Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for January 2025

Finishing Numb3rs and understanding its essence

By Leave a Comment

Last night, Christina and I finished watching Numb3rs which ran from 2005 to 2010 over six seasons. As succinctly explained on IMDB, “working for the FBI, a mathematician uses equations to help solve various crimes.”

The young mathematician is Charlie Eppes (played by David Krumholtz) and he works with his brother, Don Eppes (played by Rob Morrow), an FBI team leader, and his team of FBI agents.

Other interesting characters are Judd Hirsch as Alan Eppes (Charlie’s and Don’s dad), Navi Rawat as Amita Ramanujan (a computer scientist who is also Charlie’s girlfriend) and Peter MacNicol as Larry Fleinhardt (a physicist / philosopher / best friend of Charlie) who, during a few seasons, falls in love with Diane Farr as Megan Reeves (Don’s No 2 in the FBI).

This love story between Larry and Megan is probably the cutest thing in the whole show. Larry as the awkward geek and Megan as the one being agreeably amazed by Larry’s behaviour is very nice. Megan left after a few seasons to pursue her career.

Other characters are Alimi Ballard as David Sinclair, Dylan Bruno as Colby Granger, Sophina Brown as Nikki Betancourt and Aya Sumika as Liz Warner (all FBI agents in Don’s team with the latter the “rebound” girlfriend of Don during a few episodes).

Nikki and Liz are cool badass FBI agents. They are strong, decisive and have powerful personalities, unlike their male colleagues (David, Colby and, even, Don) who are more passive. Makes for lot of interesting situations where the girls take power (or lead the conversation).

Lou Diamond Phillips as Agent Ian Edgerton is also another badass. He is a sniper and catches bad guys who flee (including abroad). He appears in 8 episodes only but, as he has an imposing personality, he is quite memorable.

Finally, I need to mention Michelle Nolden as Robin Brooks (an Assistant US Attorneys who is Don’s real girlfriend). She is not as memorable as Ian but she plays an important role in, at the end of the show, anchoring Don to what is important in life: living.

I liked Numb3rs. The maths is interesting (mostly) but the characters, being mostly nice and genuine, make the show.

In fact, it’s not a show about the FBI but about developing friendship and love.

Christina and I are PADI Open Water Scuba Divers

By 1 Comment

Today, Christina and I are absolutely delighted to have been certified as PADI Open Water Scuba Divers. This is our gift to ourselves for our 25th wedding anniversary!

To be certified, we had to complete four training dives in the sea, a number of training dives in a pool as well as a very long and quite complex theoretical course which was followed by an online exam.

We opted to do our training with Scuba World Ltd, based at Le Preskil Hotel in the beautiful bay of Mahébourg. I already knew the owners, Daveena and Christophe, who I had met during my UNDP days. They assigned Visham to us as our dive instructor and he was great. He shared his experience with us and, little by little, we understood what was needed to become a good diver. On our third dive, we descended to 17.5m.

Now that we are certified, we can dive in open water all over the world as buddies (or with an instructor) up to a depth of 18m.

We managed to do everything over a period of a little less than one month. Our first dive was on 16 December 2024, the second on 4 January, the third on 7 January and the fourth and last one, today, 10 January 2025.

Of course, we celebrated this fantastic milestone with a good beer on the beach. A big thank you again to the Scuba World Ltd team. Thanks to you, we are divers!

Celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary

By Leave a Comment

Today, 8 January 2025, Christina and I are proud and delighted to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Our love for each other remains as strong and vibrant as it was when we first met. We love spending time together, seeking new adventures (like the PADI Open Water Diver Scuba Divers certification we’re doing now) and having fun everyday.

Our journey began with a memorable wedding on 8 January 2000, a beautiful blend of oriental and occidental styles that reflected the diversity of our multicultural family and friends.

A few years later, Anya and Kyan were born and raising them into the amazing young adults they are today is our proudest accomplishment as parents. Today, both of them are studying in France with us looking from a distance and they are doing well. What more can one ask for?

Over the past 25 years, Christina and I have grown both personally and professionally. We are happy to be independent, balanced and honest people, cultivating meaningful relationships with family and friends. As we are now half a century old, we have accumulated some wisdom on what is really important in life. Hint: it’s not money.

A big thank-you to everyone who have been and continue to be part of our journey. Your love and support have made these years truly special.

To celebrate, we had lunch at Le Skipper, a small and very good restaurant in a boutique hotel at Pointe aux Biches. Later, we met some family members at Flying Dodo for drinks and dinner. Here are some photos.