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You know I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm Hyderabad~
Jan. 4th, 2011 08:18 pmHyderabad
New city to add to the list: Hyderabad and with that I have successfully penetrated the state of Andra Pradesh. But if you're looking for some cultural insight from me, forget it! After Christmas, we wanted to get out of Mumbai but my company closed for Christmas and I didn't want to waste this time that doesn't count towards leaves sitting at home.
I mostly decided on H'bad because we had some friends over from there who stayed with us in Mumbai--actually, Angelica's friends but we all got friendly with them when they stayed over...cool guys, Ben and Ally and then four other girls came to stay as well: Avril, Claudia, Yasmin and Ilana.
They mentioned they wanted to charter a private ride to Goa from Hyderabad and I thought, what a good idea, let me come visit your fine city and stay with you and then we can all come together on what would ultimately be a party bus.
Big Mistake. Let's start at the beginning though.
We had our amazing Christmas dinner, courtesy of the my fine crew at Andheri West. I didn't have to work that day, so Eliabe and I went batshit at the groceries getting all the things we needed for our Christmas Dinner which my amazing Brazilian friend offered to make. Eliabe, I have learned, is a beast in the kitchen! I managed to be very productive that day: not only did I clean, do grocery and decorate the place (see previous post for results) but also managed to pick up my sari for a wedding I would attend on Sunday (26th), buy a dress for tonight, pick up beef and a Christmas ham and score some Filipino biko and ensaymada, basically local treats that my Filipino aunty here in Mumbai made for me!
Christmas day was also awesome because my friend Lisha who is "Indian Catholic", as they like to be called here, invited me over for such a great time, lunch with her family and friends and her parents are so cool and their house was so similar to my house. I felt so welcome and also, the lunch was non-veg and not only had chicken but beef AND PORK!!!
On Sunday, I went to my first Indian wedding of my coworker Archana to her husband Vishal and it was lovely because this one was a love match! As you know, many weddings in India are still arranged. The Sunday want ads are filled with matchmaking prospects, part of finding a partner here is studying their CV. In Mumbai, caste is not much of an issue any more but it definitely factors in somewhat. My friend Archana would have, 50 years ago, been considered an Untouchable! But lucky for her, that has been overcome and they had a Marathi wedding in Bombay, with all their family and friends and co-workers.
Unusual things about the wedding:
- People were sitting around talking normally while the ceremony went on. There's no intense solemnity like most wedding we're used to, just a lot of normal chatter, like in a train station or something.
- The reception was held in a hall, it was buffet style with typical big Indian thalis (large plates) and the food was delicious but most people sat on the floor! This is what people here are used to and while I didn't sit on the floor (someone found me a chair), I couldn't imagine doing that in my sari while all around me, many fine ladies managed to do exactly that, no problem.
I packed up my sari after the wedding, took a nap at my aunt's place, she made me and my uncle dinner and then I sped off to the train station to find Vasiliy and head to Hyderabad. It's an overnight trip and I like train rides in India, actually. Some people can't manage to sleep but I get some good sleep on trains and managed to read a book also. I woke up at one point because there was an orchestra of snoring around me; I put on my ipod only to realize that I didn't have any "soothing" music, mostly rock and stuff so I put on the piano tribute to MCR album which was at least wordless.
Then I had a nightmare in which I couldn't hear anything except MCR piano and I kept trying to act like I totally understood everyone even if I didn't, only to discover that I had inadvertently agreed to be married! That's when I woke up and it was like 4 AM on the train.
We arrived around noon and met up with Eliabe and Gustavo, who had arrived a little earlier and were napping. They hadn't had such a good time on their train which was on time but had mice and roaches, apparently. However, it was great to be together and the first order of business was to get some lunch.
And thus began the great Hyderabadi food trip. In the end we were in a food coma the whole time, managing to see only about half the sights on our list but spending hours trying the most delicious biryanis, tandooris and on our last day, the cheapest all-you-can-eat buffet. How can the food be so good in Hyderabad? I have had some brilliant food in Bombay but that city literally took the cake (and cake, they had, delicious cake).
Now on to The Mistake. We'd agreed to get on the party bus at 7PM which by Indian time is roughly an hour behind. So by 8PM, we'd finally manage to load the bus with people and trundle out the city only to be stopped and growled at the owner who insisted on 20K of the total 30K amount up front. It was pretty stupid but our American friend who arranged it handed the money over and finally we were off to Goa. I'd expected to sleep through the night and wake up to be leaving Karnataka state at least and be in Goa by 10AM.
It wasn't meant to be, thanks to:
- Three flat tires. Three. THREE. THREE.
- A driver who turned out not only to not speak English but didn't know where he was going and was also taking state roads and not Interstate, probably to avoid paying toll fees and pocketing the cash.
Plus everyone started to get really antsy and pissed off. I snapped at Eliabe once and he was ready to storm out of the bus and flip it over. And we were generally peeved because all day people kept calling me from Goa (the friends who went ahead) and asking where we were and I was near tears when we finally pulled into Goa around 7 PM. After that we had to find the place so we left the group and by the time we met up with everyone else at this extremely far beach, it was almost 11:30PM!
Nothing left to do but drink it up and party at the huge beach rave! Needless to say, NYE really worked out for the better. It was great to see people, see friends and hang out. The next two days were full of sun, sand, football on the beach, Philippe's sax-playing, eating delicious Goan fish curry, tanning (I'm so dark! Yay!) and hanging out with some of my favorite people...and thinking of course of what the new year will bring. I feel in my bones that 2011 will be a better year then previous. I think a lot of us had a crappy to mediocre year...I know mine started off hard...definitely towards the end, it was better because of India!
I once had a tendency to make really long winded NY resolutions. I mean, I wrote pages of them with explanations and justifications. So I'm keeping it simple this year:
1 | Be Honest
2 | Write a little bit everyday, if it's a blog entry, a story, fanfic or an article, DO IT.
3 | Draw a little more every day.
4 | Find a way to make life in India a little more comfortable.
5 | KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. And I want to keep everything nice and simple, especially relationships with people.
6 | Go to all the places in India (and then the REST OF THE WORLD!!!)
New city to add to the list: Hyderabad and with that I have successfully penetrated the state of Andra Pradesh. But if you're looking for some cultural insight from me, forget it! After Christmas, we wanted to get out of Mumbai but my company closed for Christmas and I didn't want to waste this time that doesn't count towards leaves sitting at home.
I mostly decided on H'bad because we had some friends over from there who stayed with us in Mumbai--actually, Angelica's friends but we all got friendly with them when they stayed over...cool guys, Ben and Ally and then four other girls came to stay as well: Avril, Claudia, Yasmin and Ilana.
They mentioned they wanted to charter a private ride to Goa from Hyderabad and I thought, what a good idea, let me come visit your fine city and stay with you and then we can all come together on what would ultimately be a party bus.
Big Mistake. Let's start at the beginning though.
We had our amazing Christmas dinner, courtesy of the my fine crew at Andheri West. I didn't have to work that day, so Eliabe and I went batshit at the groceries getting all the things we needed for our Christmas Dinner which my amazing Brazilian friend offered to make. Eliabe, I have learned, is a beast in the kitchen! I managed to be very productive that day: not only did I clean, do grocery and decorate the place (see previous post for results) but also managed to pick up my sari for a wedding I would attend on Sunday (26th), buy a dress for tonight, pick up beef and a Christmas ham and score some Filipino biko and ensaymada, basically local treats that my Filipino aunty here in Mumbai made for me!
Christmas day was also awesome because my friend Lisha who is "Indian Catholic", as they like to be called here, invited me over for such a great time, lunch with her family and friends and her parents are so cool and their house was so similar to my house. I felt so welcome and also, the lunch was non-veg and not only had chicken but beef AND PORK!!!
On Sunday, I went to my first Indian wedding of my coworker Archana to her husband Vishal and it was lovely because this one was a love match! As you know, many weddings in India are still arranged. The Sunday want ads are filled with matchmaking prospects, part of finding a partner here is studying their CV. In Mumbai, caste is not much of an issue any more but it definitely factors in somewhat. My friend Archana would have, 50 years ago, been considered an Untouchable! But lucky for her, that has been overcome and they had a Marathi wedding in Bombay, with all their family and friends and co-workers.
Unusual things about the wedding:
- People were sitting around talking normally while the ceremony went on. There's no intense solemnity like most wedding we're used to, just a lot of normal chatter, like in a train station or something.
- The reception was held in a hall, it was buffet style with typical big Indian thalis (large plates) and the food was delicious but most people sat on the floor! This is what people here are used to and while I didn't sit on the floor (someone found me a chair), I couldn't imagine doing that in my sari while all around me, many fine ladies managed to do exactly that, no problem.
I packed up my sari after the wedding, took a nap at my aunt's place, she made me and my uncle dinner and then I sped off to the train station to find Vasiliy and head to Hyderabad. It's an overnight trip and I like train rides in India, actually. Some people can't manage to sleep but I get some good sleep on trains and managed to read a book also. I woke up at one point because there was an orchestra of snoring around me; I put on my ipod only to realize that I didn't have any "soothing" music, mostly rock and stuff so I put on the piano tribute to MCR album which was at least wordless.
Then I had a nightmare in which I couldn't hear anything except MCR piano and I kept trying to act like I totally understood everyone even if I didn't, only to discover that I had inadvertently agreed to be married! That's when I woke up and it was like 4 AM on the train.
We arrived around noon and met up with Eliabe and Gustavo, who had arrived a little earlier and were napping. They hadn't had such a good time on their train which was on time but had mice and roaches, apparently. However, it was great to be together and the first order of business was to get some lunch.
And thus began the great Hyderabadi food trip. In the end we were in a food coma the whole time, managing to see only about half the sights on our list but spending hours trying the most delicious biryanis, tandooris and on our last day, the cheapest all-you-can-eat buffet. How can the food be so good in Hyderabad? I have had some brilliant food in Bombay but that city literally took the cake (and cake, they had, delicious cake).
Now on to The Mistake. We'd agreed to get on the party bus at 7PM which by Indian time is roughly an hour behind. So by 8PM, we'd finally manage to load the bus with people and trundle out the city only to be stopped and growled at the owner who insisted on 20K of the total 30K amount up front. It was pretty stupid but our American friend who arranged it handed the money over and finally we were off to Goa. I'd expected to sleep through the night and wake up to be leaving Karnataka state at least and be in Goa by 10AM.
It wasn't meant to be, thanks to:
- Three flat tires. Three. THREE. THREE.
- A driver who turned out not only to not speak English but didn't know where he was going and was also taking state roads and not Interstate, probably to avoid paying toll fees and pocketing the cash.
Plus everyone started to get really antsy and pissed off. I snapped at Eliabe once and he was ready to storm out of the bus and flip it over. And we were generally peeved because all day people kept calling me from Goa (the friends who went ahead) and asking where we were and I was near tears when we finally pulled into Goa around 7 PM. After that we had to find the place so we left the group and by the time we met up with everyone else at this extremely far beach, it was almost 11:30PM!
Nothing left to do but drink it up and party at the huge beach rave! Needless to say, NYE really worked out for the better. It was great to see people, see friends and hang out. The next two days were full of sun, sand, football on the beach, Philippe's sax-playing, eating delicious Goan fish curry, tanning (I'm so dark! Yay!) and hanging out with some of my favorite people...and thinking of course of what the new year will bring. I feel in my bones that 2011 will be a better year then previous. I think a lot of us had a crappy to mediocre year...I know mine started off hard...definitely towards the end, it was better because of India!
I once had a tendency to make really long winded NY resolutions. I mean, I wrote pages of them with explanations and justifications. So I'm keeping it simple this year:
1 | Be Honest
2 | Write a little bit everyday, if it's a blog entry, a story, fanfic or an article, DO IT.
3 | Draw a little more every day.
4 | Find a way to make life in India a little more comfortable.
5 | KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. And I want to keep everything nice and simple, especially relationships with people.
6 | Go to all the places in India (and then the REST OF THE WORLD!!!)
