I have always lived with or been in the same city as my parents. Hence after moving out (read: after marriage), there were hardly any opportunities for either of us to stay over. Drop-ins and occasions were always there but it was a first time experience to have my folks staying over for long period of time and I was quite looking forward to it (I will ignore the one time they stayed at our place in Bangalore when I was recuperating from a surgery – it cannot be counted).
I was also a little anxious on how it would go. Firstly, I work from home these days. I would be busy with my work (teleconferences, emails, office internal messaging and MS Office – I’ve worked just using these 4 tools ever since I started working from home. It is amazing that I have had no issues in delivering what is expected of me ). But it meant no distraction or noise while I was working.
Secondly, I wasn’t sure how I would entertain them on a daily basis. They were staying for 6 weeks (Apr-May 2010). They have always been such social bees. I hardly knew anyone in this city we moved into just over 7 months ago when they arrived. Who would they call upon? What would they do everyday? Will I be able to work with them around? So many questions kept popping in mind.
Luckily for us Sharan works 10/4 so all weekends could be considered as long weekends. Hence we made an itinerary for 6 weeks with heavy-duty long weekends so that it took them most of the weekdays to recover from it :)
My folks took around a week to fall into routine. As expected, Mom took full charge of the kitchen. She was churning out different dishes three times a day - a gastronomical bliss for the rest. We managed to get Dad our friend’s spare laptop. He would get up late in the morning and then get on to his usual ‘computer’ing business. The only instruction given to both of them was that there should be absolutely no noise during my telecons – that means no using blender, pressure cooker, telephones or shower (they are really noisy in our guest bathroom), no talking loudly, so on and so forth. A difficult proposition but they followed it diligently :)
After my office hours, we would usually watch the telly for a bit, snooze for a while (yea I got into the habit, thx to them!) and then go for a walk by the river (weather permitting of course). Once Sharan got home, we would go out if there was a need (grocery, sight seeing, etc). But most days we would just stay at home watching a movie or a documentary or play Settlers of Catan – a board game we have got addicted to (also check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_of_Catan).
We took them around sight seeing in and around Calgary from Friday through to Sunday. By the end of 6 weeks, they would’ve probably seen more Alberta than an average Albertan . The net result was that my folks had hectic time (and I thought they would be bored), they got to see some really unique places and we still were left with some places of visit which they could go to - Jasper and Waterton National Parks were pretty much closed as it was still Spring and not completely opened after Winter Closure.
Some of the places visited with folks have been covered in this post - Short Trips Around Calgary
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