Wow! What a week that was. As you
can see that I started off writing a daily blog but after the 3rd
day, i.e. Monday 30th April, it was just not possible to keep pace
with the week that sped full throttle. Before we realized and blinked the week
was over. Our bodies were working 2 and half times faster than our brains. No
kiddin!!!
Well, so now
that I have some breather I’ll tell you what happened while we blinked? On Tuesday,
1st May, May Day, Labor Day, Maharashtra day, Gujarat day, we
visited the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Remember seeing those guys shouting
out loud with some funny sign language in the movies trading something…yea
that’s exactly what we saw. Brokers and agents trading in Commodities like
Corn, Soya, Wheat, etc. etc. Although we could not take pictures in there, we
got a great guided tour of the place and got a lot of insight into the world of
commodities trading…doesn’t mean I’m in ‘em again.
The next destination was the most
coveted Rotary place on earth, Rotary International World Headquarters. From
shaking a hand with Paul Harris’s statue, to touching his furniture, glancing
through the huge list of major donors, proudly holding India’s flag and a visit
to the office of Rotary International President, Kalyan Banerjee, we did it
all. It sure was an honor and I can’t thank Rotary enough for this respect.
After that overwhelming feeling,
we drove past the beautiful Bahai Temple, a few ethnic neighbourhoods and a
quick stop to click pictures with Michael Jordan…I mean with his statue ;-), we
retired for the day. Dinner was at a lovely Mexican restaurant with Bob’s
daughter Jenny and her 6 month old Austin…He’s shooo cute!
2nd
May, Wednesday was the day of our 1st presentation. So we did little
rehearsal at Marie’s house before we left for the Oak Park River Forest Rotary
Club Meeting. It went off pretty well. Better than expected with the amazing
response we got from the club members, who said this was the best GSE
presentation they had seen so far. That was a sigh of relief!
Heard about Frank Lloyd Wright? I
had not either, before some architects told me how lucky I was to visit his
home, studio and some of the houses designed by him. Boy, was I in for a walk
of a lifetime? I saw some of the most beeeeaaauutiful homes I could not even
imagine existed. Architecture, so pretty, so thoughtful, so advanced for its
time and made even more passionately. If ever you plan to visit Chicago, you
simply can not not not miss this one. Take my word for it.
Following this awe striking tour,
we were in for another pretty tour of Oak Park Library. A library that is
hardly just a library. It’s a knowledge treasure, an art gallery, a technology
park, kid’s paradise and everything you think a library cannot be. The
automatic book collection system and the sorting system were so cool. They even
had a little garden on the top of their terrace. It is an amalgamation of art,
science, technology, history, architecture…can you imagine what that would look
like? No? You have to see it with your eyes to know what I’m talking about.
Day ended with Chicago’s most
amazing pizza’s at Giordano’s. Just what we needed at the end of a hard day’s
job.