MissMalini in New York
MissMalini in New York

Last month I spent a few days in New York for work and extended my trip to see friends and family. Here’s a photo diary of that visit – Desi Girl Traveler style! 🙂 xoxo

Desi Girl Traveler
Desi Girl Traveler

Plus I was pretty excited about taking my wings on a flight, I cannot lie 🙂

Jeremy Scott Adidas Originals
Jeremy Scott Adidas Originals

FYI, you KNOW you’re in the Dubai airport when all the life-size animal carvings are now primarily of camels!

Dubai airport
Dubai airport

I also had mad travelers luck when I scored a completely empty exit row on my 13 hours flight to JFK (woohoo!) and can I just say – full props to Emirates Airlines for having USB chargers and plug points on board even in economy. I love you guys, seriously. #geekjoys

Emirates
Emirates

What’s that book I’m reading? It was so good. Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer. Now I’m dying to read the sequel Every Seventh Wave.

Love Virtually
Love Virtually

One of things we love best (and by we, I mean mostly mega foodie Nowshie) is the insane variety of food in NYC! You could pretty much eat at a different spot every day, for a year, without running out of options.

Eating in New York
Eating in New York

On this trip we also ended up having a few fantastic meals around NY courtesy Qualcomm Snapdragon!

Eating in New York
Eating in New York

I kid you not, my plat du jour at David Burke‘s Kitchen came like THIS!

play du jour
play du jour

And you should have seen Nowshie’s happy face when he got his dry-aged sirloin steak 🙂

dry aged sirloin steak
dry aged sirloin steak

But admittedly we finally found true burger love at Shake Shack! *lol*

Shake Shack
Shake Shack

I also thought that their food order pagers were very #geekchic so I tweeted them 🙂

Shake Shack
Shake Shack

Fashion bonus: I really enjoyed walking around NYC in my winter gear (that I practically NEVER get to wear in Bombay.) Particularly this darling red trench by Prrems 🙂 #Love #NYCintheFall

MissMalini NYC in the fall style
MissMalini NYC in the fall style

As you can probably tell, we had a total blast at the Qualcomm Snapdragon event (where I rocked my Jeremy Scott Adidas Originals again and got lots of props for them too, thank you very much!) Check out all the geekchic-ness right here 🙂

Snapdragon Booth
Snapdragon Booth

We also ended up partying with our favorite Delhi & NY peeps Roger Williams, Raja Khanna, Sujal Shah, Surelee Joseph and Malini Ramani who happened to be in NY at the same time along with models Rachel Bayros and Ashika Pratt. Serendipity much?!

Sujal Shah, Roger Williams, Nowshad, Raja Khanna
Sujal Shah, Roger Williams, Nowshad, Raja Khanna
MissMalini, Surelee Joseph, Ashika Pratt and Malini Ramani
MissMalini, Surelee Joseph, Ashika Pratt and Malini Ramani
Sujal, MissMalini and Roger
Sujal, MissMalini and Roger

Since my in-laws live in Long Island we got in some family time with them and the cousins as well 🙂

family time
family time

Part of which included Nowshad chasing me around the house like this..!

Fun fact: I don’t know if you know this but apparently lobsters mate for life. I once learnt this on an episode of FRIENDS once randomly 🙂

Nowshad and lobster
Nowshad and lobster

Also remember this lobster from the Four Seasons brunch? Apparently Nowshie thinks all lobsters are British! *LOL*

On the weekend our friend Roger Williams (aka Roger Maha Roger) planned a BRILLIANT Sunday Funday for us which started with brunch at Felix, a French bistro in downtown Soho, over a pitcher of Bloody Marys that were YUM!

Felix, Soho
Felix, Soho
Puja, MissMalini and Roger
Puja, MissMalini and Roger

Meanwhile the boys were super thrilled to have someone to share their orders with, thereby allowing them to pick TWO things off the menu to share 🙂 Because honestly, how DO you pick between a croque monsieur and the steak tartare?! #FirstWorldProblems

Nowshad and Alok
Nowshad and Alok
Felix, Soho
Felix, Soho

Of course Bombay follows me everywhere so I grinned to myself when I saw this sign:

Bombay Duck
Bombay Duck

Fun Fact #2: Bombay Duck is actually a fish. And it turns out you CAN find 6 degrees of separation (even in a city of 12 million people!)

It was SUCH a beautiful sunny day that we decided to stay outside and dropped into the popular beer garden where we played table tennis and that awesome game Heads Up I was telling you about!

Nowshad and Puja Chand
Nowshad and Puja Chand
beer garden
beer garden
heads up
heads up

Oh btw, one of my favorite experiences in NY was using that Uber car service I told you just launched in India! Super quick rides from wherever we needed a pick up in under 10 minutes, plus free candy 🙂 #FTW

Uber, NY
Uber, NY

Two of our dear friends (and the heart & sould behind the brand Sher Singh) who have now moved back to NY also took us out to dinner the week before Halloween.

MissMalini and Preeti & Sonny Caberwal
MissMalini and Preeti & Sonny Caberwal

I bring this up because their adorable munchkin was dressed up as a little white kitty cat and I’m pretty sure Nowshad enjoyed the party almost as much as the kiddos did!

Nowshad's little halloween
Nowshad’s little halloween
Sonny, Preeti and Rania Caberwal
Sonny, Preeti and Rania Caberwal

Later that night we had a glorious Italian dinner at a new spot in Soho which plays awesome hip hop tunes while you dine. My kinda place, Charlie Bird 🙂

MissMalini, Preeti, Sonny and Nowshad
MissMalini, Preeti, Sonny and Nowshad
Charlie Bird
Charlie Bird
Charlie Bird
Charlie Bir

PS. iOS users in NY you will love what the Caberwal’s are up to now! It’s called BOND – a mobile app that lets you send gifts and handwritten notes—in seconds, right from your iPhone! Coolest thing ever; the handwriting robot they have named “Giles” – look what he can do! 🙂
Facebook Like! bondgifts

Even LATER that night we reunited with Roger and gang for some Karaoke action in Korea town at a place called Sing Sing. It was exactly as cheesy and awesome as we had hoped. Oh and extra props to fashion blogger Isaac Hindin-Miller for absolutely epic singing skills!

Karaoke at Sing Sing
Karaoke at Sing Sing

For the rest of our trip we hung out with the family, watched a haunting but brilliant movie call 12 Years a Slave and found yet another delicious burger joint! This one’s part of a chain started by TV iron chef Bobby Flay known primarily for his gutsy “throw downs” which he often loses 😛 but these burgers were a massive win in our book 🙂

Bobby's Burger Palace
Bobby’s Burger Palace

As per Nowshad’s tastebud jury however, Shake Shack took first place so we drove around till we found one in Long Island too!

Shake Shack
Shake Shack

We also popped into the other China Town in Flushing, Queens for some roast duck and pho. Nowshie’s fave 🙂 Yummy!

roast duck
roast duck
Pho
Pho

Last but not least, one of our late night cabbies in NY was a spirited fellow from Bangladesh who immediately got excited when Nowshad spoke to him in Bengali. Not only did he regale us with stories of how he had once met his musical idol Bappi Lahiri (and of course showed us a picture) he also handed me this business card just in case we ever need a “renound” table & octapad maestro in NY or otherwise 🙂 Awesome.

IMG_20131024_142324

So that was it! A pretty action-packed week all-in-all! On the way back I flew through Dubai again and had a Hollywood flashback moment when I stepped on this escalator….

Dubai airport
Dubai airport

Has anyone seen an 80s movie called The Heavenly Kid? The escalators to heaven in that movie looked just like these!

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