And Then The Biggest Surprise Of My Life!
By Arjan Bhullar
Our last stop on the tour was the city of Bangalore. We visited a Hindu temple which was over 1000 years old. The detail in the building was pretty incredible. We followed that up with a press conference at the opening of India’s first IMAX theatre (a Canadian company). There’s a pretty funny picture of me going around from the press conference….just to clear things up, I was looking back at the media asking PM Stephen Harper questions!
On our last night in Bangalore I had one of the biggest surprises of my life. Minister Bal Gosal told me there was a “roundtable meeting” taking place and he wanted me to accompany him into the meeting. So I went up and got all fancied up one last time and came back down. We waited for PM Harper to come, and that was normal for the trip- he was real busy getting things done. So after a roughly 30min wait we headed into the room.
In the room was all the media members of the delegation and myself. The weird thing was there was no table in the room. So I’m thinking to myself “shouldn’t there be a table for a roundtable meeting?” But I didn’t want to be asking too many questions and felt I wasn’t the right person to question our governments methods.
So I started studying the walls for a secret sliding door or something, thinking it was a high-security meeting and under super secrecy. No door was spotted. Next thing you know PM Harper walks into the room and comes straight to me and says, “Hi Arjan, I understand you were unable to make a certain ceremony in Ottawa?”
I was so caught off guard I started stuttering and couldn’t even come up with an answer! Instead of thinking of an answer all I could think of was, “He still knows my name!?!?!” LOL!
He then pulled out a medal from his pocket which commemorates the Queens Diamond Jubilee (60 year reign) and is presented to individuals for “their contributions to Canada”. There was a ceremony for all Olympians in Ottawa before, and I was so bummed out that I couldn’t attend. Apparently Minister Gosal thought this would be a good occasion to surprise me with the medal.
Man did they get me……and I don’t get “got” often. I was so badly caught off guard that I could barely put a sentence together. I think I came up with something thanking the PM for supporting amateur athletes and the Olympic movement….it was all a blur. It was so obvious how badly they got me that the entire room was laughing at one point. Luckily Minister Gosal’s assistant yelled that we should get into a wrestling pose, so I was also able to come away with a pretty sweet picture.
Definitely an awesome way to end the trip. A trip of a lifetime. Memories to hang onto forever.
