Random Observations

This ramble will be a  ramble consisting mostly of random observations I have had lately.  Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station er I mean ramble...

Or as Admiral Ackbar would say that was a Star Wars reference in the opener if you missed it.

First I like to start by saying random power cuts are a regular occurrence in many developing countries, including India.  Here in Manipal I'm not exactly sure what the electric grid hook up is, but the power manages to stay on most of the time, unlike in other parts of India which can regularly go without power for hours.  That being said Indians, mainly guys, like to scream very much like little girls or yell or make other noises whenever a power cut happens after dark and the lights go out.  If the hostel has already been closed (after midnight) things go even more crazy as air horns get blown in addition to the whistles, and things are occasionally thrown out of the windows, mostly bottles or other garbage not furniture so far at least.  I'm not sure why they react this way when the lights go out, but it reminds me of a prison riot scene in any movie or documentary that features prisons, specifically I'm thinking American Me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPTiPfSLCUI.  Well probably not that extreme. I think it has to do with it being guys only hostels but that's just a theory. 

This brings me to another observation, the hostels could double as prisons if necessary.  You may think I'm joking but i have bars on the windows along with having a bolt on both sides of the door, meaning if i forget to padlock the bar someone could slide the bar over effectively locking me in my room.  This was the first thing the hostel office guy warned me about as apparently this happens somewhat regularly.  Also the terminology is straight from a correctional facility as well with wardens in charge of the hostel blocks, and apparently the handbook refers to residents as inmates (dont quote me on the last one just what i've heard).  Kind of makes me laugh knowing that I'm supposed to refer to dorms at American as residence halls during tours and not dorms because of any negative connotation that might arise with the word dorm haha try negative connotations of prison.  On the flip side of things though, there are no communal showers or shankings (that i know of).

Also last week was utsav or the culture week.

Did not see this performance and have no idea what is going on

All afternoon classes were canceled so most of the girls in the program took off traveling.  My afternoon classes were shifted all into the morning though oh yeah!  Anyways, the week long utsav consisted of various competitions and showcasing of cultures between the various schools here at manipal.  I watched some of the early week Indian cultural events as I ate dinner.  The weirdest thing was probably one of single dance routines.  It was guy and I could have sworn he was auditioning for a male stripper job with his moves.  After that I only went back for the modeling performance on Thursday as I knew some people in it and the fusion western Indian group dances on Friday night.  The model show was more of a 12 minute story that needed to be narrated as people walked about in costumes or occasionally nice clothes.  The thing was overall rather weird and there seemed to be a common thread that in the fifteen competing groups, at least ten had a narration that was psuedo-feministic or it was something along the lines of save the earth go green. 

The fusion dance started out in a similarly questionable way with the first act having difficulties and partly messing up the routine.  However the KMCIC the international students in an accelerated medical program, mainly us or Canadian NRIs, put together a fairly impressive dance routine managing to actually sync western hip hop dance with Indian bollywood moves, something the other four groups had struggled with.  KMCIC won apparently the first time there school has ever one something so congrats to them.

So that seems like a nonsensical enough ramble for now.  I think I'm going to go to sleep now.

And then shit got crazy

So India won the Cricket World cup for the first time in 28 years and to put it bluntly the town and country exploded in celebrations.  People flooded the streets all over the place, with music, chanting, shirtless and painted men dancing and lots of honking cars and bikes.  I ended up driving around on the back of a motorcycle and got to witness the absolute insanity in the streets, repeatedly chanting and high fiving other people on or in other moving vehicles.

The Team. bleed blue baby

Things were rather insane as the town celebrated heavily.  Country wide, the Captain Dhoni's ancestral village is getting a new road, Kingfisher airlines has given the team lifetime free travel, and the Maharashtra state assembly wants to give the country's highest civilian award to Sachin Tendulkar, the Bharat Ratna.  People like Gandhi and Nehru have received this.

In other news, I had one of the IR kids Anand inform me that he had discovered the movie that I had been a dying Portuguese soldier in.  The film was recently released and apparently is a big hit both in southern India and even abroad as it was shown at the Hong Kong film festival  The title in Malayalam, the language in Kerala, is Urumi which is a type of sword/blade i think.  The wiki article is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urumi_(film) and the film's official website is here http://www.urumithefilm.com/.  While i didn't make it onto the official website, an obvious mistake my agent is on it, the guy who slits my throat from behind did.  Here's his picture.

I pride myself on knowing he needed to stand on a box to slit my throat.

Finally, I also gave an interview with a reporter from the Deccan Herald, which is supposedly the most widely read English language newspaper in South Indian.  The journalist had some communications issues with my accent and the end result is kinda like a funny version of the childhood game telephone when one person says something and by the time it gets back to them its completely different.  The article can be found here http://www.deccanherald.com/content/150672/indian-expertise-americans.html.  Some of my personal favorite misquotes are my Indian relatives in Goa being "involved in Indian culture", for the Your experience in India question, my imaginary given response of "Nothing special", and my apparent travels in "North and North-East India" from which I gathered that North Indians are more aggressive in contrast to the south (I haven't been to the N or NE)  And she managed to inconsistently spell my name as either the rare Daniel (correct) or the more common Daneil (incorrect).  All in all its turns into a pretty funny article due to some of the absurdities and weird English that its written in.

So to end this ramble, shout out to the injury prone Stall 11, do work at sectionals in less than 2 weeks.