A real vacation! Take I - The memories, past and present

To quote a not so spectacularly intelligent movie I saw again recently, "a vacation is when you vacate your life" (umm, heh, okay :P).So now that I'm on my way back, I suppose I should get to it. Oh but where do I start?! I guess I might skip the rather unsavoury circumstances of that last departure from Angola. (I hope the last for a long time, preferably stretching close to forever!) I was asked to make my way to New York City, to the Grand Central Station, and having asked about, I was told this: "Whatever else you might think of it, this much will be obvious, it's very grand, and very central." I must say, I had to agree :).

This, by my standards, was a very unusual holiday. Let me explain. I'm used to planned holidays ending up being rather hectic. And there's not a lot by way of idle relaxation time on most of my trips home either. But this trip, I'd decided to let the sight-seeing and tourism take the back seat entirely. Well, almost :). And for the rest, it was just spending time with people I have ended up spending altogether too little time with over the last few years. And on occasion, indulging in the unheard of, the super-elusive, the doing of absolutely nothing! :)
And in the midst of all that, there was all the catching up to be caught up with! You know, all the stuff that somehow never finds its way into emails, or instant messages, or even phone calls. Of course seeing how much use I actually make of phones in my life these days, that last one shouldn't come as a surprise in the slightest :-<. I remember the last time I'd done something like this, my vacation in Bombay back in winter '07-'08. Now that had been a really good one. But at the end of it, I'd made a lot of resolutions, of keeping better in touch, of disappearing less often :), of keeping up with the news in others' lives, and others in that vein. I guess you can imagine how all that went... But at least some of the promises I ended up coming good on :). It's interesting how it has been. How in a lot of ways I have managed to keep up with my friends' lives in part, and how in other ways their images in my mind had stayed frozen at two or four years back! :) Which of course saddened me no end since it's obvious that no matter how well you 'keep in touch', you really can't. I should meet up with people more often. :) It was totally awesome though :). There's something about meeting up with old friends that nothing else can beat. I suppose at least part of it is the way one is transported into what at least seems to be a better time :). And part of it would be the realisation that the future can't gobble up all of the present or the past... Right, so I started this in my stopover in Dubai and there's a lot more I've got to say. But other things are snapping at my heels right now, so all that, and all the pics, will have to wait for a more opportune moment :).

Currently: jet-lagged :)
Listening to: Stereophonics - It means nothing