Courage is Contagious!

🌟Courage is contagious.
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🌟Today, I took courage to post about my dad whom I have never talk about here. He is our true hero. What we are today is all because of him. I got courage to talk about him from my younger sister @dr_chandniwadhwani and I will post her words. No words can express our gratitude towards life which has given us a second chance
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🌟"June" - a cancer survivor month.
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🌟Dilip Wadhwani - a businessman, working since 45 years, a loving father to his three daughters, a husband to a very strong woman, a commenably courageous man who fought oral cancer in 2011.
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🌟Thanks to his dentist Tashveen Singh, surgeons @drrajivbhatt Rahul Thakkur @dryogeshbhatt who did the surgery and reconstruction for him! A surgery that lasted 10 hours. .
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🌟Not only this but adding years to his life and life to his years 😍
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🌟This is a very sensitive topic..Thanks to @hcg.vadodara , for bringing this out in a beautiful way!! Yes, the struggle after the surgery is real. It's an everyday fight to be able to talk, breathe, laugh, eat, drink, cough, sneeze, yawn, brush.. everything! More so after the oral surgeries..we need to be patient to them and provide a helping ear to them!
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🌟Writing this post is incomplete without mentioning an extraordinary person who is little in age than my dad, yet too big in her courage and strength Raina Joshi @raina.joshi - Fighter of cancer!! who set a never-ending example of hope and strength for us and our family in these hard times.
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🌟There is definitely the existence of a supernatural power that gave immense courage to my mom to handle this situation and many thanks to our entire family, extended family who have been with us through the thick and thin of this every single day. 

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🌟 Happy Father’s Day, each day, every day 🙏

2020 Quarantine come back!

Hello everyone, Hope you are doing well. It's been a very long time I have been away from blogging. Time to come back :)  

This is an art we did together with our little one while shelter in place 2020. 

Bangkok and Phuket Family Trip

This year in February 2016 we planned our trip to India. This was our 'first trip' to India after getting married :) Recently I have discovered a new habit in me, which is to find 'the first time' in everything we do. If its the first time, its special, so a blog post worthy :) Also, this being our first family vacation, I wanted to write about it. Without further ado, lets quickly get to our 6 day Bangkok and Phuket trip. 

Things to keep in mind before planning a trip to Thailand:

Visa on arrival: Make sure you have 1000 Thai Baht cash/person and passport sized (4x6 cm) photograph with you as you land at the airport. Keep your passport and other travel documents and the return tickets as well as hotel accommodation print outs with you as you might need to present them to get your visa on arrival.  Don’t forget to take a pen and a glue stick with you J You might be able to get that around but no harm carrying these with you.

Forex card: We had got Axis bank’s Travel Currency Card so that we do not have to carry any cash around the city, we would withdraw money as per need every couple of days and avoid carrying any bulk cash with us - http://www.axisbank.com/personal/forex/travel-currency-card/overview.aspx

Misc: Beware of pickpocketing in Thailand.

 

At the airport and in the flight! All set for vacationing :)

Day 1 – Feb 11^th 2016 – Bangkok

* Landed at Suvarnabhumi International Airport and took us around 1 and ½ hours to get our visas.

* We went to our AirBnB and immediately left for city tour with Lou-Lou. Before leaving she told us that Orange was the color of the day and coincidently most of us were dressed in orange color J After looking up online, I found that in Thai tradition, there is an astrological rule that assigns color for each day of the week. The color is assigned based on the color of the God who protects the day. Details - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_the_day_in_Thailand

* We took the City Tour with http://www.tourwithtong.com/ company. We were a group of 6 people, so we took their VIP van option. It was only 4000 THB for a full day guide for 8 hours + admission, food, parking fees etc extra on the top. They have a dress code at most of the temples in BKK. Details can be found here: http://www.tourwithtong.com/tourtips.htm

The places that we visited are:

* The Grand Palace

* Temple of Emerald Buddha

* Wat Po

* Wat Arun

* Reclining Buddha

* River Cruise

Day 2 – Feb 12^th 2016 - Bangkok

We visited the Bangkok Safari World on our second day. We watched fascinating animals shows in the Safari World:

* Orangutan Show

* Dolphin Show

* Seal Show

* Feeding Tiger Cubs

* Hugging Orangutan

* Elephant Feeding

* Giraffe Feeding

* Elephant Show

* Elephant Massage - Manoj was very thrilled for getting the elephant massage and luckily in the elephant show when they called for volunteers he was picked from the crowd J I was very nervous during the actual scene and my hands were shivering while taking his video at that time.  

After the shows, we went to an open safari in our closed van where we saw the wild animals which were set free.

Later that evening we went to eat some local food and explore the city.

* Street Food @ Kao San Road - Pad Thai & Spicy Tom Kha Shrimp Soup

* Tuk Tuk Ride - A tuk tuk is a three-wheeled colorful rickshaw. Riding a tuk-tuk is more of an experience rather than a practical way to get around in BKK.

* Waiting for Bus at a bus-stand – A hopeful Bus ride that turned into Taxi hunt & finally back to hotel – Beware of the taxi drivers that are are waiting to loot you ;) We found the pink cab drivers to be friendly and fair while charging us for our ride.

Day 3 – Feb 13^th 2016 - BKK

* We went to Chatuchak Market for shopping. It is one of the World’s largest markets that has more than 15,000 booths selling goods from every part of Thailand. It is a very popular place for tourists and has over 200,000 visitors each day.

* After shopping till we dropped, we took foot massage which felt like we were in heaven and didn’t want to get up from the recliners.

* To experience the public transport, we took a train to Bangkok Airport for our Phuket Flight. We reached our Phuket Airbnb around 10 pm at night and went to bed after the long day.

Day 4 - Feb 14^th 2016 - Phuket

* The first thing we did in the morning was to go out and get the Bike Rental. It is the best way to explore the city.

* We then spend our valentines's day at the Patong Beach. We enjoyed the Jet ski at the Patong Beach.

* In the evening we went to Phuket FantaSea which is one of Phuket’s main tourist’s attraction. It is a huge theme park with a huge stage show, a huge buffet, restaurants and plenty of shops to tempt people into spending more than just the entry fee. There are a lots of local artists who will attract you with their amazing artistry.

Day 5 - Feb 15^th 2016 - Phuket 

We did an Island Tour on this day.

* Monkey Island

* Maya Bay

* Krabi

* Snorkelling 

* Feeding the Fish

Day 6 - Feb 16^th 2016 - Phuket 

We did a full day Bike Tour of Phuket on our last day of vacation. We went to several places around the city. Few of them are:

* Big Budha

* Lunch at Mountain Restaurant

* And concluded our vacation at Patong Beach with an exotic Thai Massage on the Beach!

Instead of pictures I decided to share a short video of our Thailand trip:

First Couple photoshoot - Chandni and Pinkal

February has been my best month of 2016. Not because its a valentine's month but because we visited India in February this year :) It was super duper tiring but we enjoyed every single bit of it. One of the many best things we did in India was to attend my younger sister's (Chandni's) 'Misri' ceremony. 'Misri' ceremony in Sindhi's is what 'Roka' is for Punjabi's and what 'Gaud-Dhana' is for Gujju's. It symbolizes coming together of the two families of the couple. It means that the search of the families and the individuals for their soulmate has stopped. 

Once the shopping and preparation for the 'Misri' was done, both of them (Chandni and Pinkal) wanted to do photoshoot before the event. I was looking for a good photographer to do the photoshoot but wasn't able to find a decent one at the last minute. So, Manoj and I decided to do it by ourselves. I have always been very fascinated by Laxmi Vilas Palace since the time it has opened for public. As soon as we decided we are going to be the photographers, I decided that was the place I would like to go for the shoot. Chandni immediately spoke to one of her friends who got us the permit and we were all set :)

Here are few pics from the photoshoot:

Ek ladki thi deewani si!

Is ladke pe woh marti thi :)

Chori Chori chupke chupke, messages kiya karti thi..

Kuch kehna tha shayad isse..

Jabhi milti thi isse, yahi pucha karti thi! 

Pyar kaise hota hai? Yeh pyar kaise hota hai? :D

Doctor Doctor, kuch kuch hota hai :)

His heart beats for hers!

Ek duje k liye !

Ek ladki bheeghi bhaaghi si ;)

Pictures says it all :)

Kya tum mujhse shhaddi.. hmm friendship karogi?

... and finally he found his Cindrella and the right shoes :)

Love is in the air :)

Beginning of happiness forever!

Magical ..

Dramatic :P

Finally .. hum saath saath hai :)

Partners in crime :)

Same to same !

Please feel free to share your feedback in the comments below!

Happy First Wedding Anniversary!

Video from our first anniversary wedding in Las Vegas! Beautiful moments to cherish all our lives :) 

        

Manoj's Big 3-0!

Turning 30 is a big deal for some people, atleast it is for me. I do not want to turn 30 anytime soon... As if I had an option :'( But this year my love turned 30! For me leaving twenties is like leaving your youth and officially embarking a grown up life. It is actually a good thing but to me somehow it is a little scary. 

Even though being 30 sounds scary to me I was super excited for him turning thirty :) I wanted to celebrate it with style;) I started planning his birthday right from my birthday in August and I registered both of us for our first ever half marathon and trust me it was once in a lifetime experience for us. First times are always very special. You can read more about our marathon experience here. 

We celebrated his Big 3-0 with many of his different groups of friends. His birthday falls on November 9th but the celebrations began on Oct 31st  - yes on the night of Halloween! We were at a halloween party at our neighbors place and on the same day one of Manoj's under-grad friends was visiting SF from India. Some of his other under-grad friends planned a get together on the same night and we decided to catch them up after the halloween party. We managed to sneak out of the party at neighbors place to join the other party ;) All of them met for dinner and we joined them right on time - post dinner. On meeting them he had such a blast - taking a stroll down the memory lane and recalling their days of youth. He with five of his other friends were giggling out so loud in the restaurant that everyone around was watching us! Oh my God! I saw him so super duper happy :) Before the restaurant people kick us out we decided to take a walk to Santana-row for some desert. This is where we had his birthday cake cutting with some coffee at Cocola :-) 

Halloweenie birthday fun! 

PS: Yes, we were dressed up in our halloween avatars which made it soooo much fun to walk on the roads and watch other crazy people! It was quite halloweenie!

The next celebration was with all the scorpions of our gang :) This is the tradition of our group since quite some years now :) This time it was primarily organized by Shivali for Herat's 30th birthday on Nov 1st. It was an amazing night as we went out for the Escape room game where they lock us all in a small room and give us a number of clues to come out of that room. Although we lost the game :P and couldn't solve all the clues to get out of the room, it was an awesome experience! Post this game we went for dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant. My contribution for this party - I made Tiramisu cake for the evening. It came out real yummy... :) Here are few pics from the night

Escape room game night and dinner with friends :)

The four scorpions! L-R: Prince.Shrusti.Herat.Manoj. Missing Ami

Next was 8th of November when we ran our first half marathon :) It was awe-inspiring running with him on this day with spectacular views of Golden Gate Bridge celebrating love's birthday, listening to his awesome playlist with a little bit of drizzle as we cross the GGB with 'Tum Hi Ho' playing right on time which added the icing on the cake. Just can't describe in words. We made our first records to complete the half marathon in little under 2:45 hours. On completion, it felt like we were on the top of this world :) 

Marathon Madness!

On a scale of 1-10 we're perfect 13.1 :)

Our race bibs!

Then came the surprise part! I had called his friends to Crissy fields for his Big 3-0 surprsie moment. And luckily it was very well executed. He had no clue everyone was coming :) Here are few pictures of fun moments at Crissy fields where he was dipped in the ice cold water by his friends. I guess it was a good way to quickly recover post marathon :)

Post this Crissy fields madness we went to his favorite cuising restaurant in SF. It is called Thai Idea Vegetarian. The best part of this restaurant is their presentation of food. An absolutely must visit place just for the presentation. Here is the link - Thai Idea Vegetarian. Totally loved it. 

On a scale of 1-10 you're perfect 30!

Hungryyy!!!

Wow so much fun it was on the 8th !!!

Next day Nov 9th was his actual birthday. We had done so much the previous day but how can I leave the excitement on the day of his birthday :) We had another celebration at home in the evening with family this time and to my surprise no technical difficulties :) Everyone I invited came on google hangout and on time! Couldn't get better than this. This was the best and most unexpected celebration he said it was :) 

For the coffee lovers :)

Birthday boy!

Google hangout craziness!

Playing with google avatars!

Post family celebration we went out for dinner to a michelin star 1 south-indian restaurant. Yes, there is a michelin star south Indian restaurant in bay area. While I was looking for michelin star restaurants options to take him out for his birthday dinner, I immediately booked this place as soon as I found there was a south-indian restaurant of this class. He totally loves south indian food. We had lots of good food and fun at Rasa. Here is the link - Rasa

Birthday treat @ Rasa (Michelin star 1)!