Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Many updates

Okay so it has been over two weeks since I updated this blog. I don't know if you remember but in the beginning I said that I am not much of a blog writer :oP Though to be fair, the first 1.5 weeks of my blog hiatus was very uneventful; I was just working and becoming very irritated with my abysmal internet connection. The guest house I stay in has a quota of internet that can be used within the month so by the end of the month it always gets very slow. Apparently, though, last month was worse than most. I guess I shouldn't complain too much because it gave me time to get into the Fire and Ice series (aka Game of Thrones), which is really good!

But the last week has been quite eventful so I will update everyone on this last week.

This past weekend, I went to Mumbai, India. I am going to India at the end of my Sri Lanka trip, but I do not have enough time to go to Mumbai, and it was really important for me to see my family. I actually have not been to Mumbai in about 5-6 years so I was very excited to see how the city had changed. I only had essentially 48 hours to see as much family and as much Mumbai as I could, because I did not want to take off extra days of work. But the trip was immediately worthwhile because on my flight to Sri Lanka I met RANBIR KAPOOR.

For those of you who don't know him, you may google and ogle over him now. He is essentially the number one Indian actor in Bollywood and super super cute. I was so shocked to see him on the plane I was literally not thinking straight. My heart rate definitely jumped up 50 points. I obtained his autograph and later thought about getting a picture with him but became too shy. I know it's stupid because he was so super nice and would totally have obliged, but I became a silly school girl around him! Here is my stalker picture of him and his autograph where he said he LOVED ME! haha j/k

 LOVE






In more seriousness, my trip to India was wonderful otherwise as well. My aunt really showed me around to places I had been and places I had not been before, which was really nice. I was surprised to see how much cleaner the streets of Bombay looked because I really expected the opposite. I also got to enjoy some Indian food! Sri Lankan food is good but nothing beats Indian food in my opinion. I especially love chapatis, which are hard to find in this rice-centric country. Here a few pictures from my India trip (warning many of them are of delicious food so be wary if you are hungry!):

 Delicious Rajisthani Thali

 Gateway of India! Another thing I love about Bombay: I don't have to worry about what I am wearing!

Butha (phonetic spelling) aka roasted Indian corn = yummy!

My aunt and me along the Worli Shore

With my aunts and cousin at a little known but really nice beach in Bombay!



Part of the benefit of me going to India was to save time not having to renew my Sri Lankan VISA as I could just obtain a new one on arrival back to Sri Lanka, but India never makes anything easy. After arguing for 1.5 hours and begging people to let me use the internet on their phone, I finally boarded my flight to Colombo. Of note, there were no issues in Sri Lanka. India is great but has much room for improvement.

I got to Colombo early Monday morning to attend the National Pediatric Conference being held on Monday and Tuesday. It was a great experience! I definitely learned a lot, such as the similarities  (pharmaceutical vendors giving out freebies outside the conference) and differences (no one asked questions when a speaker was done talking! Just shocking!) between American and Sri Lankan conferences. I also noticed how much more research driven and evidenced based the US is by the paucity of poster presentations and somewhat lacking research presentations. It was a really great experience though! And I enjoy the luxury of getting an upgraded room at the hotel since I was a doctor at the conference. The room itself was not as impressive as being able to say that I have stayed in the Penthouse of a 5 star hotel! I also took some time to tour around Colombo so here are some pictures of all of that:

 The view from my room!

 A beautiful church

A cool Hindu temple

 A large, really nice Buddhist temple that I took many pictures of but could not quite capture it.

 An elephant getting a bath at the temple!

 The President's office by my hotel. I got in trouble for taking this picture because the president is inside!

A picture from the conference

Dinesha and me posing with the mascot for a cream for eczema. This is one of the many outfits I bought in India!

Ok now I am super tired so I am sorry if this was not proofread well. Tomorrow after work I am going to Yala! It's a three day weekend because of Eid so I am sure I will much more to tell you all about in a few days.




1 comment:

  1. looks so fun! i'm so jealous! i am going to try very hard to spot a celebrity in kenya, miss you!

    ReplyDelete