The Ganesan’s in the Orient – 1

Life kept throwing curve balls at us. I know we weren’t alone or privileged for these interruptions however, it can be pretty draining and you can tend to forget you are still the lucky one and there are many who are worse off. “Why me?” was certainly threatening to raise it’s ugly head.

We realised that we needed a re-charge and decided that a vacation was in order. I am always ready for travel, but uprooting the other half from work can be rather challenging. But this time he obliged. Anyway after much two and fro with travel dates and travel destinations, we finally made the selection – 14 Days tour of China.

The trip was booked months ahead. So we planned to lose weight and get fit as we had a fair bit of walking and climbing involved. Great plan but the follow through and execution went into negative figures. There were many valid reasons – it was a cold winter, we had to entertain people, we could always start next month, we just love food, yep like I said we had very valid reasons for not achieving our goal.

I also promised not to buy any more shoes but then again I realised, when you break one promise, breaking another is just that much easier. I am also a person who has a very strong sense of community. I believe that everything starts with that one person. I stop buying shoes -> shoe shop loses revenue -> shop assistant loses her job and it just keeps going. So yes, I soon realised that was a very irresponsible promise and for the good of the society and its running economy I discarded the idea of not buying shoes.

I was so glad that we were not preparing to do the Kokoda Track, else we would be in serious trouble. Finally the day gets closer and as per Mr Muphy’s Law all things that should not happen were happening and all things that should happen were not happening.

We were transiting through Hongkong and things were brewing between China and HongKong in the leading week but on the day we were flying out, to be exact 2 hours prior to us leaving for the airport, we get news that demonstrators have gone into the Hong Kong international airport and many flights had been cancelled.

After numerous calls to travel agent it was clear as mud that I was just overreacting. -one wondered and advised me that it was not necessary to panic, she also explained that they will keep me updated if things get worse. I realised a 9 hour flight directly to HongKong within the next 2 hours was nothing to worry about. Even if I was going to be mid air knowing I would get updates from my travel agent really made me relax.

Armed with all this information overload we left for the airport.

• 

•