"Yeah, I'll be like, 'Uh-huh! Yenakku un kanavan, beeyotch!'"
-Maria, on how she'll explain to the nice theoretical Iyengar woman that her man ain't comin' back no mo'.
(..Imaginging how to translate the Lady Saw song 'I've Got Your Man' into Tamil.)
I didn't get to engage in any of the Cal Day festivities (other than riding the exciting free quasiperimeter bus to the bank and back) because we at the I-House were having our Spring Festival. Yeah, we're coo'.
I spent the first few hours eating, watching performers and shopping. The rest of the time I was up at the Indo-Pak friendship table alternately explaining the mysteries of pakoras and kheer to the uninitiated and watching performances on the Great Hall stage.
First, food:
- Spanish bits and pieces (olives, cheese, quince, etc.)
- A bowl of laksa (Singapore)
- Curry fishballs and mini-satay (Hong Kong? It was an Asian Christian group.)
- Some sort of mystery drink from Peru (The Peru table was also giving out nice canvas tote bags with tourist information. Everybody loves Peru now.)
I watched and photographed copiously a South American folkdance, Congolese soukous and a Norwegian couples' dance. I also spent more money than perhaps I should have buying two paintings from the Mongolian art table. The paintings are great, though; one is a pastoral scene with camels and such and the other (the expensive one) is a historical painting of a Mongol horseman's last moments. Cool. Now I need to get them appropriately framed and conservafied. I also got a few shots of a Beijing Opera soloist while doing the transaction.
I then had to take the paintings back to my room and find a safe place for them 'til I can bring them home. On the way, though, I saw Zophia at the Poland table and hung out for a bit. Yes, I might have also availed myself of some canned fruit and coconut milk dessert at the Viet Nam table next to Poland. I also managed to snag some Greek bread, olive oil and cheese.
After I came back and grabbed my icy-cold cup of palmyrah seed, lychee, jackfruit etc., I went up to the balcony where the Indus table was. My original idea was to lean on the balcony, watch the performances in the Great Hall and chill, but I spotted Saeed at the table and went over to join him. So that's where I ended up for the next four hours, with a break partway through to snag mini-okonomiyaki, teriyaki mochi and the very last skewer of curry fish ball and quail egg. I did the videotaping of the last few acts for Gurbux, who was constantly running here and there. That digital camcorder rocks. :D Oh, and I was grilled about how to make kheer by a Pashto guy and had a good, smug conversation about Dravidian civilization with a Malayali. (The Sikh guy then came over and teased us.) Since the fashion show had already happened, Saeed was looking like Mr. Sindh 2005 in his ajrak and mirrorwork cap. The other South Asians eventually left (though not before a flurry of email-addressed napkins were exchanged in all directions and sufficient snapshots taken) and Saeed and I settled in to watch/film the last fifteenish minutes of the show.
I almost forgot -- we were trying to figure out what to do with the leftover pakoras when a woman came up and was excited by the prospect of the free snacks. We suggested that she would be welcome to take the whole tray and -- she did! We all were very happy.
Finally, a girl came by and told us that she needed to take our tablecloth and that we might as well start putting stuff away. We headed downstairs with the camera, kheer ladle, stray papers, my flag and all. We then proceeded to take over a reasonable amount of the scanty free space in the supplies room for an impromptu fashion shoot of me in the ajrak and mirrorwork cap before we were interrupted by what I hope was a good-natured jab by Gurbux at Saeed (which I won't expound upon here -- the original was in Urdu and you don't need to know either! >;))
That's when I went back up to my room, wrote out one of the amusing episodes in my writing journal and proceeded to crash. Then I got up long enough to take off my shoes and nicely place the ajrak and such on my bureau and returned to bed.
(Incidentally, while sleeping, one of my dreams involved me walking by a frat house, finding the nicely-bleached jawbone of some animal and presenting it to Saeed's wife (who seemed to be conveniently in Berkeley) in some sort of bizarre cavewoman bonding ritual and becoming immediate best friends. I mean, hey, people who like bones are probably equally and compatibly weird, right?)
So that was my day.
(Un /di/ tsayt hob ikh mayn verterbukh! Na, dir! Hebraiyish verter!)
Haynt hob ikh gegangen mit Undzer Fraynd af zayn klub-unternemung. Ikh bin friyekh geven, ober as er is gekumen.. Aza fraylekh! Aza nakhes! Er is sheyn oysgeputst in a tunklgroy kosoyst mit a shvartzer knips. Beste fun ale iz zayner rayekh -- zis, mit vanil und jasminblumen. Tor mentshn (mener, dos iz) geveyntlekh nisht zikh parfumirn mit aza parfum, ober er iz zayer a shtarker. :) Er hot lebn mir gezetst. (<-- gramatish tsores!! Kenstu, ober, vos ikh meyn.) Nisht mit zayne andere khaveyrim, un nisht mit zayne lerers, mit MIR! Kent er ver iz di beste. ;)
Naynnayn. Mir hobn geton nisht nitgedakht (tsum badoyrn!). Ober..S'iz take zis, di tsayt mit im. Zis, vi zayn rayekh.
(I would /never/ have been able to write that in English with a straight face! Vey und vind!)
It seems the fragrance of new flowers and bees' buzzing has intoxicated Srini to the point where he wrote a love letter to a girl. While we were all hunched around the seminar table and arguing about whether or not email is an acceptable medium for romantic epistles, George just stood shaking his head.
"You know what they say about love, Srini?" Uh oh! We know George's thoughts on love! (Hint: they're pretty similar to mine, as you will see.) "They say that if you are in a room and you see a beautiful woman and you feel a magnetic attraction to her.."
Here I broke in: "You friggin' RUN! In the other direction! Get the hell out of there!"
George nodded sagely. "Exactly."
(Of course, this is the same George who once advised Sujatha and I not to get involved with boys; Sujatha frowned a little then showed him her wedding ring.)
Good times, good times..Don't you wish you were a Tamil student too?
Kh'vil zaynen zayer a shlekhte maydl.
Haynt-bay-nakht hob ikh geredt mit mayn 'demon' Carol vegn undzer fraynd. (Kh'vel im azoy heysn az kh'vil nisht zayn nomen dertsayln!) Hot es onheybn vi geveyntlekh -- kh'hob ir gezet in der zal un mir hobn ge'flirted' a bissel. Hobn mir (oykh vi geveyntlekh!) geredt vegn metshelekh. Undzere mentshelekh. Zi hot shtark gevolt visn vegn Undzer Fraynd. (Ein mol, kh'muz dertsayln dir, er hot zi gezet in der kave-sho un gefregt vu bin ikh. Zi hot gezogt, 'Du bist ir /gut/ fraynd! Far vos veystu nisht?' Er is /shtark/ 'embarrassed' gevorn!)
Un hob ikh dertsayln vegn dos.
Ale mayne inyonim vegn dos. /Ale/.
Ober, dos is nisht der 'funny' zakh. /Dos/ is vos Ehsan hot gezogt geyendik in zal:
"Hey!"
"....It sounds like you had an interesting day."
Un hob ikh moyredike geshmaykhlt.
"And you didn't even hear the /really/ scandalous part!"
Efsher vet er, itst, vartn aroys fun mayn tsimmer hern vos iz der 'scandalous' zakh!