Season’s Greetings and have a happy and prosperous New Year.

This is the last posting for the year 2010. I do hope you enjoyed the variety and will continue to visit the site.

Reducing the Clutter

When Ravi protested at all the work involved in ‘reducing the clutter’ as he called it Monica had an unanswerable point; they were at an age when ‘getting rid of the junk’ as she called it assumes the top priority. They did not know when they would be forced by the circumstances of poor health, or worse, to move in a hurry to a smaller home. “In the worst case scenario, it will not be fair for the girls to be cleaning up the mess when we are not leaving much of an inheritance,” she said to clinch the argument. She added, “It behooves us to get rid of the stuff we have stored through the ages thinking that we or the children might need it some day. Children had taken what they could use; grandchildren are too young to need any thing for several years.” Ravi thought about it but eventually agreed. They decided that the appliances, nice clothes, tools, jewellery, ornaments, electronic equipment, paintings and photographs, excess furniture, whatever it is, if it is of no use to them it has to go. How to do it though? They did not even think of the garage sale, it was too much work in one go for a couple of their age. To get the ball rolling, they put smaller of these things on the lawn when the weather was good with a sign “TAKE IT IF YOU CAN USE IT” and they often disappeared in a day or two. However, the good weather is rare in their part of the world and disposing large items is a problem any time of the year.

They had a twenty year old full-size refrigerator which worked well and did not show its age. There was a large desk, a credenza and a couple of book shelves all in excellent shape. Numerous phone calls to charities were either not returned or received a negative response. Ads on trading websites were also negative. In the end Ravi piled up in the garage these and several other articles Monica thought no one will need and some that were beyond repair. He called a big burly guy with a dump truck to haul them all to the city refuse station for a modest fee of a few hundred dollars. This did make a dent in their possessions albeit only a small one, much smaller than the dent in the wall refrigerator made while being moved. The cupboards were not even remotely bare, cars could still not be parked in the garage and it was as difficult to locate an item in the two storage rooms as it had always been. They realized that one big job was out of the way, but one out of hundreds! It was time for stage 2.

Monica stacked on the living room floor numerous items they were fond of and thought it would be nice if some one could use them – grandchildren’s bikes, some nice furniture for example. Ravi put detailed ads with good photographs on two trading websites with mixed results. In the process, he learnt a lot about selling on these sites. Lesson 1, you must have a good picture, no pic no reply. Even when there is a good picture and a detailed description in the ad, the deal typically progresses as follows: You receive an email response, “It is great. I want it. Call me at xxxxxxxxxxx and I will collect it.” You call, no response, leave a message. Later in the day the phone rings. Long conversation about the item, detailed questions with appropriate replies and with, “Oh my table is six feet, will it work?” You reply, “No sir, it will not. Table has to be five feet long as it says in the ad” and go back to what you were doing before the interruption.

Lesson 2, agreement on price followed by the detailed instructions on how to get to your place does not mean that the item is sold. You wait for nothing most of the time. Even when you have priced the items as giveaways, do not expect normal courtesies like punctuality or a message to inform you of change in plans. Lesson 3, do not expect to sell at a reasonable price on these sites. Buyers are looking for a steal and there are many owners who are happy to give away the items simply to get rid of them. However, do not advertise them for free, it raises suspicion and no one will take them. There is some probability of disposing the item at a low price, none at all at a reasonable price or for free. Finally, only justification for the trouble of placing the ad, watching for replies, negotiating the final price and helping with loading is in consolation that your beloved objects will get used. You also save the trouble and cost of sending them to the dump.

The process of lightening up on possessions is not all frustration. There are occasional compensations. For instance, Monica identified the pieces of equipment that needed minor repairs and got them fixed. Among these items were four baby violins they had acquired thirty or so years ago when the girls were little and the doting parents had the visions of the girls being present day versions of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. It was not to be and the girls found other fields to distinguish in. The violins sat in the cupboard along with other musical paraphernalia like old scores and music stands till discovered last spring. Monica looked at them fondly, vacuumed off the layers of dust and suggested donating them to some worthy institution. A phone call to the Conservatory was enough to get Ravi moving. He found out that repairs and tuning had to be done before they would be accepted as donation but the donation in kind receipt would probably save enough in taxes to cover this cost. It took six months for Mr. Hill, the luthier, to get round to finishing his job but he did it last week and they will be able to claim the tax deduction this year.

There does not seem to be a satisfactory way to dispose off the usable goods no longer needed in our prosperous society. Recycling at Electronic Recycling Depot is probably better than the dump but does not appear right for a fully operational microwave oven or a tuner. Is the Used Items Bank an idea whose time has come?

Use and Misuse of Internet

The transmission of data with the speed of light in digital form on cables and through the air has changed the way we live. We do not send long letters describing our emotions in flowery language, we titter. We do not send our family pictures to friends we put them on the Facebook for every one to admire our cute children and grandchildren. We do not read books or newspapers to expand our knowledge base we google for what we should know but do not. Every thing we wanted to know even the things no one cares about, is on the internet. The event is available to our screens the instant it occurred and anyone in the world can know about it with a few clicks on the mouse. Whatever the information distribution is, it is not a cat and mouse game that it once was when print media barons competed to attract attention and pennies of prospective readers.

I am glad that I can see the latest scientific research, life-saving advances in medicine, deeds and misdeeds of our leaders, great works of art and literature and learn why the knowledgeable experts think these works are worth our study. Internet provides a great service in this respect. But this is not all it provides.

Internet also provides forum for the opinions of any one who cares to express them on any number of ‘sites’ provided by various agencies whose interests are not always above board. There is no need to have any knowledge, leave alone careful research and analysis, before raw thoughts are sent out for others to regurgitate. These unbaked opinions of often ignorant individuals carry the same weight in an internet search as those of scholars who have devoted their lives studying the subject. The ‘reader’ has no way to judge which opinion has merit and which is worthless. He is free to choose what suits his prejudices and then pontificate on it. Moreover, gullible viewers are sometimes persuaded by silly opinions expressed with authority and they either suffer serious harm or waste time and resources of the professional helping them.

If I write an essay on Mahler’s Second Symphony and put it on my blog not much harm can come out of it even if the contents are a baseless rant. If I put my opinion on a politician on the blog, it is acceptable so long as it criticizes his political deeds and does not intrude in his private affairs. But when I express my opinion on a professional engineer, financial consultant, medical practitioner or a lawyer, particularly when my comments include evaluation of the person’s knowledge and competence, my qualifications are crucial in judging the merits of this evaluation. A layman can say that a physician’s office is crowded or his staff rude, but pronouncements on the lack of knowledge or diagnostic skills must be out of bounds. Each profession has a governing body that regulates its members and if there is any reason to doubt someone’s competence, it should be contacted. Calling a professional incompetent or ignorant on a ‘rateprofessional’ website may be good for the ego but it is a disservice not only to the professional but also to the individuals who are dissuaded to benefit from his/her expertise. What makes such websites even more repugnant is how easy it is to misuse them. A disgruntled employee with a vendetta can orchestrate a series of bogus entries on the website to send his victim’s rating to the bottom and cause serious dent in the reputation of an innocent professional who has no recourse and no way to undo the damage. The attitude of the website operators is even more infuriating. They believe that humiliating hardworking people in public service careers is a noble mission and derive vicarious pleasure in inflicting it.

For internet to be a blessing some restrictions are necessary. First, just as the print media has editors and fact-checkers who reject trivial material and maintain reasonable level of quality in what is published, internet must install filters to stop false statements from reaching our screens. Second, media is constrained by legal considerations and the operators of websites need to be subjected to libel laws. Third, the name and qualifications of the blogger, or lack thereof, must be prominently displayed with the material they have produced. A simple action like a general ban on anonymous contributions will improve the utility of internet material considerably.

Let us hope the WikiLeaks fiasco will introduce some restraints on internet sites either voluntary or imposed by the authorities. Current ‘democratic’ system has gone berserk. The situation is not a desirable from any perspective and should not be allowed to continue.

Neither Fat nor Slim Brownie

That short, fat, bald, brownie. Yes, my best client was referring to me when he thought I was out of the range of his booming voice. I never found out whether it was said to show contempt for my origins or with some fondness. Not that it really mattered. It was accurate even if a sensitive person may have found it offensive. I later used it to describe myself in a letter to the local newspaper and the editor used it with glee.

Strange though it may sound to you I was not always short, nor fat nor bald though I have been a brownie since I opened my left eye as a newborn. I was never tall but of a little more than average height when growing up in India. I became short the day I landed in the West. I started fattening when meat became a vital part of my diet soon after acquiring the short stature. My curly black hair started falling off the day I fell in love. When I immigrated to Canada a few years later, short, fat, bald brownie is what I was. If I wanted to be something else, I should have gone back to India with my tall, slender, blonde, white wife who would have stood out there like a sore thumb.

I did not mind the moniker but had to get rid of it on my doctor’s rather firm advice. During my last check up she pointed out, a little harshly I thought and it did hurt my feelings, that I had become shorter by four centimeters and heavier by five kilograms. Dr. Shepherd, who is always greatly concerned with the well-being of her flock, instructed me with all the gravity at her command to lose several kilograms in weight unless I could find a way of recouping the lost centimeters and some. Since the later was not possible, and I would be at the shepherd’s door again before long, losing weight assumed a high priority. There was another reason for urgent action. Shorter, fatter, totally bald and very dark brownie doesn’t roll off the tongue all that well and something had to be done to restore order in my life.

No lunches at our favourite Indian restaurant – only way to avoid the temptations of ten kinds of delicious curries soaking in fat. No desserts after dinner – may be a mango or an apple but not as a pie and certainly not a la mode. Snacks must be low sugar, no salt. Tea down to two measly cups a day. No more creamy homogenized milk in my breakfast of granola, it had to be skimmed. No butter on toast. A tall glass of water at regular intervals followed by frequent visits to the washroom became a routine. The life was dull, hardly worth living for a food junkie like me but it had to be lived. Thankfully, the sacrifices bore fruit. Soon the waist line began to shrink. After a year, I was still short, hair hadn’t grown on the head although it did grow where it shouldn’t and shade of my skin had stayed the same, may have become a little darker even. But I was not fat although no one would call me slim.

My client was not happy. I was no longer ‘that short, fat, bald brownie’. He couldn’t call me ‘short and bald brownie’, it doesn’t feel good; ‘short, no longer fat, bald, brownie’ sounds contrived. One afternoon it occurred to me that his unhappiness may have nothing to do with my appearance. It may have been because I no longer had enough weight to throw around in the meetings and therefore failed to win support for my proposals. My words no longer carried weight.

I do not know if my tall, elegant client spent much time in thinking of some other name to use behind my back He did come up with one. Only the other day I heard him say, “that short, bald, good for nothing brownie.” English being my second language I have trouble with hints. But this one is clear as a bell and even I can’t miss it. I realize that my days in this outfit are numbered and I need a new client. Do you know of any company looking for a consultant who happens to be a short, neither fat nor slim, bald, brownie?

Collapsing Economies and Commodity Cycles

Commodity prices have a huge role in causing economic collapse and recovery, much more than outside help and government actions. When commodity prices are low, weaker of the developing countries are in trouble but they recover when prices of what they grow and produce pick up. This happened in Brazil and Indonesia. On the other hand, at this stage of cycle industrial activity is profitable and the economies in developed countries prosper, consumer spending is high and bubbles form in some of these places. When the commodity prices improve, pendulum swings the other way and some of these bubbles burst. The best solution is to wait for prices pendulum to swing back, as it always does, and in the meantime take just enough action to tide over. Ireland, Spain and Portugal will be OK if they can manage to survive current price cycle for oil, steel, copper etc. What saved UK in late seventies was oil discovery not anything Maggie did. Britain's current problems are at least partly due to declining North Sea production. Ireland's problems arose from property market collapse because bubbles collapse if they are not continuously pumped. The pumping stopped because sustained high commodity prices drained overseas investment funds out of the real estate in Ireland into mining and oil sectors in Canada, Australia and Africa. The commodity prices will turn down sooner rather than later, then smart money will move out of resources into real estate and manufacturing in the desperate European countries of today and they will be laughing till the pendulum swings again.

If we want to eliminate the boom and burst cycles we have to remove commodity price cycles. I have no idea on how to achieve this except that they would be dampened if hedge funds were somehow controlled.

We Need WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is getting a lot of press for publishing secret documents that confirm what most people suspected, if not believed, all along. Afghan government is corrupt: which government is not; it is a matter of degree. NATO soldiers have killed civilians: when was the last war in which civilians were not killed; before the Stone Age. Politicians and diplomats have been saying one thing while doing something else: since when have they told correctly what they had done; not since the forbidden apple episode.

So what is all this fuss about? I suggest that it is because the people caught lying are still in positions of power and the exposed lies are not something in the past long gone but relate to the current events. To put it starkly, the voters have short memories and bring themselves to think that their leaders are not out and out liars. Not only the leaked papers are raising issues which our leaders would rather not face, they are also reawakening the voters’ suspicions and the reelection of esteemed leaders is being put in danger.

Politicians are self-centred and focused solely on gaining and retaining power. They have reacted to published confidential archives as one would have expected. What saddens me is the position taken by some in the responsible media that lying on this scale is justified either to protect the sources of information which are vital for our welfare or for strategic reasons. Indeed, there are cases where ignoring the truth may be tolerated, but who does it help when the shaky leadership of an obviously non-functioning state – Pakistan in this case – is defended, indeed bribed by billions of borrowed dollars, to achieve ends which conflict with the professed goals of the leaders of the army and the doddering political apparatus of that country, none of which speaks for the population? Who is helped by misrepresentation of how the war is going in Afghanistan? Who is helped by confusing representations of Iran situation when much more belligerent and unruly states like North Korea and afore-mentioned Pakistan, not to mention Israel, already have the dreaded nuclear weapons? Who is helped by one-sided discussions of Palestine problem? Not an average citizen, neither in developed West nor in the developing Rest. Only people who are helped by these deceptions are the lying and cheating leaders who get elected by promising what they know they can’t deliver.

It should not surprise any one that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are being hounded by the agencies of the U.S. government and the pressure will be put on businesses to dissociate from them. But why would the media join in this persecution? Exposing the lies, wherever they originate, is what the free press is about. I would have thought that the journalists would be generally supportive of all efforts to bring out the truth rather than condemning it with unprecedented unison. Are we so afraid of the truth, or is the truth so unpleasant, that the populace has to be protected from being exposed to it lest they all have heart attacks and die? Since no one has suffered such fate from what we have seen so far, I tend to think that the storm is of little consequence. Before long it will all be forgotten and the lies and cover up will continue unabated unless some brave souls are willing to take great risk and protect us from the misdeeds of leaders by bringing their behind the scenes machinations in the open. If the media will not do it we need the likes of Julian Assange and his cohorts at WikiLeaks. All power to them.

A Moroccan Holiday

Evelyn and I spent eighteen day in November on a short vacation, a mix of visiting old and dear friends, business for Evelyn and cultural pilgrimage to Bilbao in Spain and, to cap it all, Fes in Morocco. Our first stop was London. We spent two days in North London with our friend from Libyan days. Sharron and Chris are wonderful people we like sharing life experiences with. The memorable event of our time with them was attending a performance of Tennessee Williams’ Glass menagerie, an excellent play superbly presented. We visited Hempstead Heath, the famous park which has been a favourite of British writers for centuries. The Kenwood House Art Gallery is located in the park and houses a superb collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century art. Then we moved to Gravesend just south of London to stay for two more days with Evelyn’s childhood friend Anne and her husband Phillip, both academics of great distinction. They are the type of people with whom you leave the personal problems behind and argue about the serious issues facing the world. In between the heated debates we visited Darwin’s home and the garden which gives a good idea of the life of this great scientist who used the luxury of leisure permitted by inherited wealth to work on theories which changed the way we think. We also looked around the home of Charles Dickens which is now a private school and watched the Memorial Day parade from the upper floor window of their home.

Next step was Bilbao in Northern Spain where Evelyn was giving a seminar on Human Lactation. Bilbao was relatively uneventful partly because it rained most of the time on all five days we were there. Old town of Bilbao is much like the medieval towns elsewhere in Europe, narrow streets with four to six storey buildings on both sides – shops at the street level and apartments on upper floors. There were not many customers in the day time and only establishments doing brisk business were lottery ticket stalls. It was a different story in the evening though. Streets were crowded with people although shops did not seem to be overly busy. The church of Saint Santiago was impressive from outside as well as inside with beautiful stained glass windows and intricate woodwork. The structure of Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry, is shaped like ships in a harbour to celebrate the naval traditions of the town. There were several outdoor sculptures including one by Anish Kapoor, renowned Indo-British sculptor. The modern art is not something I have learnt to appreciate and the exhibits in the museum left me confused. The imported exhibit of Dutch masters from Stadler museum in Frankfurt was more interesting to both of us.

Journey from Bilbao to Fes was unnecessarily long and stressful. First we travelled two hundred miles south west on a high speed train to connect with a sleeper, then north east to Paris retracing a quarter of our journey. We made our way from train station to Orly South Airport, to board a plain to Fes four hours after our arrival. For almost half of it flight the plain flew over the region we had covered on train. We landed in Fes exactly twenty four hours after the train left Bilbao Station. Perhaps our travel agent will have an easy explanation for this inconvenience and wasted time.

Half an hour of taxi ride in a Mercedes Diesel much older and smellier than the one I used to own, took us to a point from which we could walk to the hotel located well inside the Medina – old town. We followed a young man who pushed our luggage in a small cart through narrow lanes to the hotel which is built around two splendid courtyards. It is an architectural gem with comfortable rooms and excellent service. Our room was on the roof. It had attractive Moroccan décor and a large comfortable bed with a temperamental shower and shaky blinds. I woke up on our first morning to see a beautiful sunrise and have a bird’s eye view of Medina – the old town. This is the oldest preserved medina in the world – a UNESCO World Heritage site, going back to ninth century. 93,000 people live and work here in cramped buildings on each side of approximately 12,000 narrow lanes. Donkey and humans transport all goods and vehicles, even bicycles and scooters are rare. Most activity is a variety of crafts and of course manning the shops, female shopkeepers are rare. We spent four hours in the medina and I was reminded of a friend’s comment about CanLit. There were more shopkeepers even though only half of the shops were open than the customers just as there are more writers than readers on Canadian literary scene. It was here in a “Widow carpet makers’ Cooperative” that we were the victims of a vicious sales performance by a Moroccan carpet seller who would have put much admired carpetbaggers of New York to shame. Two lessons from this experience I would share with you. First, do not accept tea from a shopkeeper unless you have time and patience for a long sales spiel and the skill to counter it. Second, your guide, all appearances to the contrary, is working for the stores, not for you although you are paying him good money. During this walk we enjoyed a visit to tannery where they were preparing skins and separating the wool from leather. There were scores of huge vats for colouring the wool but were not in use. Again, there was pressure to buy handbags, jackets, belts etc in all colours and sizes. This time we were successful in resisting the temptation. We visited a spice shop with an enormous variety on display and a herbologist doing an excellent sales job. Evelyn had an interesting discussion with him on what he prescribed for various diseases and acquired a large sampling of his wares which will provide many excellent dinners for us and our guests.

One of Evelyn`s patients had suggested a call to her aunt in Mecnes, 40 minutes by train from Fes. She invited us to visit them and we spent a pleasant few hours there. Abdul, the man of the house, picked us up from the station and after a ceremonial drink of mint tea we headed for medina. It was smaller, but lanes were less narrow and busier than in Fes. The entry to medina is through a huge square with stores on one side, hammam – the public bath – on the other. Most evenings musicians and dancers perform in the plaza. The city of Mecnes is surrounded by a wall built by the founder Moulay Idriss in twelfth century. After a sumptuous lunch of lamb tagine and beef on skewers we headed for the train. On the station we met our first of may be four niqabs (scarf covering the face except a narrow slit for the eyes) we saw during our stay in Morocco. The women in Morocco seem to be far more advanced than in other Arab countries. They are out and about everywhere in jeans and hijab (Scarf covering the hair) is worn by less than half of the women. Two daughters of our hosts have high professional ambitions – one wants to be a physician and the other a teacher.

On the way back the petit taxi not only charged three times the going rate but also dropped us at the wrong point for our hotel. After some panic we found an English speaking young man who guided us to the hotel by a long half an hour track and persuaded us to go later to his uncle’s restaurant for dinner. He picked us up a couple of hours later. The meal was indeed pleasant although we could not do justice to it after the big lunch in Mecnes. After dinner we walked up sixty three ninth century steps to the roof for an unparalleled view of the medina. The young man earned his fifty dirhan, six dollars, tip by his guidance to the hotel and explaining various sites from the roof. We did find the next morning that he could have led us back to the hotel in less than five minutes but for a much smaller tip and not enough time to do the sales job for his uncle.

We had a pleasant day trip by car to nearby towns with a very talkative driver who turned out to be a reasonable guide. We went to Sefrou which is the oldest town in Morocco but has been mostly rebuilt. Drive to one of the two water falls in Morocco was more interesting than the fall itself which can’t be called majestic by any stretch of imagination. A visit to a cave home 143 steps up in Bihlal was interesting more due to the cave owner guide who spoke fair English and told jokes mostly in praise of himself. There are sixty cave homes in the area but his is the only one tourists are allowed to visit. The tips have made him a wealthy man and he is not shy to admit it. We also visited Ifrane, a small town built by French in 1929, often called the Switzerland of Morocco, Azrou cedar forest with monkeys and some other villages of minor interest.

On our way out of the old part of Fes we passed through ‘New Fes” with its broad avenues and the beautiful office buildings and luxury apartment blocks. There is enormous amount of commercial construction with money from oil rich states and new schools and colleges, highways and public housing projects are being financed by the government. Although people we came in contact with are not a reliable source, we felt there was growing optimism among the population. New Fes has broad tree lined avenues with multilane one way streets with heavy car and truck traffic to make up for narrow lanes and loaded donkeys of Medina. Another impressive sight was of confident, often proud, women with or without hijab usually in tight jeans, walking everywhere although rarely driving a vehicle. A few women policemen were on duty, something you do not expect in an Islamic country.

The next day we visited the Jewish area of old town called Mella. There were 65,000 Jews in Fes in 1967. Most of them left for greener pastures after the June war that year and current Jewish population is down to 534, only 200 of them women. The guide was lamenting that the Jewish young men go abroad to find wives and it is no easier for his two daughters to find husbands. The quarter is run down. It may have been burnt down during the protests in Arab – Israel wars. Most of the current residents are Muslims and reconstruction of Jewish sites depends upon help from American, and possibly European, Jews. He showed us the cemetery, Rabbi’s old collapsed house with just one exterior wall still standing, Jewish hammam but not the synagogue. Rest of the morning was a disappointment – Only Muslims are allowed to enter a Moroccan mosque; much to our surprise because we have visited much grander mosques all over Africa and Asia. Much of Fes seems to be open for view only from outside, Royal Palace, its grounds, major parks and historic mausoleums are all closed to visitors. In view of great emphasis on promoting tourism these restrictions are strange.

On our last day we visited the museum which was within a stone’s throw of our hotel yet quite hard to find. The items on display included many interesting antique doors, textiles, armours, pottery and old Qurans with splendid calligraphy. The courtyard of the museum building, a nineteenth century palace converted into museum, is a splendid garden with a variety of birds which were heard but not seen and a myrtle tree which I do not remember ever seeing before. There were several orange trees loaded with juicy fruit which nobody seemed to want. After the museum we had lunch in a genuine Fes restaurant in the Medina which served better food than our hotel at one quarter of the price. We had a long walk in the Medina to find famous mosques. We found two; they did not look any different from outside either from each other or from other mosques in Fes. The walk back to the hotel was a steep uphill and we were quite proud of ourselves to have done it with only a little huffing.

Of all the great Islamic cities we have visited, I found Fes to be the least attractive from a tourist’s perspective. The situation is made worse by poor maps, hardly any directions, hard to find and often dishonest cabs and almost total ignorance of English among general population. Then there is the smell – that of putrid waste in the Medina and diesel fumes from antique cars everywhere. Environmentalists should be complaining about pollution in this holy city rather than wasting their breath in the West.

We flew to Paris in the evening. Our flight got there around ten. We had a long wait for the shuttle and it took an hour and a half to get to the Holiday Inn. Evelyn ordered hot milk in the café and she was served a small cup of sour cold milk. She complained and was served a small hot glass of sour milk. I do not remember ever having been served milk in a restaurant that had gone off. But then French do have their own way of doing things. We had a lot of hassle the next morning to get to Charles De Gaulle airport from Orly airport because the bus got caught in a traffic jam. Fortunately we had anticipated problems and had allowed plenty of time and made the flight to London easily. However, we had to make a mad dash in London through miles of corridor and inevitable security check to reach the gate for the final lag of the journey in the nick of time. Our luck turned at last. The plane had several empty seats and Evelyn slept through the flight stretched over three seats wrapped in two blankets while I slept a little, read a little and did nothing mostly, the only thing I am good at.

We were happy to be home, even happier when we learnt that we had missed the cold spell of -30 degrees by a day.