All Inclusive: Yay or Nay?

This is the first draft of a piece I wrote for The Investment Society's publication at the University of Toronto.

Are all inclusive deals for you? Read on...

"I can make more generals, but horses cost money. "
-Abraham Lincoln

Wallet free environment awaits
Most of us live on a budget and would love a chance to leave our wallet at home and live like a king! When it comes to travel, “all inclusive” is probably the most often used term. And free booze is the most exploited of all its features. It cannot be denied that when you are on a budget, and don’t want any unexpected expenditures to pop up- all inclusive deals turn out to be great. With travel agencies springing up left, right and center and competition till the neck, deals are getting better and better with time. Just like fine wine! When penny pinching is on your agenda, it is the suggested way to go. So, whether you’re packing your bags for Cuba or Greece, the vote here is Yay!

"Charm is a product of the unexpected."
-Jose Marti

Wait, what? Only one bagel?
I disagree with what activist Jose Marti says above. Unexpected is not always charming, at least in this one instance, it certainly wasn’t. Last year, I attended a business conference through university. All inclusive. The hotel, the food and of course, the competition were all included in the cost. It was a great conference, and I did have a fabulous time – but it was also an eye opener to the term “all inclusive”. The breakfast included in the “all inclusive” was one pick from the bakery – bagel or muffin and two picks from fruits – yogurt or an orange or an apple. It was not the breakfast any of us at the conference had expected. The hotel was great, so when instead of the restaurant we were guided towards a foyer, where we had to line up with a paper plate in hand to pick one bagel, none of us were particularly pleased. Here the vote is Nay.

"A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work."
-John Lubbock

Lock your worries and lose the key!
Isn’t it true? Worrying is exhausting and should be banned on vacations. There should be a way to escape any hassle that might come your way or simply for every whim to be taken care of. Why not be spoon fed everything? All inclusive packages to rescue! From your flight, to taxi to sightseeing to spa, everything can be fulfilled, without you having to move finger. All you have to do is sit back on the beach with your piña colada in hand and bask in the glorious sun! The vote here is Yay.

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
-John Hope Franklin

The World is a book
…so, take advantage! Most vacations where all inclusive resorts are booked are spent inside a resort. A colleague of mine has frequented Latin America and now does not have learning about the culture on the vacation agenda. This is why she tends to lean towards all inclusive packages. But when you plan to visit a new place, don’t give up on the opportunity to learn something about its culture. Travel is an effective way to learn something new, so why not explore every nook and cranny of a brand new world! Unfortunately, all inclusive packages focus only on the major tourist sites and in resort experiences. While they offer a great way to unwind, exploration is limited to the different varieties of cocktails the bartender can mix. Here, the vote is Nay.

All inclusive can be great or disappointing – it all depends!

So, as Mark Twain famously said, “Throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Bon Voyage!
Harleen A.

Rain Dance

The sky was not dismal, but generous. The wind was not a tangled beast in the woods, but an explorer. The rainbow was awaited. The quiet was gone, but who likes quiet anyway?

As my colleague and I walked in the rain to the subway station from work yesterday, and I began to tell her about my love for this weather, she turned to me in surprise to ask what it is about the rain that I liked so much.

I read somewhere that anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain. Dancing in the rain is a feeling like no other. The rain, to me, brings a fresh start. It washes away what we want to forget. It brings with it a second chance. It ruined my suede boots, but I got a chance to buy new ones ;) See, chances!

Why I love the rain? Was it the rainbow? Was it my “second chances” philosophy? Was it the playfulness of the raindrops as they trickle down my face? Or was it riddance from the heat?

Having lived in the Indian heat for over seventeen years, any change from it was welcome. The end of summer in India is marked by the monsoon- we danced in the rain, made little paper boats to float in the water, ate the customary pakoras and celebrated! Monsoon is celebration. That’s what I love about the rain – it feels like celebration to me.

"Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you?”

-  Eurythmics

Raindrops are falling on my head and I’m loving it!

Harleen A.

Heat and Hope

Hot and humid, every Torontonian's topic of the day was the heat. The absolutely unbearable heat. They say they love the summer, but really, that gets harder to believe when the temperature almost touches fifty degrees. While the day went by slowly today, on the way back home from work, a soft breeze started blowing - reminding me that tomorrow will be a better day, a friendly nudge to think beyond the present. To think beyond the heat.

If today is good, why worry about tomorrow? If today is not as great as we'd like it to be, then tomorrow will be better. Happy endings, believe in happy endings. They are not merely a way of Bollywood movies or Danielle Steel novels, but reality. Plain and simple. It's just sometimes we limit our horizons and refuse to look beyond constrained by our myopic vision.

Optimism should replace realism sometimes. On hot, muggy days. On days when you crack a rib. On days when your cell phone gets stolen. On days when you realize a your favourite milkshake has a thousand calories. Hope can be our secret friend. Our loyal friend, which gives us hope in times of distress and keeps the games of life going. It helps us see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it's that light that puts things into perspective sometimes. It helps people like me to touch base with reality after my wild imagination has taken me on a rollercoaster ride.

Glass half full, cherries on the pie and birds in the sky - the world is a beautiful place. Keep reminding yourself that.

Henry Ford said - "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." This is the power of attitude. I think tomorrow is going to be a great day. Don't you?

Back in my pink bubble,

Harleen A.

Nostalgia and True Love...

It’s been four years now…but somehow the connection I feel with Delhi has not faded one bit. On the contrary, I feel it is stronger than ever. 


They say true love is hard to forget. Well, Delhi is home, it was my cocoon – a place I know inside out. I miss it terribly, especially when I begin to tell somebody where I spent the first seventeen years of my life. Delhi to me is magnetic, to my sister – a quicksand. At least we both agree it’s pull cannot be ignored. 

This morning as I was reading one of my favorite blogs on the city today, nostalgia hit me again. 

It is a city that can never be boring, always full of spice. When I imagine Delhi, I imagine colours, a mosaic of bright colours. It’s a place where everyone has a different meaning of it, and the only thing they agree on is – “Dilli Dilwalan Ki”. Plus there is the unanimous love for tandoori chicken!

Can't wait to be back!

Harleen A.

Meet the Joneses, everything you want to be...

Remember the age old saying that all that glitters is not gold. Or maybe, what looks good from far is far from good?! Well, this movie I just finished watching just hit the bull’s eye. It’s called “The Joneses” and you’ll see Demi Moore and her fake family display an exaggerated version of this saying. It touches on various topics of materialism, consumerism, marketing and finally, human emotions entangled in the spider web. The “Joneses” is a movie about a unit of four sales reps who pose as a family to sell a lifestyle. From a marketing and sales perspective, it’s a genius idea. But is it really ethical to make people believe yourself to be someone you are not? And to fiddle with their minds and exploit them? To sell a lifestyle based on frivolity?  To make them desire something you want to sell to them? Well, that is a form of marketing alright, but don’t you think a line should be drawn at some point?

The human mind and its lack of complexity showcased in this movie will keep you entertained, here is a glimpse:

Till my next blog,

Harleen A.

The Spring Sprint

It’s that time of the year again. I can almost feel a smile form on the lips of everyone I lay my eyes on. Spring is the time that the whole of Toronto awaits eagerly and welcomes with a big bear hug! But if there is anything my lessons in finance have taught me is that there really is no free lunch. Spring comes bearing gifts, gifts of warmth, sunshine and a floral landscape. In Toronto, it also gives us respite from the stretched season of spine chilling cold. And so, dear spring gives us all a reason to put that smile back on our faces.

I can see my potted peace lily get a spine once again. Its droopy form is now gone. Maybe that’s how this season really works. It puts us back on track, the one that winter made waver one too many times.

They say what does not kill us only makes us stronger. If we survived that winter, then that beloved spring of ours will replenish us for the next winter. And we will go into it armed with greater strength. It is our optimism that allows us to conclude such. What would we really be without it by our side? It is something we can hold on to on the rollercoaster of our life. Life is really a rollercoaster, is it not? One day what we are on the top, the other we are nowhere to be seen. One day we are ecstatic and everything seems to be making sense. And somehow the morning is incapable of retaining that feeling, which somehow gets lost in the noise we can’t help but be surrounded by.

Let us promise we will make the feeling of this spring, the spring of 2011 stay with us forever. Let us promise we will never let the smile it puts on our faces fade away. Let us promise we will face every challenge that life will throw at us with a bucket full of optimism.

And no, promises are not meant to be broken!

Harleen A.

Let's play the blame game

Something is skyrocketing, and it’s not something made by NASA. Just the word “oil” is making everybody flinch. The price has shot up like a rocket on fire, putting us in the same boat as the summer of 2008, right before the economy dove into a recession. Flinch, flinch and flinch some more.

But who is to blame! Ah, that is a tricky question. It’s you! No it’s you! No it’s not me, it’s you!! Everyone has a different viewpoint on this. The most popular doing the rounds these days is the unrest in Libya. Really? I personally don’t think this argument carries much weight considering the Libya is a relatively small oil producer and pumps only about two-thirds of Canada’s output. So this is a short term explanation at best.

So who is responsible for this? The world is becoming thirstier by the day and the resource is limited. There is the recovering West on one side and the rapid development in China and India on the other. The thirst for oil is at its peak. So is it that even the slightest of shortage leads of magnified effect? It is being said that the high watermark of $147 a barrel will be revisited again. Cringe, cringe, and cringe some more.

Is it the big oil companies? From what I read, Saudi Arabia has an estimated 4 million barrels per day of spare capacity and since they are the biggest oil producers in the region, they could be crucial in bringing down the oil price. The problem here is that the quality of the Libyan oil is superior and the Western refineries on be able to handle the spare oil that is of a lower quality. Umm, I believe what the correct terms are “sweet” oil (Libya) and “sour” oil (Saudi Arabia’s spare). So it’s a quality versus quantity war, is it?

So what is being said is that there is oil, but since it’s not the right kind, the refineries won’t be able to deal with it- hence rising oil prices. Refineries do not have the ability to refine sour crude and hence cannot switch from Libyan sweet crude to Saudi sour crude. Hmm.

Middle East is engulfed with social and political unrest when the higher prices of oil should result in a lot of dough. Now why is that?

This problem is far more complex than I or I think anybody imagined it to be, for it’s not only our daily budget for gas that has increased. The problem goes deeper. It is our fragile economy that is in real jeopardy here, and by the looks of it, we might be heading into a zone of inflation and interest rate increases. At least that’s what I can say from what I learnt in the past four years in my economics classes.  

Till my next blog,

Harleen A.

Star Wars and cute?

Every year while my father waits for Super bowl, I wait for its commercials! This one below is my favourite this year- I have watched it umpteen times and still can’t get enough! Even behind that mask, the kid is brilliant. The Darth Vader act tugged on my heartstrings...I wanted to go there and help the poor little kid out!

It's sad to see when his face drops when his Force does on work on the washing machine and the dog...

And then it finally does (with a little help from his dad), we have a hero in Volkswagen!

What makes this commercial a success for me is that it has a Star Wars character, which I'm sure would appeal largely to the audience of the Superbowl. Also, it's absolutely adorable and not too long!! 

It definitely gets my "awww" vote!

Till my next blog,

Harleen A.