Yes I've heard of cricket

So one of the biggest events of my stay here in India is about to begin, when the Indian national cricket team starts the 2011 Cricket World cup in Dhaka, Bangladesh playing and hopefully defeating the Bangladeshis (India is kinda heavily favored to win) on saturday.  To say cricket is important to Indians is like saying that most Egyptians are mildly excited to see Mubarak leave office.



He's actually yawning



Indians go absolutely crazy for cricket and this world cup has dominated the news for the last week.  The Indian national team is under huge pressure to win the cup after the rather disappointing loss in the 2003 world cup finals to Australia.  One of my new Indian friends who happened to be at the finals in 2003, described it as a house of cards collapsing (Australia really embarrassed them in the finals).  Cricket is probably the only thing that the British gave India that is not treated with some disdain.  One of the best examples I can show pre-world cup is the magazine that I accidentally bought the other day.

And Outlook is the Indian version of Time magazine

The tagline for this magazine is Genius. Giant. Gentleman. A 51st Century Legend.  The entire magazine, some 104 pages is dedicated to this one cricket player, Sachin Tendulkar.  The guy is like the Michael Jordan of cricket, but hes had a career that spans roughly 2 decades, his first match was in 89 when he was 16.  The guy is also a class act off the field, and has avoided the massive amounts of corruption that has plagued other top indian cricket players.  Anyways cricket is rather confusing to the untrained eye (aka Americans) but due to the cricket world cup mini-game on my cellphone I have successful learned how to play and the rules. 

Videogames are educational

The terminology is also falling into place as well (things like overs, centuries, and wickets).  I even managed to understand how well India played in their last friendly before the World Cup (they beat NZ) and understood that we couldn't leave the apartment to play soccer until we saw Dhoni (Indian cricket player) hit a century(score over 100 runs).  If you are interested I suggest not reading the wikipedia entry on cricket as its kind confusing, but rather try this website http://www.howtoplaycricket.org/ or watch a video (you'll still be confused).  Anyways when India triumphs in the World cup at the finals on April 2nd, I fully expected a massive celebration in the streets similar to Madrid after the Spanish team won the World Cup this summer.

Please let India win

So will wrap up this ramble about cricket and leave you all with this picture.  A undetermined prize if you can tell me what music video this is from.

My current feelings for cricket

And this is the winter...

So lot been happening since the last attempt at a blog post, but I will start by thanking the Green Bay Packers for beat the Steelers.  I had met a couple of NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) who live on the other side of my hostel and live in the US, (kentucky, houston,  detroit, and maryland) and they invited me over to their room at 4 this morning to watch the superbowl eat pizza and other junk food.  Unfortunately my phone randomly turned off during my nap so I missed the first quarter of the game as I was a little late.  However, the remainder of the game proved to be good, with the packers trying their best in a typical Giants like fashion to blow the lead. 

The classes over here have really started up, which means I have more work than I would have had back at American, which is not how this is supposed to work out with the normal 'study' abroad.  Also my teachers keep forgetting that I'm still doing my undergrad and all expect me to be going for a PhD and academia (unlikely), as that is what most of the Indian masters students plan on doing.  I've already had to write several small papers about various topics and rapidly becoming fully immersed in the major Indian media sources.

On a different note, I can say I am a paid Indian actor, as I was asked by a Indian director to go shoot some scenes in a Indian movie.  He was on campus looking for European looking guys (white) when he ran into some of the girls on the program.  One of them quickly decided that I should be involved and without hesitating gave my number the director and told him to keep calling until I picked up.  On the third call from said unknown number (the director) I answered and was hurriedly informed that I should come quickly and meet them so they could take me to be filmed.  Next thing I know I am in the car with the director and his assistants hurtling down congested Indian roads.  Traffic in India is bad due to the complete lack of any traffic rules or regulations, but I can generally handle the chaos as the Indian drivers do have a signaling system involving honks and beeps that inform each other of when they are going to swerve into oncoming traffic to pass the car in front of them.  We however had a time deadline and since the film location was 65km away from the university our car was really moving.  Even the director was a little uncomfortable when the driver managed to complete an very ill-advised pass of a truck only when the big red truck coming our way (his actual lane) swerved to avoid hitting us.  We made it in record time and only nearly clipping 3 pedestrians and 8 cars/trucks/bikes.  They then quickly dressed me up as a 15th century Portuguese soldier (the role is was playing) which included these awkward;y heeled boots and a rather ridiculous hat.



Myself leading the charge, minus the other soldiers.

The scenes I was involved in show cased my dramatic and courageous swashbuckling skills in the background as other died in the foreground, and then my big shot the death scene.  I was killed not only with my throat being slit from behind (and gratuitous amounts of fake blood pouring from said wound), but also stabbed in the stomach by another armed shirtless Indian man.  I managed the take in just two shots with the first one being a poor take as i kinda forgot to go limp and collapse after suffering such traumatic and fatal wounds.  I then got a brief lunch was paid and began another questionably safe but fast journey back to campus where I rushed to make my 2:30 class, still with visible signs of fake blood on my face and neck.

With my agent failing to line up further shoots (waiting for the big one), I traveled with the study abroad group to Sringeri Mutt, which is one of the more famous mutts (temple/monastery) in India.  Read about here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sringeri_Sharada_Peetham  We met with the head guy (I had to take off my shirt men take off their shirts some weird S. India tradition) and he said a little prayer/blessing and gave us some blessed fruit.  We also saw some very large fish close up (pictured) in the holy water/river. 




These catfish are like 15-25 kilos and in N. India have started killing people no lie google it.

 Finally, the store has run out of the strawberry cereal that is filled with crack and I have been addicted to, which may or may not have something to do with me buying and consuming a large portion of their stock.  They were vague as to when they would receive more (probably uncomfortably looking to cut me off).  In regards to the title its starting to peak at around 98 during the midday lunch time, and is only going to get more hot and humid as India moves from the "cold" winter months into the spring. Here are more photos.

Temple 650ish years old

Wats good

 Hasta la victoria siempre...wrong language.