Barack Acceptance Viewing Party

Barack Acceptance Viewing Party

So this evening, I'm off to Priya to watch the Barack Obama Acceptance Speech. It will be old news by the time we gather to watch, but I'm very excited to watch in the company of my american democrats here in Delhi. It really is quite fascinating to think that halfway around the world, there is an active community of Democrats who are interested enough in the election that they have organized a viewing party at a hotel in town.

Now, I don't think the US embassy will be well represented - after all, the embassy staff is largely republican today - so this means that normal folks are going to make up most of the crowd. I had promised myself I wouldn't view his speech in advance, but of course I did (the last 5 minutes anyhow). And my initial response was pretty positive. The spectacle of it all was quite impressive - to think that more than 75,000 folks would gather to hear a future president speak says a lot about the renewed interest in politics this election has stirred.

Anyhow - I'll take some photos & give you all the look into politics abroad.

Mccain & Hitler?

Mccain & Hitler?

DENVER (Colorado): John McCain's campaign hit back at Madonna after the pop diva kicked off her world tour with a concert that bracketed the US presidential candidate with Adolf Hitler.

Madonna's swipe at McCain came during a performance of 'Get Stupid', when McCain's image was flashed up alongside images of Hitler and Mugabe.

Towards the end of the song, pictures of John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi and Barack Obama appeared. "The comparisons are outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive." McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

More Safe Sex Education in India

More Safe Sex Education in India

Thanks for the Article Sally:

NEW DELHI (AP) _ A cell phone ring tone that sings "Condom, condom!" has been launched to promote safe sex in India, where condoms carry a strong social stigma and HIV and AIDS are growing problems, health experts said Tuesday.

The a cappella ring tone features a professional singer chanting the word condom more than 50 times, a playful approach that public health activists hope will spark discussion and make condoms more socially acceptable.

"We've made a conscious effort to move the concept of the condom away from negative association, like HIV and sex work," said Yvonne MacPherson, country director of BBC World Service Trust India. "Condoms are actually health products and if you have a condom and you use it, you are seen to be smart and responsible."

Nearly 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV and the disease is still largely taboo.

The BBC group, which is funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, hopes the condom ring tone can make people in India more comfortable with safe sex issues.

More than 270 million people use mobile phones in India and ring tones, especially those featuring hit Bollywood songs, are extremely popular.

"A ring tone is a very public thing," she said. "It's a way to show you are a condom user and you don't have any issues with it."

The ring tone was launched Aug. 8 and has been downloaded 60,000 times, MacPherson said.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

I stumbled across this article today about a crazy group of foreigners here in Delhi. I have to admit, it sounds like fun!

It was an unlikely sight - autorickshaws trooped into the elite JW Mariott on Thursday, and out jumped dozens of foreigners in glee.

To the uninitiated, it was bizarre. But the jumps and squeals were justified, as the 39 foreigners had braved a 2,000-km drive all the way from Chennai in the rickety three-wheelers. And for a good cause: to gather funds to improve the living standards and education opportunities for villages between the two metros, as part of the CEAT Mumbai Xpress-2008.

The incentive was not just this, but also adventure - and madness.

"The event's brief said that you should be really mad and based on that criteria we thought we qualified pretty well," said Greg Callaghan from Britain who was dressed as Batman. Callaghan and his partner Keir Admonts (dressed as Robinhood) adopted seven villages on the way.

Full Article here

Big Dips

Big Dips

Big Dips. This is what my Driver Dharmender calls Potholes. "Big Dips Sir, roads really bad," he often exclaims on our way to and from the office.

As you can imagine, in the middle of rainy season, the road is FULL of big dips these days. On Thursday, we experienced especially bad rainfall & the roads deteriorated even more. The roads were so bad, that cars were blowing their tires left and right on the road back to Delhi.

In fact, the Newspaper reported that the road to the International Airport was so flooded, that visitors from abroad were left carrying their luggage through the rainstorm down the completely flooded access road in order to catch flights.

In front of my office, we have an especially big dip, one that was caused by construction crews digging to lay a new pipe in the road. For the past several weeks it has been left open, a gaping wound in the pavement large enough to cause traffic to merge to one lane.

On Thursday, this hole was filled to the brim with water in the heavy rainfall. Suddenly, the huge hole appeared to be nothing more than a small puddle - which is when things started getting very strange...


Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Unfortunately, at least 2 cars had succumbed to this hole by the time I left work. It should be noted that no traffic cones were placed in front of this hole, simply a few stones. Thinking this sort of accident would encourage something larger be done to alert drivers, I looked again this morning. Still no sign had been raised.

Singh is King, Singh is King, Singh is King!

Singh is King, Singh is King, Singh is King!

So, new movie on the airwaves these days. For the last week or two, I've been bombarded by commercials, spam text messages, ringtones & spam phone calls for the new Bollywood moving Singh is King. I have a prepaid account here with Vodafone, and so I am particularly susceptable to the spam mesages - it is just a part of life in India. At least 3 times a day, my phone will buzz & a long hindi message will await me. So, I decided to look a bit further into Singh is King - proof advertising works - and this is what I found on wikipedia. I'm giving you advanced notice, that I can't decipher a storyline - so you probably wont either. But, be sure to read to the end - there is a surprise at the end.

Lakhan Singh "Lucky" is the "king" of the Australian underworld, a position which he reaches after being jailed for a wrong offense, when some one keeps drugs in his bag, as soon as he reaches Australia. He takes the revenge after completing the jail term , by killing those involved, and eventually he reaches to the position of King,. The high point of his journey is when he Happy Singh (Akshay Kumar) promises to bring Lakhan Singh back to his village. However his boarding pass gets mixed with someone else and then meets Sonia (Katrina Kaif) whom he starts loving but upon reaching his destination things take a precarious turn when a series of comic misadventures run him out of any money.

He finds lucky's house and lucky tells him that he cannot come back to India leaving his buisness and throws him out. He is fortunate to find warmth and affection in a elderly lady (Kirron Kher) whom Happy treats like his mother. In a strange turn of events Lucky is saved from a life threatening attack by Happy risking his own life.

Inspite of this, Lucky is paralyzed and Happy becomes the new "King". The elderly lady comes back to him saying that her daughter is comming from India but doesn't know that she is poor. Happy gives her a conslolidates her and gives her a home to find out that her daughter is Sonia and she is engaged to Puneet (Ranvir Shorey).

Puneet comes to know that Happy is the king and tells Sonia whom upon hearing this gets dissapointed because of her harted against criminals. Puneet hires Mika Singh (Javed Jaffrey) Lucky's brother who is hungry to become the "king" (the only thing stopping him is his partial blindness and deafness) to kill Happy.

Mika tells one of his men to kill the paralyzed Lucky where as he will kill Happy at Punnet's and Sonia's wedding after he recives his specially ordered hearing and eyesight aid. When the hitman attemts to kill Lucky, Lucky snaps out of paralysis. At the wedding Mika's men attacked, the cowering Puneet runs away and leaves Sonia alone Mika's men try to grab her but Happy protects her and fights them at the end the preist unknowingly declares Happy and Sonia married.

Happy tries to ask for forgiveness for this mistake but Sonia accepts him as her husband. while they are leaving Mika encounters them, now with his aid. Lucky then comes and shocks them all Happy tells Mika that being the "king" is no great thing Lucky always found sadness being the king. Mika then cries and hugs his brother. The credits scene shows that Happy brings Lucky back to India.

Got that?
I didn't think so. But here is the greatest part of this movie. The Bollywood studio got Snoop Dogg to record a track for it. Yep - Snoop D o Double G.

Enjoy:

I'm Nesting

I'm Nesting

Wow, in a sign I've officially started to consider India home, I took advantage of the Independence Day Holiday (now celebrating 60+ years of British Free Living!) and cleaned up around the house. I guess clean isn't the right word (although, for having a guy come daily to clean my apartment I sure found a lot of dust bunnies), but more like re-arrange. Nest even.

I finally got around to removing the hideous wooden fake flowers & glittered birds on a stick that were in a vase. I moved a few lamps into the main family room to let a little light in, I found a few pottery pieces I'd never noticed & even figured out how to open some of the curtains.

In the process, I decided I detest the random Chinese jewelery box that has been sitting in plain sight for two months & so I unceremoniously put it away. I will say, the place looks much better. Now, it still has a bit of the "serviced apartment" feel to it, but it does look lived in. I don't think I'll be in this particular unit for much longer, I may move out in January, so I'm going to leave the pictures in place for now. But, I will say the place looks much more welcoming and inviting. It looks like I live here.

Rainy Weather & Hot Samosas

Rainy Weather & Hot Samosas

I've been patiently sitting in the office waiting out the crazy monsoon rains. We've been getting rained on most of the day & the roads are being punished for it. With tomorrow being Indian Independence Day, many of our office co-workers headed out early today. The early reports have been streaming back in of commutes upwards of 2 hours.

So, in the middle of blogging, surfing the web, and twiddling my fingers, I get a call from Alfred. He's given up on making it home & instead parked his car nearby. The best part? He has a bag of fresh - piping hot - Samosas. Now that is the way to wait out traffic!

Bangalore is the new Footloose!

Bangalore is the new Footloose!

In a move reminiscent of the movie Footloose, Bangalore is continuing to enforce it's ban on dancing... at least in bars where music is playing.

This is what protesters are claiming anyway. It turns out that in Bangalore, a city where officially alcohol sales must end at 11:30 (but unofficially can be purchased on MG road at all hours) also has a rule stating that for dancing and alcohol to co-exist, you must have a special license. A license that is rumored to be impossible to get - apparently in four years, not one has been granted.

Couple this with the noise ordinance (I hope you like not dancing in bars with music less than 6 decibels), and what is a young, hip & wealthy crowd to do? Protest.

This Week in Hindustan Times

This Week in Hindustan Times

From time to time, I like to enjoy a newspaper on my way to and from work. More often than not, at least 1 or 2 articles jump out at me - and I am forced to share them with you. Now, don't get me wrong, if you picked up the USA today, you would find equally bizarre articles, like that man who was too fat to be executed, or the town that wouldn't deliver water to the black side of town (yes, these are both true!).

If you've been following the Olympics, you may have heard that India won it's first ever individual Gold Medal at the Beijing Olympics. the lucky athlete was Abhinav Bindra. He won gold in the 10 meter Air Rifle. This victory has whipped the Indian Press into a frenzy. Wednesday's issue of HT featured many interesting articles for my blog. Here are a few snippets.


Bride for Bindra:
Young, rich, good looking and the man who will go down in history as India's first Olympic Individual Gold Medallist, Abhinav Bindra now also heads the country's list of most eligible bachelors.

The phones in the Bindra household haven't stopped ringing from Monday and it's not just congratulations that are pouring in. So are the marriage proposals. Abhinav's Mother Babli Bindra says that they've got quite a few offers. "We have been receiving calls," she says.

Babli on Tuesday was quoted as saying t hat, after his glorious win, her son was "the most eligible bachelor in India today."

A Flyover Named After Olympic Champ:
Olympic Gold Medallist Abhinav Bindra would soon have a flyover named after him in the capital. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has announced a cash award of Rs 5 lakh for the sportsman.

And then, the not so funny...

I Am Better Than Bindra, He Said And Killed a Man:
Drunk landlord in Gurgaon wanted to show his shooting skills to his tenants...

...Satyanarayan told the police said a drunk Sant Ram (38), armed with a pistol, entered their room on Monday evening and started bragging about his shooting skills. He claimed that he was better than Bindra who had won an Olympic gold a few hours earlier, he told the police.

The landlord then allegedly ordered the two brothers to place a water tumbler on their heads so that he (the landlord) could take an aim.

"He barged into the room and waved the gun towards us. He kept on saying that he was a better shooter than Abhinav Bindra. He ordered us to keep a tumbler on our heads and said that he can shoot it without harming us. He even shot the wall clock in our room trying to prove that he could shoot accurately," said Satyanarayan.

He added that when they did not oblige, Sant Ram allegedly shot at him, missing him by a few centimeters. "Then he aimed at Satyajeet and shot him in the abdomen. He told us he could shoot so accurately that the bullet would pass through our legs without hitting us," Satyanarayan said. source