But despite the misery, it was a great year in many ways. It was the year…
Taha learnt to write his name and graduate from therapy to his Kindergarten class at CAS. It is also the year in which he started making eye contact and speaking in clear sentences and statements. Fawzia, Taha and Salwa redecorated the walls in our room with their worksheet exercises and traced alphabets and numbers in three dimensions. Seeing him settle down at CAS and the school flex and change around his needs made our year as parents.
Salwa started reading and then broke her wrist while Amin’s appendicitis was diagnosed in time by Ammi and Baba. The surgery, three nights in the hospital and Salwa’s cast made us realize how much we had and how blessed we were as a family and as parents. Without these three events and Ammi’s emergency knee surgery at Liaqat, I am not sure we would have remembered or appreciated how good we have it here at home.
We rediscovered PAF air force museum in spring and spent a handful of early Sunday mornings gawking with awe at F-104 star fighters and the runway length walking and running strip that bisects the exhibiting lawns. Happiness for 3 kids and two dreamers at 8 am on a weekend for less than a hundred rupee note.
Abdul Malick, First Printers, Singapore and Reboot. It came together in September ’09 after a three year wait and a six month effort. Armed with the best agent in the world, we did an impromptu book signing at the TIECON event in November.
The Singapore trip served up another major personal milestone. I finally managed to climb (overstatement of the year) the tallest hill in Singapore without having a heart attack, though it was close.
Between Singapore and Dubai, I managed to corrupt 300 young minds this year that I hope (and secretly pray) will never be the same again.
Some of them will remember me more than others…
And finally while I missed judging at the PASHA ICT Awards (I was busy selfishly charging myself out at a customer at our rack rates) and the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (Busy teaching at SP Jain in Dubai in December), I did manage to catch the PASHA Tech Crunch Gong Awards in Karachi as a judge. Like teaching at SP Jain it was an event that added at least a few years to my life.
And managed to get my picture taken with some of the freshest and smartest technology talent in Pakistan…
As Adnan put it politely, “we are not sure if we were celebrating the technology industry in Pakistan or Jawwad doing Khakis and whites in public.”