My plans were to visit Bahrain in 2011 and fly Emirates Airways, which will give me the chance to have break journey at Dubai & the opportunity to meet Paul Sebastian.
Sometimes we should be prepared to expect the unexpected as I had to visit Dubai for some official work in the first week of April 2010. Paul was well aware of my visit & I was happy that this would be my first MS meet out of India.
But as I said we should be prepared for the unexpected, my plans were changed as the company wanted to meet me at Abu Dhabi instead of Dubai. This obviously unsettled our plans but I called Paul & told him that I'll definitefly meet him before I depart UAE.
I was happy to finish my work in Abu Dhabi in one & half days, immediately changed my return return flight from Abu Dhabi to Dubai & took the bus to Dubai. Of course Paul was informed of this change.
I am very fortunate to have some good friends around the world, called one of my friend in Dubai & asked him to book a hotel for me, which he happily did. I spent the evening with him as my meeting with Paul was scheduled for next day.
Since I know Dubai well, we decided to meet at Bur Dubai at 1 pm. He was a bit late, blame it on Dubai's traffic. It was not difficult for us to identify each other courtesy our profile pictures. Instead of sitting in a restaurant and talk, we decided to roam around Dubai & talk.
We boarded train at Dubai Metro, went to Dubai Mall & took some snaps near the tallest building in the world. The picture posted by Paul to identify the MSian was mine, this I am disclosing after having Paul's consents.
We had lunch at 3 pm and then departed to our respective destination. It was a pleasure to meet Paul, who is a man with good knowledge about finance and has a broad horizon about various other things. I wish I could spend some more time with him as my flight was at 1030 pm but since he was flying to India next day for a three week's vacation, he had to finish his office work, which left us with no other options other then to say see you again.
Thanks Paul for the wonderful time we had together. Hopefully my next visit would be directly to Dubai & we'll spend some more time together.
