Name: Mohamed Bharoochi
When and where: Sunday, January 3rd, 2016 at Richard’s Pub, East Greenwich, RI
Beverage: lemonade (Mo), beer (me, although I’d finished it by the time this photo was taken, and had moved on to water)
Last time we met in person: my visit to the UK in May 2014
Friends on Facebook: since October 2010
Friends in real life: since August 2007

I met Mo through our friends Scott and Ruth. Mo and Scott used to work together, and we first met when he gave us a ride to Scott and Ruth’s wedding in August 2007, where Mo and his wife Sumaya were acting as witnesses. We’ve stayed in touch since then via email and now mostly on Facebook, and I’ve seen him on most of my trips back to the UK. Through Scott he’s also become friendly with Ted and Susan via Facebook but they had never met in person… until today.

Mo and Sumaya flew over on New Year’s Day to celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary in New York City, then had arranged to spend a few days in Boston with Scott and Ruth, before flying over to San Francisco. Mo and Scott secretly planned this little rendezvous in Rhode Island so that Mo and Ted could finally get to meet. We had to be really careful not to let the cat out of the bag, especially in these past few days when we’ve spent a fair amount of time around Ted and Susan. We met Mo and Sumaya off the train from New York at Kingston Station and headed to Richard’s Pub, where we’d arranged to meet up with Ted and Susan for lunch. Scott, Ruth, Chris and I sat at a table for six, and Mo and Sumaya sat at an adjacent table for two. Ted and Susan arrived a short time after and took the remaining two seats at our table. After a couple of minutes of conversation, Scott asked Ted if he recognized the man sitting at the next table… here’s a photo of the exact moment of realization:

I’d say we managed to pull off the surprise quite nicely!

We were fortunate this afternoon to suffer from the slowest, sloppiest service I think I’ve ever received in a restaurant in the USA. Two appetizers arrived a good 15-20 minutes before the others (which then arrived very promptly after another server got involved) and I lost track of the time it took to get our entrées. But on the bright side, it gave us all lots of time to catch up, and I’m sure we’ll look back on it and enjoy complaining about it for many years!