While I have been staffed out here in Hawaii for a few months, I have not had the opportunity to explore any of the islands - until last weekend, that is. My first experience of the Hawaiian Islands away from the hustle bustle of Honolulu proved to be a most refreshing one!

On Thursday, November 17th 2005, Vivek and I took a late evening flight off of O’ahu to Maui. We landed in Kahului (OGG) at around 8:30 PM and had some time to kill after renting the car until Chris’s (another Deloitte collegue) flight from San Diego arrived. When we asked the ladies at the Avis office about places where we could grab something to eat, we got the most enthusiatic endorsement for a Denny’s I’ve ever seen. Regardless to say, we ignored that suggestion and found a nice Thai place close to the Airport. After a quick dinner, we picked Chris up from the airport and headed to the hotel in Lahaina, which is the touristy resort area on Maui. We checked into our room and after a quick appraisal of the facilites, we were off to bed - we had a big weekend ahead of us!

The next morning, all three of us worked from the hotel to finish up our stuff for the week and then headed off back into town to explore. The first stop was the Iao Valley State Park.

Here we hiked around the paths and took a few photos while trying our best to avoid getting our camera’s wet from the intermittent rain. The park isn’t really all that big and can be “checked off” as being done in about an hour. At this point, it was late afternoon and we had to pick up Chris’s bag from the airport since it had arrived on a different flight than Chris. At this point, we grabbed some dinner had headed back to the hotel to get some rest for the long day ahead.

I like to think that over the years I have seen quite a bit of the world. As a consultant, I have continued to travel quite a bit. Yet, when I filled out the information to generate the map below I was shocked at how much more there is to see! I just love the prospect of heading out and visiting new places and understanding different cultures. Knowing that I have yet to see the majority of the world makes life so exciting!

Create your own visited countries map

One of the byproducts of the “consultant life” - by which I mean long or unpredictable hours, weekdays away from home, expense reports, buckets of unsorted mail, you get the idea - is that many of the activities that you’d otherwise get involved with tend to take extra effort to participate in. In most cases, when you return from a week on the road, you take the weekend to catch up on things that go neglected while you’re away; not just the mail that seems to be constantly piling up, but also people (family, friends, acquaintances). This seems to eliminate any time you have left for time dedicated to the community in which you live.

A couple of weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to an organization here in Chicago called Apna Ghar. The group was started 16 years ago in order to help provide shelter for battered women of South-Asian descent. Apna Ghar is in the process of creating a new sub-group focused on providing assistance to the elderly folks of South-Asian descent.

I hope that this opportunity will enable me to contribute to the community which I call home, though I’m not always present physically.

But don’t worry, I’ll tell! I got my first exposure to “Sin City” this week during my stopover there on my way to Hawaii. The only way I can truly describe the city is, “total immersion of the senses.” From the moment you approach “the strip,” you are bombarded by a torrent of stimuli from the high intensity lights that submerge the city in a perpetual state of daylight, to the cacophony of sounds emitted by the casinos and the gamblers that inhabit them. Walking through the casinos, your nose can detect the smells of the various tobacco being smoked, mixed in with the smell of the alcohol that seems to be flowing from every tap in the city. Yes, it sounds overwhelming, but keep in mind that this is the natural state of the city all year round. Add to this the fact that it was Halloween eve that I ended up staying in the city, and you can imagine how crazy things were!

On Monday, October 31^st, I took the 9:14 A.M. flight from ORD to LAS along with Janet Collins, a fellow consultant that I worked with in the Northwest. We landed in Vegas at 11 AM and headed straight to the hotel to check-in. The rest of the day was spent exploring the city with Kathie and Chris - two of our other colleagues the completed the NW team.

After doing some work back in the room, I broke my fast at 5 PM. The gang met up for dinner again at around 7:30 and we headed to the Bellagio for “The Buffet.” On the way there (via the tram and a cab), we got to see the strip at night - a totally different experience from the daytime.

The Halloween costumes were just starting to pop-up, and yet, there were already people who were quite drunk. The food at the Bellagio was absolutely amazing - a great meal after a day of fasting!

After dinner, we headed out to the fountains to see the famous music choreographed water fountain display. The display happens every 15 minutes, and lasts for about 3-5 minutes.

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After viewing the fountains and the decorated atrium at the Bellagio, we headed back to the Mandalay Bay. Since Janet had an 8am flight the next day, she headed up for the night while Kathie and Chris headed to their favorite spot for poker. It was a very lucky night for both of them as they ended the night up a few $. I went out to snap a few more pictures of the Luxor at night.

The next day was spent working in my room until checkout time. After checkout, I took one last trip down the strip before heading off to the airport for my flight to Hawaii. While it was just 24 hours that I was in Las Vegas, it was great to meet up with my colleagues some of whom I hadn’t seen for a few months (since we work in different regions). The trip was also a great “introduction” to the city that is the Disney world for grown-ups!