IL Family meet in Dubai

Dubai IL Family Meet- one of its kind with maximum participants...
Venue: Zabeel Park, Gate No. 3, Karama, Dubai

Attendees:
Usha, Krishnan, Swetha (IL member too), Srivatsan, Harshitha
Sylvia, Ram, Anish
Preethi, Preetham, Ilina
Jayashree, Santhanam, Shruthi
Sharadha, Hari, Shreya, Smera. Supriya
Sujatha, Vijay
Reenu, Rajan, Rohan, Riya
Leena, Sunny, Viraj
Neharika, Ashish, Aashka, Aryan
Sowmini, Vibu, Aarushi, Aryan
Shanthi, Sandhya
Priya, Prem & Vedanthi
Sonia, Rajesh & Karan
Anu, Chetan, Swayam

Menu
Samosa
Chocloate Burfi (Made by Usha in honour of Chitvish)
Masala Peanuts
Bhujia

Kids meal:
Party Pizza
chips
Biscuits
Juice/ 7-up
Games
Dumb Charades (Gents versus Ladies, ended in a tie)
Passing the parcel for the kids. All kids got a small gift (Sylvia has taken immense efforts to choose a gift for every child and gift wrapped each gift, so beautifully.)
Bingo (superbly conducted by Leena & ...)
The IL family meet began at Gate No.3 of Zabeel Park. Preethi was displaying placards marked INDUSLADIES Family meet. Preethi's foresight is highly commendable..it turned out to be a great family meet. While the ladies were greeting each other and exchanging pleasantries, it was a delight to see the husbands form a group, so comfortably chatting with each other. We waited for all the families to join in before starting the Dumb Charades game conducted by Swetha. Ladies versus Gents..trying to outbeat each other with their expert miming..Hilarious minutes followed and the game ended in a tie. The children continued the funtime with a game of passing the parcel, again ably conducted by Swetha & assisted by Shruthi,Harshitha & Supriya. All the kids received a small gift when they got out of the game. It was Syvia's idea to get gift for children and she has taken the pains to individually choose a gift, wrap them in fancy shapes which brought a big smile on every child's face. Thank you Sylvia for the great efforts not only for the games but also for captaining the army.
Then we served the snacks which had bought from a nearby restaurant, except Choclate Burfi speacially made by Usha for the IL meet in honour of Chitvish.
By now, it was almost 7:30PM and we had to move to a better lit place in order to play a game of bingo. Leena and Ashish did a great job in conducting this game and the ticket cost was given away as prizes.
Priya's husband was initially apprehensive about attending the meet. He decided to please his wife with his presence. At the end of the meet, he told me: "It was like removing the slippers and entering a temple, with an open mind where EGO is totally absent. He was impressed with Malathy, Jey and other ILites who are contributing with a no-profit motive." His comments struck a chord in my heart and is worth mentioning here.
All good things have to come to an end, and so did the IL Family meet. The husbands cheered the Indusladies and were greatly moved. It was a pleasure to see 14 families, meeting for the first time, but we felt as if we knew each other for eons!! We parted ways, reassuring ourselves that more meets will follow..
Thank you IL, for being with us always..
A special thanks to Malathy, Jey, Chitvish and all other people who strive to grow our IL community.
Photos to follow shortly.


Regards
USHA

Dear Usha,
I was waiting for this thread!
So many of you have met & that too with families. It is marvellous, Usha.
Knowing Sowmi & Swetha as real livewires, I can imagine what a great time you must have all had!
Priya's husband's comment is very commendable. All the spouses perhaps came, more to see what IL which their wives talk about always, is all about, but must have gone back as if they just attended a family function.
I can imagine, how much of planning must have been done by all of you, participants.
My love & best wishes, to all of you, the participants!
Love,
Chithra.
Thanks for making my recipe, Usha. You have overwhelmed me!!

Dear Usha,

Great writeup and yes we are all still enjoying the memories of a wonderful evening. All the families had such a great time and it felt like friends meeting up after a long time instead of the first time.
Thank you and your lovely family for the wonderful contributions. The food was great and Swetha was a really entertaining and capable games organiser. Now we know who to give that responsibility to for all our meets. Great work Swetha you really had us guessing with those film names. Next time we will have more time so we can have a lot more rounds and more acting . Usha Chitvish will be proud of you i am sure and will surely take up your invitation to visit Dubai after seeing the picture of the tasty Burfi.Thanks for the updates .

Special thanks to Syliva and you really great organising work and coordination we just had to walk in for a good time. Also thanks to Krishnan for providing us with the chips and beverages. Everything was thought of from snacks, to juices to soft drinks to water to gifts to games.Thanks ladies you are wonderful organisers and worked well as a team . Special thanks to all the husbands for taking care of the kids and giving us time to chat.

I was super impressed with the form that Sylvia made and brought along taking down all our contact details. Now we have a list that can only grow from each meet.

Thanks to lovely Leena and Ashish for conducting the Bingo. We collected a nice sum of DHs100/- from the ticket sales and the prizes were generous .

Meeting everyone was indeed such a pleasure and we found so many of us with common interests that will only help grow the group and enrich it with the various inputs. The really commendable factor of the entire evening was the way all the husbands got so involved and joined in everything, looked after the kids and took pictures of all of us. At one point when all of us were posing as a group we had about 6-7 cameras flashing( the DH's) and it did indeed make us feel like little celebrities. I took a picture of them taking our pictures i think and will post them. They even gave us a resounding three cheers as we wound up to go and play Bingo. It was truely a family meet in all ways.

Thanks and three cheers to all our dear friends we came we met and made this meet a sucess. Now all the more we would like to meet and continue posting to get to know everyone better.

best wishes
preethi

Dearest Ladies,

I had initially started the "Indians in BurDubai" thread with the intention of making friends within BurDubai.. But the response was unbelievable.. Yesterday, I was overwhelmed to see that something started soo small had taken shape of a Indus Ladies Family Meet.

All the confirmed participants had attended.. We had 14 familes and all of them were puncutal.. We planned to meet at 5:30pm and at 6pm we had already started the evening.. Isnt it great! Thank you all for taking this meet seriously and making it on time.

A special mention to Preethi's Plackard reading "Indus Ladies Family Meet" with a big "Indus Ladies" Logo which made heads turn.. The regular visitors of the park were actually wondering what was happening..

Thank you Usha for arranging the snacks. Thank you Swetha for taking care of the games. Thank you Leena and Ashish for the BINGO. Special thanks to the men/fathers who took good care of the kids which facilitated the women to interact with eachother.

The evening was amazing.. Everyone had fun.. Ladies indulging in intellectual conversation, Men enjoying eachother's company, Kids just running around all over the park. We had taken loads of pictures.. we will be posting them shortly..

I can go on and on and on but I want to leave space for others to write... In short, it was a blast.. But, its only the beginning! We promise to have many such events coming in future and to have many more Indus Ladies involved.

Hey Usha, Thanks for the edits in your first post... However, it was a combined effort.. you or I would not have made it happen without the co-operation of the lovely Indus Ladies.

Thank you all for being there and hope to see you more often!

Cheers!
Sylvia

Friends,
My write up was just to give an idea to other IL's as to what happened last evening. I have to mention every single name of the participant yesterday for their overwhelming response.
Sylvia, I was too much in NASHA yesterday. sorry, bandhey ko maaf kar do. you are the spark for the meet in the park. How can I treat you as an invisible Ghost..when u & Ram are such wonderful hosts.
Thank you all for making this happen.

Regards
USHA

Dear Sylvia, Preethi,
Can you please post some pictures in this thread.

Regards
USHA

Hi Dubai ILiites,
it was s nice to know that you had a family meet. This proves that IL is not only for ladies but for the whole family. And once we meet, the men folk realise that this is not a phoney group, but genuine friends thro the IL.
All thanks to Malathy and Jey! Photos?

Hi Varloo

Thanks for the lovely message .Yes it was great to see the menfolk bonding so well and helping out and joining in all the fun. Its amazing how we all just blended together and had a great time. Saying bye was the hardest i guess.
Photos coming soooooon the camera ran out of charge charging it this morning.Pictures to follow.
best wishes
preethi

Dear Varloo,
It is very encouraging to see your mail. We thought it will be a good idea to invite the DH to join in, as they would anyway come all the way to drop us at the park. We were awe-struck to see them in one single group and happily chatting away.
Their chemistry clicked so well when they played Dumb Charades..

We were so happy to have organised the IL Family meet. We bonded so well that all of us found it difficult to say bye & leave.

Varloo, please take this as my invitation for you to plan a holiday to Dubai.

Regards
USHA

Hi Everybody


Congrats on making this the biggest IL meet ever!!!
We sure had a fun time together ... didnt we?
And I'm glad you liked the games ... Thank you!

Hope we have more such meets ... because I've already started thinking of other fun games to play!!!

Kudos to all those who organised this and all those who attended ...
And to those who couldnt make it, all I can say is ... you missed the fun! But hope to see you at the future meets ... I promise it will be fun unlimited ... GUARANTEED!!!