Lessons from Las Vegas
while the latter was everywhere within reach.
Just a short stroll out of The Palazzo and over the bridge in front of The Venetian to the pedestrian crossing and over to the other side of the road and one finds himself in a huge shopping mall, which contained hundreds of shops, boutiques, supermarkets, stores and jewellers, some closed and others just opening up.
But the most important find was the Food Court on the first floor of the sprawling mall, which contained various options for diners’ delight; ranging from Chinese to Italian to French to American, Mexican and English food joints. However, this reporter and his colleague chose the Chinese joint, Panda Express for two major reasons: one, it had the obvious largest patronage and secondly, the food on offer was pleasing to the eye. Imagine munching on hot fried rice and chicken teriyaki for the cost of around $8 in one of America’s most alluring cities.
One lesson was learnt in the search for decent and affordable chow: even in the midst of splendour, people always look for the best bargain, an obvious fact attested to by the volume of human traffic into the Food Court and its various food joints. To the rational mind, it is better to enjoy the exact same bottle of water at $2 per bottle at the food court rather than grab the same off the table in the hotel suite, which costs just $9 or around N1,900.
Another lesson learnt during this reporter’s five-day sojourn in Las Vegas was that there were more tourists than inhabitants in the fabled city and there were more casinos than worship centres. Casinos on the whole ground floors of both The Palazzo and The Venetian, casinos in the hotels lining the world-famous Strip; casinos in the Treasure Island and the nearby CVS mall, with cold breeze wafting out to potential customers and patrons who leisurely strolled along both sidewalks of the long Strip in the bright sunlight.
To the new traveller, it appeared a calculated attempt to divest unsuspecting patrons of their money and that appeared to be Las Vegas’ catch-phrase; come and enjoy your money in one of America’s most famous and beautiful cities.
Although the next three days were spent in intense, exhaustive sessions at the EMC global media and analysts forum which had more than 50 IT leadership sessions, more than 300 technical sessions and more than 100 exhibits in expo, this reporter still found the time to walk the Strip to do some minor shopping and to sample the culinary skills on display at the nearby Food Court.
The return journey to Lagos, which spanned over 21 hours from Las Vegas through San Francisco to Houston and then back to Nigeria, only highlighted the differences in culture, infrastructure, societal orientation and display of good governance. Nigeria has a long way to go to match the likes of the US in above-mentioned terms and nowhere was this disparity better show-cased than in Las Vegas, the city of ambient splendour.