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Indian formalities are interesting. For the second time this week I have been waved on during a police (today I think it was an army) check for bikers. Usually they just check your license to make sure your papers are in order and let you go. Since the whole huge rape outrage (I don’t want to talk about it, at least right now) I’ve been pulled over, halfway, twice. As soon as they see that I’m not a man – I’m not sure they can tell I’m a foreigner because I wear a scarf around my face – they wave me on. It’s strange.
The interesting thing that happened last week was my office’s holiday party. Back in the US we would have some food, maybe someone might say something – it might even be at a bar. We had ours in our office. One kid who hangs out in the office for his homework was also there; he loves to dance and performed a hip-hop Bollywood number. I danced a salsa social (as in not choreographed) dance with a friend of mine, and a tutor who plays classical flute also performed a song. There were several games as well as a “fishpond” (phrases that people submit and everyone has to guess who they’re about), titles with crowns (all very nice), and a game to make food – creative no? Although I was looking forward to the party, I was pleasantly surprised to be thoroughly involved in, what I might call in US terms, a kind of cheesy but really enjoyable party. One game involves one team starting with a song, the other team has to find any word from that song and start singing a new song (not made up, but real songs). For fun I raised my hand to be captain of a team. It was so much fun to be ridiculous – I managed to get three songs that I knew and our team won. We’re very silly and competitive at work. It was fun to perform (although I was completely nervous) some dancing in front of them. Somehow I feel that this kind of party would have never happened in the US.
The quantity, and maybe the quality of my posts have decreased. This I can attribute to two things. First, in general, nothing really seems that new anymore. Yes, there are things that continue to shock me, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the traffic, some smells, some of people crassness or gentility and kindness, etc. However, after over two years here, it’s a little difficult to pick up on all of these things anymore. I like that. The second is that I’ve been super busy. Partly work has picked up a lot recently. Partly my out of work time has been super busy as well. I like that too.