Chp 542. Mumbai Christmas

As a blogger, this Christmas was special to me because having blogged for 10 years now, this was the tenth time that I was blogging about my Christmas experience. And going through all my previous Christmas blog posts indeed brought back a lot of memories. That’s what I love about blogging - That nostalgic feeling.

My Christmas posts ranged from Hyderabad to Bangalore to Delhi to Mumbai to Aizawl. Each of them was unique and fun.

This year too, I spent Christmas with my Mizo family here in Mumbai. I attended the Christmas function conducted by our BMCF (Bombay Mizo Christian Fellowship) held at YMCA International House in Mumbai Central.

It was a bit difficult waking up early on Christmas day but I managed to get ready and took a taxi to the venue location.

Going past Sea Link all alone made me miss last year’s Christmas even more as SHE was there with me back then. This year, it was just me, all alone…

Since this was the first time I was going to YMCA International House, I marked the location on Google Maps and followed the direction via GPS. I reached 30 minutes early, and the place was really nice and quiet.

Our MMA and BMCF leaders were some of the few people to have arrived early, and people started setting up the place. It was also a good time to take photos :D

Here’s a short video I took before people started arriving. And as mentioned in the video, I’m still starting to get the hang of my new phone, so some of the video qualities may not be that great. In fact I ended up accidentally muting the sound many times with my fingers and even took some of the videos in HDR format, which isn’t really a wise choice, as you can see below…

However, things got better from there onwards. We had our first tea/coffee break as we waited for others to arrive…

This guy Bee-a was everywhere…

But I guess I shouldn’t post some of the pics I took of him, like the ones in the loo etc…

I tried experimenting with the HDR feature of my new phone, combining different levels of exposure in one shot, which I think came out pretty good as you can see from below…

Our two duet singers Camy and Gemi too were looking around for someone to take their selfies when I just happened to walk close by… Watch their music video further below…

We started the function soon enough. Here are some of the little cuties enjoying the moment while the adults attended the Christmas programme…

The volunteers at the reception desk too were busy most of the time, managing not just the people but the entrance fee, donation, seating arrangement etc as well…

Mah precioussssss....

And then of course there were those selfies and SELFIES. Note the difference.

This is a selfie.

This is a SELFIE.

Once the first session which consisted of the main Christmas service including the sermon was over, we had a short tea/coffee break again. This was a great time for another round of photo session.

Other people stepped out for tea and coffee… where I met this guy yet again...

Here’s a video I captured on my new phone. By the way, all the videos on this post were originally 1920 x 1080 but I had to render it at 540p with varying bitrate of 3000 to 6000 kbps to make the file size smaller without much loss in quality so you can easily view them from YouTube. But if you have a slow connection, the videos may not appear very clear...

The second session soon started. This was mainly entertainment, and everybody had a great time.

Here are some of the awesome songs our talented Mizo members sang on stage. I recorded short clips of the duet, solo and group song…

Here is an awesome dance performance from Sophia, enthralling the entire auditorium with her elegant dance moves.

Once the second session was over, it was soon dinner time. During the second session, there were a lot of photos I didn’t get to take. Like for this instance where they called me out on the stage and I had to participate in an event about match-making and choosing one’s partner… As usual, I was the last one to be picked-up by the female kind, but guess I’m pretty used to that by now. It was a fun activity. If you want, you can view some of the photos here and here, as the photos I’m putting up here on my blog are just the ones I took from my Oneplus One phone.

Here are a few more photos of selfies…

Once the second session was over, we had dinner. I roamed around the place taking one last video of the peeps…

After dinner, we had one last round of photo session. That was a great time too.

After this, there was the Christmas after-party, but guess I can’t post any of the photos and videos I took with my phone since I was threatened by some people not to post those online :)

All in all, it was a great Christmas function and I’m really glad to have taken part in it.

Cheers everyone…