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PANA Reunion 2008
By Adnan Qureshi, 8326/L
Yet one more successful reunion of North
American Petarians was held in Niagara Falls on 12 July
2008. Around 25 Petarians attended the colorful event along with
their families and friends. The day started by chit chatting and meeting /
greeting followed by a formal introduction by Petarians themselves. As
always Petarians flew and drove from all over to attend this event - people
came from as far as Wisconsin, Florida, New York and Little Rock, Arkansas.
Naeem Bhai 504/L
presented some souvenirs which he had brought from CCP to all the Petarians
who traveled a distance to attend this reunion. Special
CCP caps were given to Shahid Mian Bhai 666/I,
Iqbal Hamid bhai 7272/Q and Siddiqui bhai. Tshirt
was given to Kamal Qadri
88125/A and 3 Petaro key chains were distributed among Imran
Yaqub bhai 7174/L and
others. Naeem bhai gave away his own CCP cap to
Nasir Awan bhai 7729/A who was the chief organizer
of the event.
Food was later on served and people enjoyed food and talked about Petaro.
Anwar Memon bhai 48/LF brought around 10 Kilos of
Gulab Jamun, Jileebi and Barfi for the Petarians
which people could not finish and so every one in the park was invited to
come and join the celebrations. Fahed bhai 7942/Q
brought a special CCP cake.
It was decided to convert a days reunion to a 2 day event from next year.
For this reason Iqbal Hamid bhai 7272/Q offered
his services if friends want the PANA Reunion to be held in Florida. Some
friends were of the opinion to hold it in Toronto for the first time and
later on switch to other cities. It was also decided to put this in the
forum so that other Petarians could also voice
their opinion. A committee was formed for this reason among the participants
to volunteer for the next year's event. It was
also decided to divide PANA into minimum of 4 zones for organizational
matters, namely East coast, Central zone, West
zone and Canada. Naeem Saroya
504/L would continue to be the Chief Coordinator.
It was also decided that one or
two volunteers would be
required from each coast as coordinators to arrange for the next year's
reunion. All those interested to represent the zones were
requested to send in their names. The formation of
PANA East Coast was welcomed which was represented by Imran bhai
7174/L. It was also
appreciated that PANA EC decided to use PANATalk as their Yahoogroup rather
than making their own sub group.
It was also decided that the next years PANA reunion would be held
on the Last Saturday of month of June (June 27,
2009) and the date will not be switched.
A group photo session was held at the end and
people stayed until late night as gup shup continued over cups of coffee.
As always it was a time well spent.
Friends are requested to write their own version of the days event and post
photos on the group's
website. Some of the pictures are posted on the PANA Talk website.
Report by Dr. I. Zafar
Hamid, 7272/Q
It was a pleasure meeting
and seeing so many old colleagues. Adnan, Nasir, Mani Bhai, Anwar Memon bhai,
Asif, Kamal Qadri and the team had done a great job.
In my personal opinion,
meeting was very productive as we were able to discuss the future happenings
of PANA. Naeem Bhai was very instrumental in
suggesting and guiding us through the meeting.
Before, I go any further,
I would like to wish Adnan the best with his future endeavors in Pakistan.
Adnan has elaborated very
nicely about the meeting and the minutes are well written. Obviously,
everyone has been working for keeping the PANA alive and healthy but it is
about time, as discussed, to bring some procedure and policies in its’
administration.
Local meetings are great
but to make our Alumni , the most vibrant unit, networking has to be more on
the global level. May be, if we are able to streamline our Unit here, our
central body will also work to get their act together.
Arranging the Annual
Meeting on a more professional pattern in different regions will bring a lot
more Petarians together which will benefit the members as well as our Alma
Mater.
In the end, I will salute
all those pioneer members who worked very hard beyond the call of their
duty, to establish the foundation and give us the vision and opportunity to
do what we are planning to do. Special thanks to Ikram and
Bashir Memon
bhai with whom I had the privilege to work with in early eighties in the
establishment of Petarian Association. |