You've got mail

A colleague sent me the email below because he thought I would appreciate it. He was right.

Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 2:57 PM
Subject: Indians easy 2 identify!

1. Everything you eat is savored in garlic, onion and tomatoes.
2. You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil.
3. You are Always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport.
4. You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think it's normal.
5. You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp.
6. You recycle Wedding Gifts , Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts.
7. You name your children in rhythms (example, Sita & Gita, Ram & Shyam, Kamini & Shamini.)
8. All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names.
9. You take Indian snacks anywhere it says "No Food Allowed"
10. You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house.
11. You load up the family car with as many people as possible.
12. You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch.
13. Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won't let you do certain things because of what the other "Uncles and Aunties" will think.
14. You buy and display crockery, which is never used , as it is for special occasions, which never happen.
15. You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table.
16. You use grocery bags to hold garbage.
17. You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible.
18. Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff )
19. You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes).
20. You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker.
21. You fight over who pays the dinner bill.
22. You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. ( And they prefer it that way).
23. You don't use measuring cups when cooking.
24. You never learnt how to stand in a queue.
25. You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are traveling by bus, train or plane.
26. If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel proud to spread it at the velocity of more than the speed of light.
27. You only make long distance calls after 11 p.m.
28. If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight.
29. You call an older person you never met before, Uncle or Aunty.
30. When your parents meet strangers and talk for a few minutes, you discover you're talking to a distant cousin.
31. Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls.
32. You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty.
33. It's embarrassing if your wedding has less than 600 people.
34. All your Tupperware is stained with food color.
35. You have drinking glasses made of steel.
36. You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping.

Cellular

Indian Cell phone etiquette

1. Never put your phone on silent. Ignore requests to do so in conferences and movie houses. You have the latest tune as your ring so why not let other people enjoy it?
2. Don't use voice mail, noone does. Far more effective is to ring someone incessantly until they answer - they will either have become available in the interim or you will have cracked their resolve by the eighth try and they will answer.
3. Avoid the possibility of the person on the other end of the line missing important information. When you are saying something important take the phone away from your ear and move it in front of your mouth like a walkie talkie. They will be able to hear you much better this way.
4. Talk on speaker phone whenever possible.
5. If the latest caller tune ring tone isn't enough for you why don't you load another caller tune for when people ring you. While they are waiting for you to answer they will be able to tap their feet along to your chosen beats instead of being bored to death by the same old ring ring.

Shall we dance?

The one thing I will say about Indian men is that they can dance. They have both the rhythm (integral) and the undisguised delight in the sport that combine to make a good dancer. Most unlike many of their male South African counterparts who specialise in something more akin to a self concious shuffle. Often at parties there will be a group of just guys dancing together, having a ball and completely unphased by the lack of oestrogen in the group.

I too have been working on mastering the art of dancing to bhangra music. I was fortunate to have a tutor who took me for Bhangra Dancing 101. She made it look so effortless but essentially there are three components:

1. Pat the dog. This is when you put your hands at hip level face down and move them back and forth.


2. Answer the phone. Put your hand in the vague vicinity of you ear with your thumb and pinkie out and shake it.


3. Screw the lightbulb. Hold an imaginary lightbulb above your head and alternately screw and unscrew it.

Interchange the above three movement whilst moving your hips back and forth to the music. Now you're dancing. Sort of.

Redemption day

Thought for the day

"Don't come up unless you have been invited by the host or the performer. Everyone should have their own special moment in the spotlight. They waited your turn now you wait yours."

Tony's Karaoke Etiquette, page 1.

On Friday night we arrived in Goa pretty late and rather than mission anywhere we decided to go and check out the hotel bar. We arrived to discover that Fridays are Karaoke night at the Marriot. Still scarred from being tuned out of a rousing rendition of "You're just too good to be true" at the Colony Arms in Johannesburg (trust me when I say that this is a very bad sign as the other singers are not exactly brilliant - the Karaoke man just didn't go in for my "but it's the passion with which you sing and not the ability" argument) I adamantly refused to sing.

As the night progressed my resolve gradually weakened and I sang a duet with Chanda. It helped that we didn't know a soul in the place and were able to sing the songs from our seats at the bar. Boldened by the relatively good response to our duet I decided that it was time to redeem myself and sang "You're just too good to be true" on my own. Sucker for punishment some might say. I prefer to think that I've improved - the audience was enthusiastic and the Karaoke man let me sing the song through to the end.

Next to me was a man named Ravi. Ravi was patiently waiting for the Karaoke to start when we popped our heads into the bar before dinner and still there when we arrived threee hours later. Ravi DOMINATED the karaoke. I started chatting to him and he told me that he came to the Marriot every Friday for karaoke. He was very good but he was also incredibly serious about the whole thing. It was as if he was just waiting to be discovered by a talent scout - I guess the Marriot in Goa is a good a place as any to be discovered. Where most of us were just messing around he looked on disparagingly and when it was his turn (which was often) we all had to respectfully quieten down and listen to him. Now I haven't been anywhere else in Asia but from watching 'Lost in Translation' and speaking to other people who have I get the impression that people take their karaoke very seriously right across Asia. When Chanda was in Bangkok she saw Karaoke booths where you could go in and sing karaoke by yourself!

So this is for you, Ravi. If any of you are looking for a singer with a great voice in his late thirties who can sing an enormous range of songs from Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" to the latest Bollywood hits go to the Marriot on a Friday night and ask for Ravi.

Goa Goa Girls

This weekend was spent in the lap of luxury. Thanks to Chanda's weekly commutes to Atlanta and staying in a residential apartment owned by the Marriot we got to stay in the Marriot hotel, a far cry from the very basic backpackers I have been staying in up to now. Chocolates on my pillow, a bed so comfortable you wanted to stay in it the whole day, a sea view, water pressure that didn't erratically run cold and was strong enough to wash all the conditioner out of my hair; I was in heaven. We spent our days lazily sunning ourselves at the poolside on the sun loungers. The pool even had one of those cool bars where you sit at the bar in the water! Chanda was tickled pink by the flags on each of the loungers that when raised made the waiters come scurrying.

I rather naively assumed that the sun shone far more gently on India than harsh Africa (the effects of the hole in the ozone layer etc.) and was a little late in applying sunscreen. I was wrong as the peuce hue of the entire front side of my body attested. To make matters worse (and more comical for Chanda), it is a lopsided, afternoon burn significantly worse on the left side of my body. I should have taken the cue of the leathery brown, seasoned tanner on my left who we affectionately dubbed the lizard due to his habit of lying on his stomach on an upright lounger (I don't know if you can picture this but it looked incredibly uncomfortable". From the moment we woke up till long after sunset he religiously lay in the sun assiduously swivelling his chair every hour or so to ensure that he didn't make the school boy error of getting a lopsided tan as I did.

I've reached a temporary saturation point with my India reading and am currently reading 'Freakonomics'. The book inspired me to wonder what the total cost of a tan is for somone like him when you factor in the cost of his flight, his accomodation (clearly he had no cost for sunscreen, the potential cost of skin cancer and the opportunity cost of the hours spent tanning. Not cheap I would think.

The evenings were spent drinking Fenny Caju and revelling with fellow holiday makers.

Of all the places I have been so far, Goa is definitely the one that I could come back to for a month.