Happy Birthday Ezy and A happy Wedding Anniversary to Us!

Hello everyone. It has been a long time since I have done a blog post and it is because I have been lazy to do it.  I am a person who loves to talk face to face with people or over the phone with family and friends who I cannot meet regularly. My daughter  Magali has been pestering me since such a long time to do a post so I decided that today is the right day that I should do it.
Today being 20th January happens to be my husband's birthday and our 21st Wedding Anniversary.
Happy Birthday Ezy and a Happy Wedding Anniversary too.
It is 21 years ago that I gave up my career since my husband who is a Captain in the Merchant Navy wanted that I should sail with him and that we would be able to spend a life together rather than being apart when he would join a ship.
Time has gone by like the seas, sometimes smooth sailing with not even a ripple on the waters and then sometimes were like the choppy seas and bad weather but basically we have managed to keep ourselves together without allowing any outside interference to break us apart.
I really do not know what life has in store for us but I hope and pray that we keep in Good Health and have a happy life together along with Magali.

I love you Ezy and wish that we have many more Wedding Anniversaries to come.

With all my love.
Sheila

Lego

Lego is  a line of construction toys manufactured by a company in Denmark.
I remember the time when Magali and I were sailing on a ship with my husband and I purchased the first Lego bucket for her in Singapore. Some months later we were in a port in Thailand and since it was December 1994,

Some of the minifigures from Magali's lego collection.
Photograph by Magali.

Ezy told me to buy some toys for Magali for Christmas. I went to the toys department and bought lot of mini figures and different sets of Lego. Every morning when Magali woke up I used to give her one box and would love to see the excitement on her face when she opened the box. She was small (about 2 years and 8 months) and thought that Santa was giving her all those gifts.When Ezy  was free all three of us would sit on the deck (floor of a ship) in the cabin and make all the sets and really love to try out different things that could be done. Magali really loved Lego and some were used and thrown out while some are still there and displayed in our show case. Magali was just clicking some photos a few days ago.
I remember those lovely days we spent as a family on a ship and made all different things with Lego.

Love to all,
Sheila

This post is part of ABC Wednesday

C for Captain

This post is dedicated to my husband Captain E Vaz and all the Captains in the Merchant Navy.

Our family on the ship.

Most sailors are away from their families for at least 4 months when they are out at sea sailing from port to port and have wives in every port.... that is only true for the unfaithful kind.
It is really good  that the contracts for higher ranking officers are  not more than 4 months so they can be home more often. I remember the time when Magali and I were sailing with  Ezy for 18 months at a stretch. Magali had forgotten our home in Mumbai and for her the ship was home and when I came home when the ship was in Mumbai port she was crying to go back home (the ship). We really enjoyed the time spent together as we got to visit a lot of Asian ports though Magali does not remember much because she was between 18 months and 36 months of age.
So for  all the Captain's I pray that you all have calm seas and following winds always.
Since you are in charge of the ship and all the lives on board may you always have God's blessings and guidance.
Take care,
Sheila.

This post is a part of ABC Wednesday.

A is for Andheri

For those of you who don't know, Andheri is a suburb of Mumbai. read more about it here.

Taken from here.

This is the place where I have spent 44 years of my life, the first half in Andheri (West) and after marriage in Andheri (East). It has changed a lot since we first came here so long ago. It was deserted, & a lot of it actually had forest cover. Now it is becoming pretty crowded. I have fond memories of the cottages and time when I used to play chor-police with my friends. It is basically one of the largest suburbs of Mumbai & I love living here.

This post is part of ABC Wednesday, I have been convinced by my daughter to start the ABC Wednesday challenge so I can post regularly on this blog! She is taking it too!

Have fun,
Sheila

Happy Birthday Magali

Today my daughter Magali is 18 years old.

I still very clearly remember 9th April 1992 when I was all alone at home and waiting for some news about the return of my husband Ezy from Gibraltar.

Around 7 am I started feeling restless and a few minutes later I felt the first contraction. Actually the due date for the arrival of my baby was 21st April but after all the football playing and kicks that I got, I was very sure that this baby would be wanting to see the world earlier than the date he/she was supposed to arrive. Having been a nurse I knew that her father would never make it for the arrival of his child because he had told the Doctor that he wanted to be in the labor room when the baby was making his/her entry into the world.

I ran up to my Aunt's house to call my sister since at that time we did not have a phone at home.

MTNL connections were being given after 2-3 years and we were staying in that house for only about 10 months. My sister and her husband came and picked me up and took me to the hospital.

By then the contractions were more frequent and painful but naughty Magali was not coming out. I had to wait till 8 40 pm before she decided that she had put me through enough of pain and with the help of forceps she made her entry into the world. A few seconds later I heard a loud angry cry and saw a red angry baby yelling. She looked so cute like a small chimp.

After that ordeal the only thing I wanted to do was to eat something since I was very hungry as I was not given anything to eat because the Doctor thought that if a Cesarean section had to be done then it was better that I should be (nil by mouth) hungry. An Intravenous drip was started in the morning itself so as such my baby was getting nutrition through that.

My sister and brother then went out and got me some hot food which I ate and fell off to sleep completely exhausted.

The next day onwards till to date I have been taking care of her single handedly with no help whatsoever.

The years have gone by really fast and I thank God for all my blessings.

Ezy will be coming home tomorrow and then we are off to Goa .

Summer Holidays begin.

Lots of love,

Sheila

Egg sandwiches and college days

Yesterday began as any other day since Magali was sleeping late and being a Sunday I too did not have to go out in the morning. At around noon time I received a call on my cell phone from a number I did not recognize and a female person asked me to guess as to who she was. I thought of a different friend from college who is settled in Mangalore but the voice did not match.

Sitting on the steps with my friends in
Lonavala. Can you spot the 17-year-old me?

She reminded me of our degree college days when we used to play Table Tennis and bunk college to go for movies. Now I somewhat guessed that she was one of the five friends from my group because she mentioned 'egg sandwiches'. Those were the days when we were allowed to carry whatever we pleased into a cinema hall and our group always planned as to what each one of us would bring for all to eat during the intermission. The menu for the four of them used to change but I invariably had to make egg sandwiches for all of us because all of them loved the sandwiches and so did I. I had finished college and gone to Bombay Hospital to do my Registered Nursing while the others did what they planned to take up as a career. Two of the friends got married and are homemakers and two are single and career women. While two are in Karnataka state (one in Udupi and one in Mangalore) three of us are in Mumbai itself.

Us again! (left to right): Sujata, Neeti, Eleanor & Me!

The best thing that happened was I got hold of all their telephone numbers and spoke to all of them. So yesterday I got in touch with four friends whom I had not met or spoken to in years. We are planning a get together either here in Mumbai or in Mangalore.

A holiday together would be great fun. We had gone on a holiday together in December 1980 to Khandala and I happened to have 2 photos which Magali has managed to capture with her camera as we are too lazy to use the scanner.

With love,
Sheila

Hello everybody

My husband Ezy in his uniform
feeling very bored.

Hello. My name is Sheila Araujo Vaz. I am born and brought up in Mumbai and I do not think I will be happy in any other place. I am a homemaker though I trained to be a nurse before I got married in the year 1990. My husband Ezy is a Captain in the Merchant Navy and I have spent many years sailing with him and though I had terrible bouts of sea sickness in the beginning I later became 'a sailor's wife' according to Ezy because after 2 months the sea sickness flew out of the porthole (that's sailor lingo for window).

My daughter Magali pretending to
steer the ship.

My daughter Magali is going to be eighteen very soon. How the days have gone by. I remember holding her as a baby the day after she was born and her father was speaking to me on the phone from the port of Gibraltar and feeling very sad that he could not be with us at once. He came 10 days later. Now she is a childlike mature girl who still wants to play silly games with me and I sometimes wonder how the years have flown by. She herself has been a blogger since a long time & introduced me forced me to blog.

Ezy & Me on the ship.

Though I had not started blogging I have been reading a lot of blogs and I really do not know how often I will blog because I am not much of a writer. That is Magali's forté. I will write as and when I am in a mood, and I should warn you all that I am a pretty moody person as I am a Cancerian.
My free time is spent as a Volunteer at The Home for the Aged close to home. I have been going there for nearly seven years.
This is all I can think of for my first post. Will post sometime soon.

Take care,
Sheila

*all three pictures in this post were taken during our trip sailing with Ezy in the year 2008.