Highlights from trip to Cape Town!

Deep and I visited Cape Town during the recent Easter holidays and had a wonderful time! Here are some photos from our travels. We spent 3 nights and 4 days exploring the entire region including the city, waterfront, Table Mountain, Robben Island, Western coast, up and down the peninsula, Cape Point and the wine country. Cape Town is definitely one of our favourite destinations in the world! The weather is excellent, the natural landscape of the region is so beautiful, the history is of course fascinating, the food is superb and best of all the rand affords you a great time (15 rand to the pound, we were in heaven!) :) Some highlights include:

• We took a fenicular (cable car) up to the top of Table Mountain and hiked around the top, where there were incredible views of Cape Town!


• We drove down the East coast of the peninsula down to Cape Point, took a fenicular up to the top for some fantastic views from Cape Point, and then drove back up to Cape Town along the Western coast, which has some of the most breathtaking views! Reminded us of an untouched version of the PCH or Highway 1 in California.
  
• Deep had organised a personal helicopter tour of Cape Town and the wine country, which was lots of fun! We even landed in Franschhoek in the wine region to have lunch at a vineyard called Haute Cabriere, which was delicious!


• We took a ferry to Robben Island to explore the place where Mandela spent most of his years as a political prisoner. The tour given by an ex-politicial prisoner who was at Robben Island during the same time as Mandela was truly fascinating and his stories were both interesting and of course terrifying as well.

We would both highly recommend you all visit and 4 days is a good amount of time to spend, although 5 would have been a little less hectic. If you want any tips, just send us an email! :)

Congratulations Sheel!

Mina Fai informed us that Sheel has been accepted to attend UC Berkeley this fall, which was his number one choice in colleges. Congratulations Sheel!

Its exciting to see what a lineage of graduates our family has from Berkeley including Manoj, Jigna, Trishna, Vinod (MBA), Tarak, Reema and now Sheel! Go Bears!

Welcome Shalini M. Khiani

Anjali, Darshana, and Manoj Khiani are very happy to announce the arrival of Shalini M. Khiani, born on Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008. She arrived at 12:29 p.m. and weighed in at a healthy 8 lbs. 2 oz. and measured at 21 inches.



Everyone is doing great!

Anaya Lakhani

Hi everyone,

Thank you for the wonderful calls to congratulate us and wish us well.  It's so nice to hear from everyone.  I'm sorry if I haven't had a chance to return calls.  It's been a rough start, but I'm pleased to say that things are going really well now.

Anaya had a bad case of Jaundice, and had to stay back a couple days at the hospital.  She is home now and has recovered incredibly well.  We feel very blessed to have her, and even more so that she is healthy and safe.  She is very cute and sweet, and reminds us of when both the girls were born.  It's really an incredible an amazing experience to go through, even a third time!

Yes, it's hard even for me to believe that I have 3 kids!!!  Everywhere I go, I keep thinking I have to take 3 of them now.  

We've  posted a few pictures online that I'd love to share.  You can check them out at http://picasaweb.google.com/lakhanimeera15/AnayaFirstWeek

Again thank you for all your well wishes!  We hope to see you soon.

Love,

The Lakhanis

Memories of Kenya

Navinkaka sent a really neat site that has pictures from old Kenya. Hopefully they will reach some settlement and not destroy the country

http://www.mccrow.org.uk/EastAfrica/Kenya/Kenya.htm

Job Description for Parents

Here's something funny to lighten up your Sunday...

POSITION: Mom, Mommy, Mama, MaDad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop

JOB DESCRIPTION: Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities!
Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES: The rest of your life.

• Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5.
• Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly.
• Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.
• Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers.
• Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.
• Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.
• Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next.
• Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
• Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.
• Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION: None. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE: None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION: Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you die, you give them whatever is left.
The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS: While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered, this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love, and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right..

FOOTNOTE: THERE IS NO RETIREMENT -- EVER!!!
** If you are fortunate enough you will become grandparents!

3 Cousins Celebrating 21st Birthdays in 2008!

Three of our cousins will be ringing in the big 2-1 this year! Sahil just celebrated his on Feb 4th, Reina will be celebrating on April 14th and Hersh will be celebrating on June 1st. Happy 21st Birthday guys!

Tarak Ran a Half-Marathon on Feb 3rd!

For those of you who didn't know, Tarak ran a half-marathon on Feb 3rd to raise money for a great cause -- congrats on finishing ahead of your goal Turk! Here's a note he sent out after the race...

Dear friends and family,

Thank you so much for all of your support in helping me meet my fundraising goal for the 1/2 marathon I ran! The race was this past Saturday (the 3rd), and luckily the weather wasn't as nasty as it could have been (it had been raining pretty hard the day before, but on race day there were just a few brief showers and a short stretch of rather intense wind and hard rain). I was able to finish a little ahead of my goal time, finishing in 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 53 seconds, and with all of your help I raised almost a dollar a mile to support great volunteer projects around the Bay Area. Thank you so much for your support and kind words while I was training! I've stopped feeling sore from the long run, so if any of you want to go out for a little run any time, give me a call!

Oh, Also: Happy New Year!

-Tarak

Who can view the blog?

A quick question.. The blog is currently publicly viewable. Should we close it up and make sure that it can only be viewed by authorized users? Please comment soon, and I will make the necessary changes. Also, I am looking for others to help administer the blog site. Any volunteers.. Sahil, Alpesh, Vikash :-)

December in Cambodia and Vietnam...

As many of you know, we travelled with Deep's parents this past December to Vietnam and Cambodia for 2 weeks. It was a fabulous trip and we would highly recommend visiting soon, before it become overrun by tourists like other parts of the region (ie. Thailand). We spent 3 days in Siem Riep, Cambodia exploring the Angkor temple complex. From there we flew to Hanoi where we spent time in town and also did a day trip to Ha Long Bay. After that we flew to Nha Trang, where we spent 5 days relaxing on a beautiful beach. Once we had recovered, we went to Hoi An for 2 days, which is a World Heritage town on the coast that has lots of character. Our final stop was 3 days in Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City after the North beat the South in the war), which is the most cosmopolitan city in Vietnam

If you'd like to see some photos from our trip, check out this web album. We had three photographers on the trip (Deep, his Dad and me) so you can imagine it took forever to screen through thousands of photos to come up with this selection :)

we've moved

We've moved. The new address is:

1220 Mills Avenue, #5M
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Home: (650) 391-9329
Satyen's Mobile: (415) 215-5872
Jigna's Mobile: (310) 699-6448

We look forward to your all visiting soon!

Satyen & Jigna

DiskSpace Restrictions on Images

Hi everyone,

I just found out that there is a 1GB limitation of space to store images on our blog. Please make sure that you reduce your image size before you upload them. Microsoft has a great free utility called ImageResizer that you can download at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Look in the right hand column for "ImageResizer.exe", download it and install it. Once installed, you can right click on your image, and click "Resize Image". The 640x480 option works really well. Your original image will not be overwritten. A new image will be created in the same folder that is much more efficient for web publishing. Let me know if you have any questions.

Dipak

Bharati,Reema and Raagini in Vienna

Our house in the background.
Rashmi

Looking forward to actively use blog

Hi Everyone,
Beginning to learn how to use this site.Will post pictures later.
Rashmi

Kiran and Sharad

Kiran and Sharad

Ok.. so here is the information we need:

1. Where was this picture taken?

2. When was this picture taken?

3. Who took the picture?

4. What do you remember about that day?

Use the comments button below

Our New Family Blog!

Greetings from London everyone!

Dipu, thanks so much for setting up this blog -- I think its going to be a GREAT way for all of us to be in touch across the world! I thought it would be helpful to give those who haven't blogged before, some ideas of what you might post to the blog.

- Vacations you've been on recently with some photos and stories to tempt everyone else to visit that place! :)
- Announcements: babies, engagements/weddings, new homes, parties, new jobs, university decisions, special anniversaries/birthdays coming up, etc.
- Children's stories: accomplishments, things they've gotten involved with recently, halloween photos of the little ones, birthday party photos, activity updtes etc
- Ideas - if you're looking for ideas for your new home, your next vacation, menu ideas for a party, etc

Hope that gives you all some ideas to get started and I'm sure as we get going, everyone will come up with so many more things to blog about.

I'm really excited about this new tool, especially since Deep and I are far away in London, because it will be such a lovely way to keep in touch. Hope you all start contributing your stories soon :)

Love,
Trishna

Nikhil Baby Pictures

Here is Nikhil and Devanshi