The short answer is ‘saving’ and the longer one is the fact that the magnificent image of Taj Mahal has been haunting me for ages and I vowed to view it in person within my lifetime. So when I saw the special discount offered by Friendly Planet on a week-long visit to India termed ‘Taj Mahal Express’ ($999 including round trip airfare from JFK) which appeared in the Travelzoo Top 20 newsletter, I jumped right in. The newsletter is put out weekly by Travelzoo.com, highlighting some of the travel discounts offered by various vendors each week. I signed up for the newsletter years ago because I was awarded a free share of the company’s stock for doing so and I was dreaming of getting rich one day! Unfortunately I have no idea where my share is and how much it is worth right now! I picked the departure date of June 8 because the French Open would end on the 7th! It seemed a perfect vacation for this tennis nut before the start of another grand slam (Wimbledon) a week after my return and there would be time enough to nurse the jet-lag upon my return! To my infinite dismay, however, a few days after I paid for the tour in full a more attractive offer with exactly the same price and with better accommodations along with free optional side tours was being offered by another travel outfit called Smar Tours which also appeared in the same newsletter! Well, that’s life and I had no choice but to swallow the bitter pill!
A respite before the long journey.
Since our one and only precious grandson Milo (but Aya is giving us another one in the Fall!) lives in New York, we made every effort and excuse to go see him whenever we could, lest he forgets the grandparents living in the distant Nashville. So we decided to go a couple of days earlier to spend a weekend in NYC. We stayed at Aya’s place and had a couple of meals together with our immediate family. Aside from seeing Milo and having a proper rest before the long journey, we also enjoyed watching the final of the French Open on TV witnessing my favorite player Roger (my alias in the tennis club!) capturing the elusive clay title for the first time with tears of joys in his eyes, nicely culminating the two weeks of tennis which I followed religiously! I also followed the final rounds of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition via its webcast and learned of the awarding of gold medals to a 20-year old blind pianist from Japan and a 19-year old Chinese pianist studying at Curtis. On Monday Melvin picked us up from Aya’s flat and dropped us off at JFK for our long flight to Delhi via Air India.
The non-eventful long plane ride.
The flight from JFK to Delhi was about 14 hours. Thank God it was a direct flight; otherwise it could have taken us the whole 24 hours! Nothing much we could do in the plane except watching movies. Fortunately the movie selections were not bad, with some old classics and recent releases. So the 14-hour stretch was taken care of by watching 4 movies, occasional naps, and meals. As to the Indian food, I was well prepared on that score. Realizing it could be a problem with my body adjusting to foreign foods with strange spices, I had the foresight to train my stomach getting used to them. A month before the trip we went to Bombay Palace, an Indian restaurant in Nashville strongly recommended by an Indian professor of theology at Vanderbilt and my occasional tennis nemesis. The first time I got a terrible diarrhea which kept me awake the whole night rushing to the toilet. Not ready to give up, we went the second time a few days later and it improved considerably except for the occasional pungent farts released. The third time was the charm and not even one single fart, pungent or not, was generated. So the Indian food on the plane didn’t bother me a bit and I passed the test with flying color!
It is hot!
I don’t mean the Indian spices; I am talking about the weather! We arrived in Delhi with great anticipation and were met by the local representatives of the Friendly Planet. The first thing hit you when you walked out of the airport to board the bus was the suffocating heat, it was around 110F! The heat was almost unbearable for the entire trip especially during the outdoor walking tours under the scorching sun and Katherine would rather forgo seeing some interesting sites than suffering the terrible heat! Fortunately the bus was air-conditioned and after the ½ -hour bus ride we checked into the LaLit Hotel which was unexpectedly luxurious with the bargain price we paid for the tour. It turned out June is one of the hottest months and thus we have come to India during the off-season with the bargain price!
Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur
. These are the three cities we visited which constitute the Golden Triangle of the northern India. Agra is best known as the location of the Taj Mahal, the single most important sight a visitor to India can see. This structure was ordered built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child. It took some 20,000 laborers 22 years to build using white marbles decorated with elaborate patterns of semiprecious stones (heavy Persian influence). A reflecting pool adorned with classical gardens lay in front of the magnificent building. We also visited Agra Fort, built under the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1565, containing numerous palaces and a white marble mosque. Itmad-ud-Daulah’s tomb also known as the ‘baby Taj Mahal’ was another site visited and it was the first Mughal structure totally built from marble.
Jaipur is famous for the unusual rose-colored sandstone architecture that gives the city its nickname, the Pink City. The early 18th-century Jantar Mantar is the largest and best preserved of the five observatories built by astronomer Prince Jai Singh II. The prince had the huge stone structures built to measure time, chart the declination of celestial bodies, and predict eclipses. The other attraction was the City Palace/Museum, which was once a beautiful royal residence. We also made a photo stop at Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, Jaipur’s signature building and is famous for its beehive-like structure. However, the highlight of the Jaipur visit was the elephant ride up the hill to see the 18-century Amber Palace and Fort for which I have photos to prove it!
Delhi is the capital of India and actually consists of two separate cities. The old city of Delhi, which the Mughuts built and lived in; and New Delhi, built by the British and expanded since independence in 1947. We visited Red Fort, Qutub Minor, and India Gate. The Fort has Diwan-e-am and Dwan-e-Khas where the king granted audiences to the public and to important people, respectively. Qutub Minar is a tall and magnificent structure built by Muslim King Qutub-un-din Aibak in 1199 A.D. India Gate, a 42 meter high structure is a war memorial in honor of soldiers who died during the second World War.
Some memorable personages and coincidences.
There were a total of three buses hired by the Friendly Planet to transport us around and we were with the #1 bus. Since nearly all of us learned about the tour via travelzoo.com, the demographic make-up of the group is very representative of the US population. Unlike the Vantage Tours we had taken before which are mostly geared to older and more affluent populace, we had a younger and more bargain-seeking crowd on this trip. There were about 25 people in our bus and we got to know some of them better during the course of our tour.
We established a bit of kinship with an expatriated Iranian couple from Texas because we were in Iran about a year ago. He was in the Ph.D. program at Texas A & M University with a teaching assistant post in the Industrial Engineering department and nearly completed the degree requirements when the Islamic revolution (about 30 years ago) started in Iran and the American embassy occupied and hostages taken. Shortly after, he received a letter from the University informing him that his service was no longer needed. Out of desperation he started buying some used cars and refurbishing them for resale, even though he knew very little about car engines at that time. Slowly and surely he got a foothold in that college town and eventually ended up owning a big junkyard and a sizable car repair garage. Later on his wife also opened up a child-care facility and operated for a few years. Now they sold their businesses and are wealthy enough to own a house in Esfahan (a beautiful city in Iran) and commuting back and forth from Texas. The couple started traveling because their two daughters are now happily married and residing in the States. We were all anxiously trying to find out the election result in Iran on Sunday; unfortunately our hotel in Jaipur didn’t carry CNN or BBC World News. Thus we had to wait until we got back to Delhi to find out the sham result!
And then there was a young man of oriental face seating a few rows behind us. When our local guide walked past his seat in the bus he started talking to him in Hindu, quite a strange sight indeed! As a matter of fact he carried a big Hindu dictionary with him on this trip. At another occasion I saw and heard him talking to the Iranian couple in Farsi and someone told me he knew 7 or 8 languages. Later on we chanced to talked to him in private and found out that he is a 5th year medical resident at the UCLA hospital and his parents are Chinese from Hong Kong and are now living in New York. The reason he could speak Farsi is because there is a large population of Iranian Jews in California and LA in particular which he had constant contact in the hospital! When we told him we were from Nashville, he said “my god, I went to Vanderbilt Medical School!” He knew of Dr. Stanley Cohen, Katherine’s boss at the medical center and a Nobel Prize winner. What a small world and what a coincidence! So one night when we three were having dinner together in a restaurant, being the white-haired elder I felt obligated to take care of the young and bought him a dinner.
Talking about coincidences, at the farewell dinner (the only free meal provided by the Friendly Planet) in a nice restaurant in Delhi, I was sitting in front of a young black lady from Martinique (the birth place of Napoleon’s Josephine) who is currently teaching French and Spanish in a Virginia high school. I asked her where she went to school in the US and she said ‘State University of New York at Stony Brook’. Then I recalled asking the young Chinese doctor earlier why he decided to go to Vanderbilt Medical School and his reply was because it offered him a full scholarship. Thinking that he might have graduated with summa cum laude from some university, I asked him where he did his undergraduate and he replied ‘SUNY at Stony Brook’. And I also recalled that one of the ladies in the group is an engineer working for Raytheon in Massachusetts making Patriot missiles and I remembered asking her if she graduated from MIT but she replied in the negative and pronounced herself to be a graduate of SUNY at Stony Brook. So I single-handed brought those three to have a mini reunion in a restaurant in the faraway land of India and the city of Delhi, what an impossible probability of having 3 out of a group of 25 to graduate from the same school!
Street vendors and the ugly Americans.
Since we had been to places such as Brazil, Cambodia, and Egypt we were pretty much used to the aggressive street vendors selling gifts to tourists. Yet the ones in India seemed much more tenacious and would not take ‘no’ for an answer. It appeared that the persistency is directly proportional to the extent of poverty in a country. But some in our group got upset at times and yelled out loud ‘NO!’ or ‘get away!’ to their faces. The lack of compassions and rowdy behaviors reminded me of the book published years ago entitled ‘The Ugly Americans’! We were indeed terrible ambassadors for our country! If you were a skillful bargainer like me, you could get some good buys on gifts from this huge and colorful country. I believe I got some good bargains, rescuing Katherine from paying too much on some items.
So here it is, my report on our short and interesting trip to India (actually only 5 days because we lost two days on air flights!).
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