Strange Trip to Las Vegas
Journey to forget
I got a job in Phoenix when I was living in Dallas. The job was with Wipro, a contractor to Honeywell.
The job entailed maintaining and setting up IBM brand computers for Honeywell's defense manufacturing component. Wipro was an acronym that stood for West Indian produce. Wipro competed directly with IBM for Honeywell's business. I had many experiences with IBM’s brand of the UNIX operating system called AIX. I had worked for IBM for 10 years and had multiple certifications with them.
I went to Arizona and established a residence and started working. The whole time I was in Arizona I kept my house in Texas.
I rented an apartment in Phoenix and commuted to my employment in Tempe. At first, Arizona was like a wonderland. The Arizona Cardinals football team held their practices in an adjacent field to the buildings where I worked. It was common to see citrus trees decorating the front yards.
A bad experience I had shortly after traveling to Arizona was that I ran out of liquid assets or money.
At the time I only had one bank I was using for my liquid assets, which I had multiple accounts in. I had recently been unemployed and my liquid money reserves were wearing thin. When I was offered the job in Arizona I knew I needed a certain amount of money for moving expenses.
I think I made a mistake earlier in my career when I chose to pursue breath instead of depth in my employment history.
I was older now, gone were the days when companies would pay all my moving expenses.
I had moved money from one liquid asset account to another to be used for my transition to Arizona. Without my permission and secretly someone at the bank moved all the money from my account that I was planning on using to transition to Arizona with another of my bank accounts to take care of some alleged debt,
I was trying to buy gas, when, I discovered my cash had been cleared out of this particular account. This was the only account I had access to, I had left my other financial information in Dallas.
This was combined with another problem creating the perfect storm.
I needed to send a letter to my companies' headquarters with some information. Until my company got this information they were going to hold my paychecks. I diligently sent my company a letter containing the information. I was unaware the amount for postage increased.
I sent my letter with a stamp that cost me 1 penny less than the new price of the same stamp, which resulted in my letter containing information the company needed before I was to get paid to become lost in the post system bit bucket.
My paycheck was delayed for weeks. I was facing the perfect storm.
Coincidently my company scheduled me for a trip to Las Vegas during this time.
The purpose of the trip was for the new employees to be introduced to the company. As a result of the perfect storm I was facing, I had to make the trip with no money.
My company was very generous with the expenses they covered for the trip, but I was broke. I was booked in the MGM Grand hotel which is a very nice hotel.
I boarded the plane in Phoenix and then took the short plane flight to Las Vegas. The expected thing to do when you get off a business flight is to rent a car, to assist you in making it the rest of your way to your destination. I had no money and couldn’t rent a car,
I must have been a sight rolling my suitcase from the Las Vegas airport to the MGM Grand casino. Furthermore, I felt strange as I rolled by a homeless encampment. The Las Vegas dessert was very hot that day.
I rolled into the MGM grand dripping with sweat. I checked in and went to my very plush suite. My room was very high up in the skyscraper and I had a window that had a superb view of the Las Vegas strip.
There was a sharp contrast from feeling like I belonged in the homeless camp I passed to living in Luxury in one of the finer hotels in Las Vegas.
I wasn't out of the woods yet. My stay in Las Vegas was scheduled for a week and I had no money to buy food. I survived from eating at the banquet tables in the many conferences I attended that week.
When there were breaks in the conference schedule other attendees of the conference would gamble or see the town, not me, I stayed in my room. The week was soon over, and I rolled my suitcase back to the airport.
That was one of my many journeys to forget.
During the time I was writing this story my internet kept dropping out like some force didn't want me to write this story,
