Second London PE meetup, Oct 29, 2011
The London Meetup #2 went ahead as planned, and it was a great blast! :D
We met at Tibits, a lovely vegetarian restaurant and bar, at 1:30pm. Tibits is one of my favorite vegetarian places in London, along with Vita-Organic (where we went to for the first London meetup).
Interior of Tibits. It uses a buffet concept, where you take whatever food you want, get it weighed, then pay according to how much you took. Prices are reasonable, at $2-2.20 pounds per 100g. All the food is vegetarian. Love it!
Everyone getting to know each other
Deep in discussion
Me and the Burton family – from left to right: Emilie, Tom, me, Bob and Catherine. The Burtons are among the sweetest and most generous people I’ve known, ever. They invited me to Cambridge (where they reside), showed me around the place, took me punting, and invited me to a very lovely meal at their place at night. They came for the first London meetup as well!
Me, Bob and Catherine. Bob is an active reader of PE and also a regular participant of PE Challenges. He recently joined the 21-Day Meditation Challenge for Oct 2011, and is one of the top participants who meditated every day, for the 21 days, without fail. Amazing! :clap:
Chris and Dimitri. Chris is only 21 and is already actively pursuing conscious living and personal development, whereas some people who are twice his age may not even be doing that! Dimitri is an extremely sweet and intelligent guy who is planning to start his business in the near future.
Sweet Megha and the very lovely Suparna. Suparna actually lives in US and she was on a 1-week work trip in London, which coincided with the meetup date! How serendipitous! :D (Megha and Suparna are cousins, by the way.)
Beheshteh, me and Sulthana. Beheshteh is currently studying at King’s College and is graduating very soon; Sulthana is very passionate about charity work and leads quite a number of projects, both within and outside her work. Both incredible ladies with fiery spirits in them!
Sulthana, me and Rashna. Rashna and Sulthana are very good friends and have known each other for almost a decade! Rashna is highly passionate about cancer support and is planning to pursue this passion full-time in the future. Extremely noble cause and a vision which I highly respect.
Emilie and Tom, from the Burton family. Emilie just graduated from high school and will be entering university soon. Tom is Emilie’s younger brother and is highly energetic and adorable. Both of them are the cutest siblings I know!
Suparna and me. I didn’t have a chance to speak to Suparna much, which was a great pity! She struck me as an extremely strong, kind and considerate individual.
And the highlight of the day – Some readers brought gifts for me, much to my pleasant surprise! :)
The one on the left is from sweet Dimitri, while the one on the right is from the very lovely Burton family.
And what might they be?
I unwrapped the first gift, after which I promptly burst out laughing (in a good way). Lo and behold…
Seriously, it doesn’t get any better than this! I told Dimitri – “One can’t get more narcisstic than to wear a shirt with his/her name on it!!”
But really, it was incredibly sweet and thoughtful of him to get a shirt custom made and printed as a gift, so thank you so much Dimitri. :D The funny thing was, he told me he literally got it printed on the day when I announced the change in domain/site name, so he was going “arghh”!
But it doesn’t matter to me, to be honest – it’s the thought that counts, and I told him that this serves as a memento of the old name and domain name, so it’s all good. I’ll keep this shirt close to my heart and am definitely going to put it in a special place in my room when I get back to Singapore. ;)
As for the second gift from the Burton family, it’s a highly useful piece of equipment which will come into use every day. See below:
And I definitely do. ;) A British mug with iconic symbols of London, including the British flag, Tower Bridge, London Black Cab, Scots Guards, red telephone box, Big Ben, and red London bus. Thank you so much, Bob, Catherine, Emilie and Tom! :D I’ve been drinking from this mug for the past few days, and will definitely use it every day for the rest of my trip. ;)
So this is it for my London trip! I’ll be heading to the US next Monday, Nov 7 (early morning flight), and will be visiting Philadelphia first for my engagement in Wharton on Nov 11.
(Images: Personal Excellence)
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