The world around us

People are going in for more specialization in their careers, with the result that training programs and courses have got extremely niche as well as becoming highly technical and focused. Take cooking schools for example, where they used to be just general cooking schools at one time, now one has very much more focused learning at places like Le Cordon Bleu, College of Culinary Arts in Minneapollis/St. Paul with their website at http://www.twincitiesculinary.com, which is one of the finest institutions in the area.

I’m all for specialization in educational courses, since it is the best way to really understand a subject and learn all its intricacies. Before going in for a specialized course, it is however essential to have a good basic understanding of other topics as well, so specialized courses should only be taken up at a higher level of study when one has completed the regular courses first. It’s a strategy that will come to good use in the long term.

We’ve been using Holiday City for several of our hotel bookings lately and had a good experience. We did have a problem with one hotel we booked through this travel portal as it did not give us the room at the rate we had booked it for and refused to do so when told about it. While it’s not really against Holiday City, but since the booking was done through them, they must control and verify the kind of hotels they list so things like this don’t happen again. This was a three star hotel so unless the ratings are completely wrong, it should never happen at such a hotel either. Holiday City has been very helpful and has got in touch with me after reading of my account on my blog, but am nor sure if they will be able to do anything about the extra money we paid. I do hope they can make the hotel give us a partial refund, since that would show how much they value their customers and how much importance they place on associating only with good hotels.

Food has always been a high priority for my hubby as he has received training in hospitality management from some of the finest institutions in Switzerland and the US. He understands quality of food and expects to eat only the very best where ever he goes. I myself had no idea on the complexities of food, but for someone who has trained in the industry, these are absolute essentials. Cooking institutes are getting to be quite a popular choice these days. Take www.chic.edu for example, which has trained some of the best people in the industry including the chef of 1492 Tapas Bar.

The food business is big business and if you can get it right, the sky is the limit. Competition is absolutely fierce and only the very best manage to survive, but once you do, then it’s only going to get better. We’ve been to some of the finest restaurants where ever we have lived and place a lot of importance in world class food and over the years have had the opportunity to discover and explore the finer foods, something that we hope to continue in the future as well.

It’s getting rather hectic now on the home front as we’ve started sorting and selling things. In fact, I sold some things yesterday that I didn’t even have on my list of things to sell, mostly smaller items in the kitchen. But since all of our stuff is in really good condition and we still have lots of new stuff, people are interested in them and they are getting some really great deals. Now, I just hope that I can sell some of the larger items for a good price as well.