This weekend I was surprised by the short notice visit I received from one of my good friends from school.
Keeping up with university buddies can be a difficult task. Just because of the types of jobs people in my education stream pursue, we seemed to have spread around the globe like will-o'-the-wisps in the wind.
Nameer Rahman and I properly met in a discussion about the developing world and the writings of an academic by the name of Sen.
Nameer, another chum named George, and myself all crowded around a table in the pub at the school discussing things like students are prone to do.
In this particular conversation I was the low man on the totem pole.
With Nameer a native of the country of Bangladesh and George having arrived from Kenya, discussions about the developing world were ones I could speak about abstractly, but could not apply the day-to-day knowledge these two had, both having come from a developing region.
Nameer had gone and gotten his Masters Degree in Political Science since those days when I first met him. After that, he was off to Toronto, then Edmonton where he worked as a policy analyst at the Alberta Legislature, and from there back to Toronto, then surprisingly back to Windsor.
Now working as a policy analyst specializing in energy and alternative energy, Nameer is working with a municipally owned utility company.
The fact we have kept up over this time is pretty significant in and of itself.
Nameer has since married his university sweetheart, a gorgeous Afghani girl who makes him extremely happy.
But he found some time, and with less than a weeks warning, came swooping into Regina for his first visit to this province.
I met up with him on Friday night, at 5:30 p.m.
After not seeing Nameer in well over three years, it was a joy to see the man who jokingly refers to me as the 'white version' of himself.
We immediately set out for a dinner, and our table was loud with animated discussion about this issue and that, about this policy and that, and where we felt the next federal election would go.
A political animal from birth, Nameer came from a family with political ties back in his country, and his grandfather had actually served as an ambassador for the Pakistani government in the 1950s and 1960s, when Bangladesh was still 'East Pakistan.'
He also has stories from his family about the brief but bloody war of independence the Bengali people fought against Pakistan in 1971, an uprising that led to the birth of the now independent state.
I brought Nameer down to this neck of the woods on Saturday, and introduced him to the most rural atmosphere he has ever tasted.
Fascinated by the growth of the oil industry, and in love with the wide vistas and thick woods the Moose Mountain region has to offer, he was wondering aloud by the end of his visit about the potentiality for him to pursue a life in this area.
Tickled by the whole visit, I made sure to tell Nameer all the great things I this neck of the woods, and all the great people (I was only able to introduce him to a few.)
The funniest moment of all came when I was driving Nameer back to Regina at 3 a.m. for his 6 a.m. flight on Labour Day.
I was talking about the region, how great it has been to me, and the wonderful opportunities that exist here, when Nameer said to me, "Okay, I get it Todd."
"You don't have to sell me anymore," he continued. "I'll be back soon, and I am going to bring my wife. I think she is going to like it here too."
So there you go. I am gifted to live in a place so wonderful that it sells itself to someone as educated and world-experienced as Nameer.
Now I need to draw some more people here!
