Las Vegas - As It Happens

• Remember it's a big city, it's a big hotel. It's a big...I've no idea why but everything looks closer than it is so don't set out to walk from your hotel, oh just up the road, to your dinner appointment in 20 minutes. You'll almost surely have to call the restaurant to tell them to hold your booking.
• Which brings me to: Have a phone, for goodness sake. With the battery charged. The people around me know I am really speaking to myself. Before you leave your hotel key in the number of the restaurant. No, you don't actually have to call them. Not yet. When you're out there in the Vegas throng, lost in translation and all other ways, you can just press the call number, try to keep the desperation out of your voice and schedule a later time.
• See a Cirque de Soleil, even if it breaks your budget. It's impossible to put a price on a miracle. The Cirque will make you believe in them, will conjure them before your eyes. Time, space, all the dimensions will reconfigure before your eyes. My brain never thinks the same way again.
• Take flat shoes. Forget about the stilettos. This way you can get from one end of the casino to the other on your feet -- the best way to do it. And yes, you will have to walk through the casino to go everywhere, a ghastly Vegas thing. There is a peculiar expression that goes with short black dress, high heeled shoes. It has to do with silent agony. You don't need to go there. There are probably other places you're aiming for.