Congratulations Shalu & Deepak!

Yesterday, I was privileged to witness the marriage of two fantastic people - my good friends, Shalu & Deepak. I've known Shalu for several years - ever since she started her Masters in my lab. Shalu was, if I recall correctly, thrown into the middle of my (ridiculously large-scale) experiment and informed that she was to learn our lab protocols by "helping out with" (translation: doing half the lab work of¹) my PhD experiment with me, at the same time as taking her graduate level courses. Once my big experiment was done, we soon moved on to her (also ridiculously large-scale study)... oh wait, there was her pilot study before that, and a pre-pilot, and a pre-pilot-pilot. Plus, we decided to do a "small" (translation: normal size for anyone else's lab) unrelated side-study during her pilot, because "wouldn't that be an interestingly little study to do and sure, we have enough time to do them simultaneously"². What this meant was that, for stretches of three or four months at a time, we were together in the lab from about 8 am to around 5 pm, with no breaks, 7 days a week³. And the astonishing thing about all of this was that, when a study ended, not only were we not sick of each other, as you would imagine two people spending that much time together would be, but we actually missed each other after a day or two of not seeing one another! Shalu is just that kind of awesome person - so much fun to be around, such a great person and a great friend!

Fortunately, after she finished her Masters, Shalu and I have stayed in close touch. Blog That Needs a New Name readers may remember her from such events as:

• helping me move on a moment's notice
  
• my softball team
  
• the Seattle trip
• the Seattle trip that involved less 151 and more shoes
• my half birthday
  
• potentially healing my injured foot through magic
  
• showing up on my doorstep bearing a New Year's present because my 2006 had been so miserable, to make sure my 2007 started off right
  
• being my BFF and she knows why (although I bet she doesn't remember now!)
  
• my first ever trip up the Grouse Grind
  

And fortunately for me, Shalu got a job working at the same site⁴ that I work at even before I got my job, so I had a ready made lunch buddy when I started work!

I'm trying to remember the first time I met Deepak and, although I'm not positive⁵, I think it might have been the Seattle trip. And I do know that he bought me my first ever Jager Bomb, on my half birthday. And he was there to help me move too. Like I said, Shalu and Deepak are awesome peeps. And now they are married to each other - how cool is that?

And speaking of cool, their wedding ceremony was the coolest thing I've ever seen⁶. Coolness included (but is not limited to):

• Deepak making an entrance on a horse, led by a marching band and surrounded by his family, dancing
  
• Shalu & Deepak wearing absolutely gorgeous outfits
  
• seeing Shalu & Deepak so very, very happy - they were smiling, and laughing, throughout the ceremony and you could just see how happy they were to be wife and husband
  
• more delicious Indian food - there was a lunch held at the temple after the ceremony
  
• I got to wear a sari! Shalu & Deepak helped me pick it out - I absolutely love it!
  

Here are but a few photos (you can go to my Flickr to see all of them⁷):

And the festivities continue tonight - the reception! Stay tuned for more photos and stories!


¹our lab couldn't afford a lab tech, so we had to do all the lab work ourselves.

²upon retrospect, that was a rather silly idea. Although we did get a published paper out of it, so I guess it was OK in the end.

³we would also often have to come into the lab late at night, around 10 pm to midnight-ish, to take blood samples, but we usually traded off so that only one of us would have to come in, whenever possible.

⁴different group though, doing different things, but in the same building complex

⁵at Shalu's wedding shower, we discovered that Shalu can't exactly remember the first time she met him either, so I don't feel that bad.

⁶granted, it was almost all in Hindi, so I couldn't actually tell what was being said, save for the odd word in English ("exemplary couple," "McDonalds," "pizza", "you have to buy her beautiful clothes now Deepak"), but Shalu had written up what each part of the ceremony means in the program, so we could follow along.

⁷I didn't get any good ones during the ceremony as the scene from where I was sitting was back lit, so my photos came out grainy. I can't wait to see the ones from the professional photographer which, at last count, will number over 3 billion.