A weekend break

When monotony strikes, there's a way to beat it. Just take a break. And that's what I did. Former colleague and good friend Susmita and her cousin Sunil suggested that I join them on a trip to Masafi and I accepted the offer with thanks. We roped in reporter Rasheed too. We moved on a little further from Masafi to Fujairah. A weekly bull fight
show is a regular feature in Fujairah and we ended up interviewing the organisers. We also met a lovely couple, German national Benjamin and his Italian wife, Rosanna. Those few words in German I knew came in handy again. In a few minutes we were great friends and exchanged business cards so as to stay in touch. We were five in the car, including the man behind the wheels Rehman of Bangladesh. Susmita is from Bengal, Rasheed a Keralite, me a Madrasi and Sunil is from Pakistan. Truly global..ehh!
I will let the pictures speak to save your valuable time. Plenty smart, right?

In love with Paris

Sudha Ramaswamy, my good friend and former freelance journalist from Mumbai who is now settled in Nigeria, shares this experience: (Excerpts):
We had gone to Paris for an eight-day stay...from Amsterdam....It was fun...interesting city.
Reaching the Paris central station....takes you to a place so close to our Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus of Mumbai...God.......the resemblance is amazing.....in terms of the cosmopolitan melting pot of people's thronging the area...Afros, French, Europeans...Turkish...and more...Goodness....the load speakers blare every ten minutes.....”plz be aware of pick pockets and take care of your belongings.”
The fast metro trains are so much cleaner and better and smarter....but just so similar to Mumbai locals....they are fast trains...and zoom away..so much so that you can’t really see out of your window...it’s only darkness....it’s that fast.
Paris is dirty...so much...so much like India and Mumbai, but Paris has “Sex shops” glaring at you from every corner too! Paris is so interesting and Parisians love Indians.
The French are the warmest people I have ever met so far in my life...they are so warm, friendly, helpful, I simply loved them.
The French similarity to India exists in innumerable dimensions as in the lentils that they also cook, their style and manner of taking great interest in dressing...so much in contrast to Holland's Netherlanders....many are pure vegetarians.
But most of all, they have a fondness for Pondicherry - this makes them love Indian food. Indeed we shared Puri ...aloo sabji with a French family that took so instantly to us in the train returning to Amsterdam.
Paris is so ancient and preserves its culture and traditions in its architecture, monuments, road side cafes and pattiseries... nothing seems to have been impinged upon since the times of Napolean Bonaparte...despite the cyber scratch and sniff experience sweeping France just as much as it has done the rest of the worrld.
It’s minus 9 degrees here at Holland now and is snowing.
Thanks Sudha. And best of luck.

The German connection

Famous blogger Fida was surprised when I used a German word. I love Germans. Tried to learn the language in Chennai's Max Mueller Bhavan two decades ago, but failed miserably. Had an opportunity to visit Hamburg as part of an international journalists team allowed to watch the World Cup Soccer match between Ukraine and Italy two years ago.
The entire city wore a festive look and it was a great time, which I
will never forget in my life. The way I made friends, especially with the pretty German girls, made some of my counterparts from Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India turn green with envy (joking dear). "Guten Morgan" was good enough to start a conversation. But once they started speaking in German, I fumbled and confessed I din't know the language. Of course, I always finished off with a smile and a "Vielen Danke." (Dunno whether spelt right!)
This particular fatty German girl at a railway station asked me to
click a photograph with her colleague. Their faces decorated with flag
paintings, the duo looked awesome. Back in Dubai, I did post the
photograph as requested by her to the address she mentioned, but till
today there has been no acknowledgement. Long live that pretty girl.
Four of us (we became great friends – thanks Paul, Anita, Venu - of
Australia, Malaysia, India) planned to take a train ride and decided
to go to the "Chocolate" city of Lubeck. Interestingly, I bumped on a
private museum run by a German gentleman with his Indian wife. She was kind enough to prepare some South Indian dish, (Dosa. Have you heard of it? May be I will ask my wife to post a recipe of this!!)
At the end of the journey, the handsome Australian editor-friend
commented jovially: "You are a funny guy."
"Fun-loving guy," I corrected.