Some photos of the Duo - Vancouver New Year's Eve

We decided that rather than hanging out in SD for new years eve, we needed a break and off we went for a white new year's eve to Vancouver. Call it a mini-moon, it was great to see something else and experience something new. We flew into Seattle and drove north - my first US border crossing which was not at all troublesome.. actually easier than the airports.

If you want an interesting wine, cheese and charcuterie experience, you should head to Salt in the Gas Town situated in a street called Blood Alley - yes it does take some work trying to find it.. but nevertheless worth the effort. Great wines and excellent parings.. It reminded us of the restaurant we visited in Slovenia, with Andreja, the Jarvis (pre-child) and Josef P.. the same one when I got the "flu" and headed to sleep early..

We also caught up with Tim and his girlfriend Timberley. Kind of cute actually. and it was good to catch up with him and hear all about his antics - He is the Chevron coverboy and we learnt a lot about how gas is priced..

We also went to Stanley Park in the freezing cold to walk around and get some exercise and got to see all these cool totem poles. As John loves to drive, we also headed up to Whistler for a day - really pretty up there and a great setting for the Olympics in 2010..

Hope you all dig my London pimp style winter coat..

New homes in Southern California

We now have two homes and visitors are more than welcome in either abode.. one is in playa vista, 5 minutes from LAX airport but also 5 minutes away from the beach.. its a tough life... but weekends in SD were way too boring and we need a bit more city life.. jokes aside.. john is now working in LA and I work in airport lounges on most days, so having a home in LA makes tons of sense. so the very first thing I need to tell you about in LA is surfas.. (www.surfasonline.com) which started as a kitchen/restaurant supply store but now is the place for foodies.. a great cheese counter, an impressive boulangerie, and an excellent selection of spices including the great south African spice mixes that turns my cooking from average to something special.. I could spend hours in this place, but John gives me at most 30 minutes or else I may just come out with the entire store. Most importantly, I don't need to do my Waitrose shop everytime I am in the UK as this place has all the "special things" I like.. more to follow from the retro city..

Crazy People - Cutting it tight...

This refers to wedding prep-- if you have had enough of my biggest project ever, our wedding.

I know most of you will not agree with me, but when it comes to air travel, you cannot really get better than British Airways – ease of routes, frequency of flights, good airline music (note to self) and most importantly the flat bed.. Since 2005, I have flown over 60 long haul flights with this airline, to the point that some of the airline attendants recognize me on flights.. especially the London Kuwait Dubai London routes and more recently the London LAX routes. Now British Airways is truly British, you still get the cold yet polite service, weird Shepherd’s pie meal or often the “yes madam, right away madam” response, but it is the flat bed and the loyalty program that attracts me to them.

I relied on the miles I have accumulated time and time again. Holidays to India, Turkey and London (from the US) for John and I – thanks to the loyalty program and it was no different when I needed to make that short trip to South Africa for wedding preparations once in September and then again in October of 2008.

In September 2008, I needed to be in South Africa most importantly for Phares’ wedding. Phares is like a brother to me and often reminds me of the eldest brother that I had.. and there was no way I was going to miss his wedding. So I planned to spend 2 days in Cape Town prior to his wedding in Johannesburg which took place on a Saturday.

If I had planned a wedding from afar about 5 years ago, I don’t think it would have been possible without on the ground continuous help from a wedding organizer. I had some great and focused friends helping me out, and together with their help and that of the internet, I managed to finalize most of the service providers for the wedding.

Hairdressers, make-up, flowers, dresses, décor, priests, entertainment – it is amazing how many South African service providers are flaunting their services on the internet.. From what I could gather weddings is as big business in South Africa as it is in the US and more and more foreigners are getting married in the beautiful venues of South Africa, in order to make their weddings a very affordable yet unique event.. So I was not unique when I interviewed the many service providers for our wedding and many more were very willing to offer their services when they saw that I had a US phone number. The most important things to accomplish on this trip was the dress, the food tasting (John will pair wines a week before the wedding), the priests and the décor. VNL (Vrede en Lust, the venue) sent us menu lists months before the wedding as we needed to make sure that they could accommodate certain requests that we had. Firstly, its not the place of choice for multi-cultural people like John and I. We knew that this would be a challenge irrespective of region.. I am sure many a wine farm in the US would have been sceptical about us. Its not common for a South African of Indian descent to be marrying a half Latvian, half North Korean, American Boy. The wedding organizer at Vrede en Lust was skeptical of our cross culturalism and was even more surprised when she learnt that I was South African born and had only formally left the country 5 years ago – so trying to convince me to purchase Norwegian bottled water for our guests was not going to work, yet she tried anyway.

The Chef, JP (Jean Pierre) on the other hand was great. He had worked in Seoul for 2 years and was intrigued by John’s background and enjoyed the fact that this American Boy loved Karoo Lamb and biltong. He even spoke Korean, which is more than we can say for John :)

When it came to food, I wanted to ensure that we took into consideration most importantly, John’s favorites – caprese salad, carpaccio and a South African favorite karoo lamb. To ensure that the farm could accommodate the Karoo Lamb option, they needed to make sure their organic farmers could rear enough lamb by early November to have it on the table by our wedding.. so as you can see a lot of planning went into this. However there were limitations.. the chefs could not handle serving 3 options for either a main/entrée or a starter/appetizer and we had to remove a few things of the menu. We also had to convince them to flexible on the dessert menu – we wanted the Indian heritage to flow through in the food, and it took numerous tries before we could get the Indian vegetarian option right. We knew that getting them to do Indian desserts was going to be difficult so JP agreed we will get this from outside the farm.

The experience of menu sampling and food tasting was well worth it.. I wish I could do this as a job.. And after watching too many episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (Ironic that in the US we subscribe to the BBC channels!), I think I will get good at this job.

It was at this point I decided that holding the Thanksgiving Dinner at the wedding venue would be too difficult, as all we got was the venue.. We needed to arrange for everything else to be brought from outside other than food and drink. Chairs, Tables, lighting, heaters etc had to secured from 3rd party providers. Having thanksgiving dinner would be like organizing a mini wedding, so I looked for a restaurant that this could be outsourced to.

I then met with the potential wedding cake maker – Charly’s Bakery, whom I phoned from the US – bad idea… I should also got the signal that this was not going to work out when she told me that she had a special feeling about me and because of that was willing to fit me into her schedule… at a price of course.. Charly’s Bakery is well regarded, consider them the Dior of wedding cakes in South Africa – very expensive and you often have to ask yourself what did you actually buy – superglam but not functional… More expensive when you are calling from a US mobile, and when our numbers (guest attending) started to drop (which was in mid-October), we asked for a smaller cake (from a 120 serving to 80 serving) and Charly’s said no – its not the done thing.. Now if you attended at our wedding you would have noticed that the wedding cake was nothing but small so much so, that we had an entire tier which travelled back with us to Johannesburg.

Motivated by a 2 year old.. why the AWOL?

Dear Friends and Family, Well, I had all those great expectations that given that the wedding was over, I would blog more often, but I am sad to say I failed in keeping my promise. The recession truly kicked in and with it, we have had so many things to resolve that trying to keep up, just became difficult. First and foremost, I started working really hard, not too sure if this was motivated by job insecurity (you never know these days) even though I got promoted at the start of the year.. but all in all, there is a ton lot more to do.. It also has to do with the 9 investments I know work with. I guess investments are like children, once you have them, they need nurturing and it never stops.. there's always something, and as a good friend says, its relentless.. :) Well, I am back after having completed two moves within a fortnight.. We know have home bases in LA and San Diego and I have to say that the former is a whole lot more fun.. and I will letting you know more about our experiences in the retro city. And please do come visit. The other important thing on my list of things to do, was to send our wedding thank you notes.. they have been written just not posted.. so if you dont receive one, John and I would like to thank you sincerely for making all the effort to head to South Africa for our wedding -we hope you had as amazing time as us and thank you for all your wonderful gifts.. now we just need to have you all over to enjoy the great stuff you bought us. My return has been motivated by our favorite two year old.. whose mom mentioned that Jas should update her blog and the two year old replied "Update mine!"Thanks Bea.. all we need for you to do is start reading and then you will be able to keep up with Don Don and Jas. And I am sure that reading is in your not to distant future. More to come....

Crazy People: Quick weight loss methods

We thought we were sorted when we sent out the save the date. A nice montage of photos from our backgrounds - a little bit of India, South Africa, South Korea, Latvia and the US and London, of course.. It then dawned upon us that we needed to get thin fast for this wedding and since I was getting close to no exercise with my long work hours and exhaustive travel schedule, John decided that we should go on a slow long death March. So it was off to a National Park in California - en route to Sequioa to burn off some well entrenched cellulite. John is no softie when it comes to heavy back packs and long hours in the sun. On our first day we hiked about 12 km to our overnight camp only to find a group of noisy Afrikaners (yip Saffies) as neighbours.. It was freezing cold and we did not carry sufficiently warm clothing - part of the quick calorie burning strategy that we decided to pursue.

Along the way, we came across a herd of llamas as where being used a pack-mules for a group who had been hiking for an entire month - an entire month without our creature comforts.. i dont even think that john kim would manage that.. We set up camp around 4pm and started to make dinner.. not fun.. rice-a-roni ( a new experience and unlikely to be a recurring experience in my life) does not boil well at high altitudes least of all in a tiny pot.. but we shared and enjoyed something that was warm.

Good thing i decided to at least bring along a few coffee filter and long life organic milk in small packages to make some good coffee.. and then it was off to bed.. in some super warm sleeping bags and neighbours who decided to play some type of board game that just got louder and louder.. The next morning, we got up early and since it was not the most enjoyable sleep, we decided that neither one of us was keen to spend a second night in the wild and thus began our long walk death march.. 24 km back to the car through some very very cold and windy areas (in shorts..)

All I can say is good thing we started early and even better that we brought some energy bars along and a great purification pump.. We walked fast and stopped for short food breaks.. and finally at 7pm we got to our car... the next day I could hardly walk, a few blood blisters but once we got home the next day (a comfort inn never felt that comfortable before!), my clothes felt looser and my legs felt toned..

The problem was this kind of regimen was too early in the wedding preparation process because whatever weight we lost, we slowly put it pack on by the time of the wedding.

Lunch at the Gherkin in London

The Swiss Re Building in London is a well known landmark in the City. On one of my many trips in 2008, I got to visit the Gherkin as Sarah (university friend in picture below) now works for Swiss Re and invited me to the very top for lunch.. It is 180-metres (591-foot) in height, with 40 floors. Its construction symbolised the start of a new high-rise construction boom in London.

Sarah is an actuary and works in the health dept for Swiss Re as a health consultant. She and I go back a very long way.. all the way back to our first year of university when we were both studying together. We lived together or in the same residence for three years and got up to a lot of stuff, best not divulged in any public forum. She is the mother of twins and shares the same birthday of Eva, also an old friend who has twins.. I was also her bridesmaid (as well as Eva's) and they finally met each other for the first time at our wedding this year!.

The views from the very top are pretty amazing and below is one of my favourite photos taken that day.. london bridge and the tower of London. not bad for yet another rainy day in London..

The food was good, lots of foamy reductions and the tiniest carrots I have ever seen. The cheese plate was excellent... so good that Sarah participated even though she was about 10 weeks pregnant! This time, no twins.

Crazy People: Planning a wedding from 20,000 km away

This blog posting is one of a series of ten that will describe our wedding planning and the event itself. It has been written specifically for those dear friends and family of friends who could not share the day with us... this series will be interjected by other curious and odd happenings in our lives and will always be written significantly long after the event.. enjoy!

Today is about 3 days to the year when John and I decided that we should have our wedding in South Africa. We were actually in Chicago, at a friends wedding when we decided this, not fully realising the impact on our lives (my life) for the next 11 months, such a project would create.

Well if it were not for the internet, great friends and the world's most organised bridesmaids (Nothando, Thevendrie and Eva), I don't think we could have done it. Between the decision on wedding location and actual week of wedding, I spent all of 7 days in Cape Town. The first weekend was in late January when Nothando (Notty for short) and I went to look at wedding venues. I had shortlisted 8 farms and we started early on Saturday and decided that after number 4, we settled on Vrede en Lust, a wine farm near Franschoek in the Western Cape.

After making our decision, Notty and I decided to have lunch at the restaurant in order to evaluate food. I ordered a salad and cheese plate and a bottle of wine.. the food was good, the wine crisp so we felt satisfied with our choice. Given the number of other couples who were at the farm that day, I knew I had to lock in our date as soon as possible - the weekend of Thanksgiving, which we hoped would suit all of our American friends and family.

The wedding industry, the world over (and I speak from experience), like the baby industry is not a hard sell... it is amazing how the price of a cake for a wedding is often 3x that of any other event.. its still the same cake.. so if I ever decide that I am tired of the male world of investing, it is in these two industries that I will start a business, perhaps something project management related, given how my skills have improved as a result of planning this wedding. Layer on that you are flying in from the US to plan the event and all you get to hear is the upsell.. "Madam, you should go with the Norwegian water for your guests as local bottled water is not very good! " You would be amazed to hear some of the lines I heard..

Not to mention when Sarah Jarvis and I decided to head to Nordstrom on a Saturday morning to look at wedding dresses. Dressed in our jeans and not looking at all as if we were big spenders or on a big budget, we were first told that we had to make a booking. Then through Sarah's smooth talking, the salesperson decided to let us try on a few dresses - starting price $4,000 - for a dress.. The salesperson then began contacting me on a fortnightly basis, sending me little notes and invites to events as I guess selling one wedding dress is as good as probably two months on the floor in any other department.. Sarah, she is still calling me..

Back in the US, 3 days after my first time in SA, John and I put down the first deposit on the farm. We felt that we were done for now.. All we needed to do was send out a "Save the date" and we could put our legs up and relax a bit... yeah but not for too long..