Anniversaries and beginnings

Sitting here in muggy Mumbai it's hard to imagine that we were in Turkey a year back. We landed at Cappadoccia same day last year. We were in the amazing Museum Hotel, cave room with its own jacuzzi, Kainaz's gift to me for our anniversary. Wrote about it in The Mumbai Mirror. Here's the link to the article which came out recently.

And it's such a coincidence that I got my first ever cheque for writing today. A year after the day we landed at Cappadoccia. K has suggested that I keep it rather than encash it. I am in two minds. No amount is too small after all.

What would you do?

Coffee, cultures, conversations, cheese

a chat with an Uruguayan settled in Argentina about Calcutta football... watching a presentation comparing market search with a restaurant...the Stravinsky hall, base of the Montreux Jazz festival, filled with market researchers... tender slices of roast beef... fresh poached fish ... a chat with a wise and warm African American couple about the new socialism in the US and watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S in Mumbai... Swiss blue cheese, American bourbon ... a Nigerian presenting on the recession with a big self deprecating smile ... Starbucks coffee with the wife in the neighbouring town of Vevey in between conference and banquet ... work emails on phone ... picture postcard buildings... chatting with a German from Cologne on Indian culture and A R Rahman... Waga borderish exchanges of visiting cards all around... the frantic ones ticking off their networking lists... bright flowers ... a computer with rigour mortis and stalled apell, sorry 'spell', check.. weary bones, wondering if one can stay up in the banquet coming up... an understated anxiety about the next day... and a bit of hope and crossed fingers

Need Tony Bourdain to sum it up in his soulful, singsong manner