Loading

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Dinner with friends, awaiting my London visit, and more

The good news first: I got my business visa to London. I am travelling there in the last week of April for a total of 51/2 days. This trip is a freebie to me, and this is all thanks to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), a study resource that ran an online contest last year in which I won the first prize. I will be attending the 20th International Forum on Quality and Patient Safety at ExCel London as part of my prize. In the evenings, I plan to see what I can see of London in the 4-5 days that I will be there. 

My daughter Hannah got a job with an online premium retail portal called Go Gappa (check it out here). She will be one of their core staff, looking after both, content writing AND digital media marketing. I am so happy for her. She is still busy preparing for her boards, which start next week. Good luck and good wishes to her.

Inas is, since some time now, a senior hair-stylist at the Juice salon, Colaba. She has acquired quite a reputation among her clients for her clean and good cuts, styling, colouring and other hair management skills.

Nishrin continues to run her beauty salon same as before.

Now that the rest of my family is so industrious, I should also do something, right? ;-D

A few days ago, I went out for dinner with my doctor friends Muhbeen Shaikh and Ashfaq Ubharay. Our triumvirate is always meeting ... I mean, whenever I come to India from my job in KSA. This time, we went to Shalimar Restaurant at Bhindi Bazaar. We ordered a "Tiranga Platter" (consisting of red sholay kabab, white chicken malai tikka and green chicken pahadi tikka), followed by a chicken garlic sizzler and a nalli nahari mutton gravy. We had all these with rotis ... and had a great experience.

Is anything else happening? Well, nothing to crow about or regret, but small things are happening. I will write about these as they develop into something share-worthy.

Coming now to bad news ... the situation in Yemen continues to alarm everyone who cares. I was seeing a photo-album of Yemen and was saddened to know that the civil war may permanently scar a wonderful nation. I am not too sure why Saudi Arabia is attacking Yemen, unless it is because their best friend U.S. has asked it to. The thing is, Saudi troops will not do a ground attack ... it does not have the will to do so. But even amidst this bit of bad news was the story of how Indian air forces, navy and even some merchant ships made a great effort to evacuate its own citizens, as well as helping citizens of other countries to leave war-torn Yemen. I am proud to tell you that the captain of one of the merchant ships that evacuated citizens of India and others from the port city of Aden was my childhood friend Mr. Shabbir Badsha ... great effort, sir. My greetings to you. 

And, finally, something from Bollywood. After a long time, I saw a well-made Hindi feature film called "Detective Byomkesh Bakshy" a Yash Johar film set in the Calcutta of the nineteen-forties. The chief protagonist is Sushant Singh. The story is a detective who-dun-it that you will surely enjoy watching. However, a word of advice: do not miss the beginning, and do pay attention to the dialogue. It won't be worth it otherwise.

That's all for now.  

No comments: