This is the end?

So as I watch my last sunrise in manipal, I contemplate and come to the conclusion that i havent 'contemplated' enough to write a witty or even intelligent eamble (purposely mispelled in retrospect).  Rather than letting a rambling post like the last one occur again, i will detail you my return trip in all its horror, starting with 1.5 bus ride to mangalore, a 1.5 hr flight to bombay/mumbai a 8ish hour layover and then a 16hr flight to newark just to arrive absolutely delirious at 5:30am on Sunday just in time to try and stay up to shock my system to east coast time.  In actuality this trip has been one crazy ride and while the rambles are kinda cricket heavy you need to understand that that what drives the average Indian male when it comes to sports.  Anyways shout out to everyone behind in India fighting the good fight and whatnot.  I leave you currently with this by far the greatest news parody I have ever seen. (sorry onion this has you beat)  http://www.galacticempiretimes.com/2011/05/09/galaxy/outer-rim/obi-wan-kenobi-is-killed.html

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.

And then there was no part 2

So between my general laziness, travel week, and questionable Internet connection the part 2 about Goa has yet to materialize.  As your all undoubtedly heartbroken I;m going to combine the Goa into a massive traveling in India post that will eventually be made (maybe).  The real reason why this blog post is coming up is that India has advanced to the finals of the world cup on saturday.  And they beat Pakistan to do it.  Pakistan and India have gone to all out war 3 times in the since independence, had several sub-open warfare conflicts, and more recently India has accused the Paki intelligence service ISI of being behind several terror attacks in India, including the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2002 attack of the Indian Parliament.  Therefore this match was probably the most important of the tournament for India, with several Indian commentators calling it more important than the actual finals and likening it to a pseudo-war.  Its estimated that well over half of the Indian white collar workforce either took a half day or didn't work at all, and in Pakistan there was a similar workless situation.  (versus Sri Lanka btw)  It was interesting knowing that there were an estimated Billion people watching or listening to the match.  In the aftermath of this match, the streets which had been mostly empty during the match erupted with people shouting screaming flying down the road on motorcycles and cars etc...  The only thing I can compare it to is when Obama won the presidency in 2008 and DC erupted in similar street celebrations.  The celebrations are still ongoing, but have moved away from the streets after the initial hour or so outburst of noise and craziness.  The only reason why the celebration for a win on saturday might be bigger than this win over Pakistan is because the day after is Saturday and not a week-day.  Right so thats the update for now lets go India crush Sri Lanka.

Creative Title Part 1

So its been a while since I updated the blog, and alot has occurred since the last update.  Therefore, dear random readers you get a two part update.  So anyways this first part will be a general update about the current situation here in manipal and the second part will be about my trip to the ancestral homeland, Goa. 

So to continue with where I last left you, the world cup has been proceeding along.  India has been doing fairly well but recently lost  to South Africa in a game they should have won easily.  Other highlights so far of the tournament include the Irish upsetting the heavily favored English (at one point the English were favored 400 to 1 in the match)  and then Bangladesh also upsetting the English.  Despite these upsets there is still a good chance that England will make the next round and India seems to be in the next round as well.  Unfortunately for India while their offensive batting has been superb for the most part, their fielding and bowling (pitching) has been rather lackluster which does not bode well for them against the better teams.  Also here's a picture of the Irish cricket player who destroyed England's bowlers, Kevin O'Brien.



Yes his hair is dyed pink


Anyways, whenever an interesting match is on, or an India match, the activity among the population of manipal and I'm guessing to a greater extent the rest of the country slows down dramatically for the duration of the match.  These matches last for like 5 or more hours normally.  Also the screams increase dramatically, as the fans watching the match in my hostel scream and clap for just about everything.  For 5 or more hours.

At least they don't have vuvuzelas

Class wise i have had a slight break in actual class time as several of my professors were away at conferences, and the Indian IR masters students had a psuedo spring break.  However, that simply meant that my professors gave extra readings in their absence.  Temperature wise, its now close to or around 100 everyday, and is supposed to remain or get hotter for the remainder of my time here.  The real problem though is that as we approach the monsoons, thankfully I leave before they hit in June, it gets increasingly humid in addition to being hot, so basically similar to summer in DC.  Other big news is that this coming weekend kicks off our psuedo-break/ travel week during which the group is going to travel to Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty and a tribal area, a wildlife preserve, Cochin, and go on a backwater trip in Kerala on a boat.  I'm excited and will certainly give an update about the trip after we get back on the 27th.  So stay tuned for part two of the update, Meeting the Relatives.

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.