Well, Arif is now married. 🙂
It was a pretty good trip. Sometimes I think travelling is not quite my thing. Or maybe it’s just the way we travelled. Larry pretty much took the reins on this trip and he’s quite a go-go tourist. So we had to hit all the spots, etc… I think I’m more of a chill out tourist. I like to relax and do some stuff and then take a nap in the afternoon.
Somehow I didn’t expect jet lag to be that big of a problem for me, but it took me a long time to readjust to the time schedule. It didn’t help that we didn’t get much sleep to begin with..
We stopped in Dublin first, which was short but sweet. Jeremy might appreciate that we went to the Guiness Brewery, which, I’m sorry to report, was the most pompous display of self promotion that I’ve every seen in my life. It was either that or I was really really really tired that day. They had something like 7 levels of “exhibits” extolling how they brewed the beer, but the last line would inevitably be, “well that was cool, but now we do it differently. (aka the cheap methods)”
London was fun. People are a little jittery about the Underground. There are no trash cans in the stations, and we had an evacuation one day. Akil, Arif’s brother, got a lot of looks on the Tube holding a backpack.
Otherwise the wedding was different. It was a 2 night affair. The first night was at the mosque where the men and women were separate. The women veiwed the whole thing on 3 lcd panels. 🙂 Arif was his own representative and sweated thru some arabic, and sat thru I don’t know how many photos.
The second night was more of the banquet. Tho I think everyone decided that night that Arif was never to give a speech at any of our weddings in the future. He made some interesting comments… Here’s a sample
Arif thanking a woman who sorta arranged things behind his back.
Arif: I want to thank Big Tahera for setting me up with Little
Tahera. Tho I wasn’t happy about that.
Big Tahera: But you’re happy about it right now?
Arif: Ask me in 2 years.
😛 All the friends that knew Arif laughed about it. We know that he means well, it just was poorly formed. heh.
Cool. Hmmm, that’s interesting about the men/women thing. So the bride is the only woman at her wedding, even her mother isn’t there?
whoops. sorry nonono.. the women are all in a separate room… laff the bride isn’t the only woman there.