Bhangra!

Maybe some of you have heard of the club hit, Mundian To Bach Ke Rahi? Those of you have should have heard of its creator, Punjabi MC. Well guess what? He was in Delhi this weekend and I went to see him!

Bhangra is by far the best dance music in the world. There’s none of that bloody posing that you find at the usual clubs, no awkward side-to-side shuffling or tentative hip-jiggles from the guys who can’t dance. When its time to Bhangra, everyone gets their hands up in the air and starts to jump around like maniacs. It’s a helluva lot of fun and I highly recommend it to people who just want to cut loose and don’t want to have to worry about what other people think about how you look.

BHANGRA!

Mother Ganga

Last weekend, 10 of us AIESEC Trainees were given a sign that we needed to take a break



and so we decided to head up to the Yoga centre of India, Rishikesh. The journey there was an adventure in itself, and it was something of a miracle that we were able to find our bus to Rishikesh in the chaos that is the Delhi bus and rail terminal.

It was an uncomfortable ride. The bus was hot as hell and the poor suspension was not able to soften the jarring journey along India’s potholed roads. Fortunately I’ve learned to sleep pretty much anywhere since the army, so it wasn’t too bad for me. My companions were pretty exhausted after a sleepless 8 hour bus ride, poor buggers. We arrived bedraggled and dirty at half past five in the morning. Fortunately there was Chai...


God's gift to mankind: Masala Chai.

The autorickshaw to our guest house struggled its way up the winding valley and dropped us in front of an alleyway that led to our home for that week. The New Bandhari Swiss Cottage was a very comfortable little place right with a restaurant that served both meat and alcohol, a rarity in the religious Rishikesh area. And with rooms that start at Rs200 a night it was also dirt cheap, a huge plus for us budget travelers.


Rooms start at 200Rs a night.


Worshipping at the feet of King Ricky-Kesh

As a weekend getaway trip Rishikesh is absolutely perfect. The air was fresh and the temperature significantly lower than Delhi. The almost constant tolling of bells in the distance added to its already very meditative atmosphere. And if you get bored of free Yoga lessons, chilling by the (clean!!) Ganga watching an aarthi, or the Rs250 hour-long massages, you can always go whitewater rafting (Rs650 for a 4-5hr guided trip)!


The Ganga is still clean up in Rishikesh


Whitewater rafting on Ganges!

I’ll say it again for those of you who are still skeptical. India is >fucking< happening!

I am an Indian

Alright so I know that I haven’t blogged in a while. What can I say, I’m in India; I run on IST. But to appease all of you, my faithful (and demanding) readership, I’ve decided to make up for my tardiness with my next two entries. HERE WE GO!

It’s great being an Indian (well half-Indian anyway) in India. Why? Well it’s a helluva lot cheaper for one. I pity all these white people, being harassed by hacks, rick drivers, and shopkeepers wherever they go. After being perpetually quoted prices 4 or 5 times above the prices quoted to Indians, and having to be constantly on the alert lest they be cheated, it’s no wonder why many of my fellow AIESEC Trainees are a little annoyed with their experiences so far. Which is not to say the people here don’t try to cheat me, but just not as often and certainly not so blatantly.

And there are other benefits of looking Indian! Chief among them is being able to pay local rates for all the attractions!

Two weekends ago, my roomies and I decided to venture into Delhi and check out the Red Fort and Chandni Chowk. We walked together to the ticketing booth and as soon as we got within shouting distance a middle-aged sari-clad lady screeched at us.

“FOREIGNERS BUY HERE!!!!”, and she pointed at the booth to the right.

I was bringing up the rear of the group, my usual position while walking with my housemates as their white-ness clears my path of all the beggars who scramble to harass the ang-mohs. As we got closer she saw me following the group. She glared at my stupidity, shouted something in Hindi and pointed to the queue for the Indians!

BOOYAH! I only had to pay 11 rupees while my poor white buddies had to pay Rs110! Haha! Imagine the savings when I go to the Taj Mahal man! Rs25 compared to the Rs750 for all the white people! Mwahahahahaha!

I’m not ashamed to say that the Red Fort looked really good to me that weekend. Hehe.

Here are some pics of that trip, check it out.


The Lohore Gate of the Red Fort


The intricate designs of the interior

Dearly Beloved...

Indian weddings are awesome. I think that's the only word to describe them. A trip to India just isn't complete without attending at least one Indian wedding ceremony. Fortunately for me, the stars were in allignment and all the residents in my apartment were invited to attend my landlord's, wife's, cousin's wedding.

Now first let me tell you that I'm not kidding about the stars thing. May 11th was apparently considered to be an excellent day to get married if one believed the paandits (Indian Astrologer/Priest chaps). This being the case, naturally THE WHOLE OF DELHI decided to sieze the day and get married. Alright, I may be exaggerating when I say the whole of Delhi, but I'm not when I tell you that according to the papers, over 40 THOUSAND wedding ceremonies were performed that day alone.

Can you imagine the traffic jam?! Let's just say it took us a long, LONG time to get to the wedding, even though we were driving on the sidewalks to avoid traffic.

Now if your experience with weddings up to this point has been with the traditional-christian-wedding variety you are in for a treat. An Indian wedding is an explosion of colour, sound, light, and smell. There are young people dancing, old men shouting, women of all ages crying, people being flung about (usually the bridegroom, poor chap), horses, horrendously bad brass bands screeching through melodies, and food. Lots and lots of food. I must have had 20 Kulfi's and 15 Gulap Jamun's that night.... It was awesome.

Now if anyone is thinking about going off on me about my diet, you may take your comments and shove it three feet up your ass. I'm in India. I'll eat whatever I want, and a lot of it too. I'll diet when I get Diabetes.

Unfortunately, we didn't bring a camera, but here's a picture I stole from an apartment-mate.


Poor Fellow... He doesn't know what he's got himself into...

India's Secret Weapon

I'm not sure if many people are aware of this, but India has been secretly training what must be the largest and greatest fighter pilot squadron in the world. You heard me. India has been secretly training a group of crack pilots that make the American look like a bunch of turds riding piggy-back on a camel.

And who are these talented young men?

Auto wallahs: Top Gaan, yaar.

Auto-rickhshaw drivers have the reflexes of a turbocharged cat...on Speed. Zipping around in their tiny little machines of death, one wrong move would send them careening into one of the India's myriad of traffic deathtraps: Cows, Dogs, Cats, and People. I mean look at that bugger! He's even covered his windshield. No eyes required, it's the auto wallah 6th sense!

To many foreigners driving in India this will be the last thing they would see before being crushed into a mangled, messy pulp of bones and flesh:


Indians are very polite

Yet the auto wallah avoids them all with practiced ease. Just another day's training in the worlds most dangerous flight simulator, Delhi's Roads.

If ever an "Independence Day" style attack were to ever face India, Manmohan wouldn't have mess around with any finicky virus uploads or any of that shit. He'd just have to press a button and the Auto wallahs would fuck them up:


"Get me the Autorickshaw drivers"


"Ok Top Gaan Squad. Go fuck those Alien-kutta's up, Thiiiiiiiiiiik?"
"Haanji..."


"I am Shahrukh Khan. I will distract the Alien's with my stupid ass Aviator glasses while Top Gaan attacks! Challo!"


" Namaste, Bhenchodh."

That's it. Independence Day India in a 4 frame movie summary. Don't believe me? Drive in Delhi. I dare you. I double dog dare you...

I thought so. Pussies.

INDIA!

So as it turns out, I'm not in Delhi proper. Rather I'm in a town called Gurgaon (pronounced: Goor-Gown) that sits just outside Delhi's border and is about an hour bus/car ride into New Delhi. It's a nice place, much more developed than I had expected certainly. That being said development in India is really quite different than one might think at first. Because of the absence of laws that allow the government to force private landowners to part with their property (Like in singapore), one will find a fantastically modern building shooting out of the ground in the latest architechtural fashion, all glass and steel and concrete. And right next to it you will find an undeveloped lot of land that is being illegally occupied by aluminum and corrugated iron shanty's.

My own accomodation is a case in point. Here's a picture of my wonderful, and disgustingly comfortable home:


Here's a picture of the view from the front of our house (Look there's a peacock!):


And this is the view from my house of the land behind us:


Now that's pretty crazy right there. The people who live there seem to be having a relatively good time, although life is undoubtedly difficult. I dunno. They always seem to be smiling, but perhaps that's just from the view of an ornery and disillusioned 23yr old...

Off to Delhi!

A quick post. I'm in Changi airport with my little "Janet" doggy sitting by the computer Miss you babe! and thought I'd fire off a quick post before I boarded my flight.

Damn am I happy to finally be on the plane to India! The Land For All Reasons! I'm actually looking forward not just to absorb the culture and lifestyle and become a pseudo Delhi-wallah, but I'm seriously excited to start work at the company.

Man I can't wait. Ahahaha. They're calling for me already. Heh, I'm already beginning to operate on IST (Indian Standard Time)!

Sinkapore Cow-chur

I took a drive down Bambai to grab some teh tarik today and just relax. With all these Singaporean's caught up in the rat race, I figured I should do the relaxing for all of them as well. So I stayed on for a bit longer...about 5 hours in all.

It was a good time, a bit lonely without Sim and the rest of the "Gang of Thieves", but still a good time. I was lucky that Bambai was pretty devoid of yuppies and managed to snag a seat with two very entertaining old Hokkien men. They seemed to be reminiscing about the old days, and although my hokkein is extremely bad, I still found listening to their earthy exclamations very entertaining. A half hour before I was about to leave I decided to ask them a question that had been bugging me a little since my previous post.

" Uncle ahr, what do you like about Singapore?"

" Teh Tarik lah!" was his reply, accompanied by the agreeable guffaw of his companion.

I had guessed as much.

" Of course lah, uncle. Singaporean food very best... But besides that, got anything?"

The old man added several dozen creases to his forehead as he searched for a reply while his buddy sipped his teh and watched him attentively.

" How about the culture?" I prompted after a few seconds had passed.

" Cow-chur!" He nodded vigorously." Yahyah! Sinkapore got a lot of cow-chur! Chinese cow-chur, indian cow-chur, malaysia cow-chur! Every cow-chur oso got. Velly multi cow-chur, Sinkapore."

His response surprised me, but since he was older and no doubt wiser than I, I decided to leave it at that. I finished my tea, said my goodbyes, and left this little malaysian haven in Singapore behind me. I felt rather confused by the old fellow's reply. I certainly have not witnessed this "cow-chur" that, according to the old man, was so pervasive in Singapore. I decided to investigate further.

I drove home, parked and walked down to the nearest shopping centre with a bookstore. As a great lover of books, bookstores have always been a special place to me. The modern pop-culture equivalent of a library, a treasure trove of knowledge and information. I figured that the fastest and easiest way to learn about this Singaporean culture that had managed to elude me for over two decades would be to go to a bookstore.

(So as to avoid infringing on any copyrights or angering any corporate or "gah-ment" people I cannot tell you the names of the shopping centre and bookstore. I can only say that the names of these places end with "akashimaya" and "inokuniya" respectively.)

I walked into the bookstore and found the shelf that held the books on "Singapore Culture". This is what I saw.



If you have trouble reading the titles, the titles of the books from left to right are:

1.)Invisible Trade: High class sex for sale in Singapore
2.)No Money, No Honey: A candid look at sex for sale in Singapore
3.)Sex Slaves
4.)Woman, child for sale
5.)Human Traffic
6.)Sex For Sale
7.)Handbook for Expatriates: Working and Living in Singapore

I shit you not, dear friends. On the shelf of Singapore Culture, there were 6 books on the sex-trade, and 1 book helping expatriates acclimate themselves to Singapore.

Not books on Singaporean history, not a collection of local art, not even a fucking "Guide to Singlish" (For our foreign friends: Singlish is possibly the only interesting thing about Singapore. A local cockneyed form of english, it is a shortened, highly efficient form of grammatically incorrect communication that is the result of a mixture of over 4 languages and is possibly the only unique, interesting, and entertaining thing that has evolved in Singapore. Naturally the government is actively trying to discourage its use.)

Apparently, Singaporean culture consists entirely of Expats and sex. No wonder the tourists come here! We're such a randy city-state that we kindly provide them a handbook to settle in and then give them guides on where to go get a good fuck. (Note: prostitution is legal in Singapore)

Fortunately with the new Casinos coming up, we might be able to squeeze in a few books on Blackjack and Texas Hold 'Em on that shelf!

How's that for putting the "Sin" back into Singapore? GO GAH-MENT!

Uniquely Singapore

The title of my post, for those non-Singaporean's amongst us, is the tourism board's slogan to attempt to lure unsuspecting tourists to this little island. Let me tell all you foreigners out there who, upon seeing this fantastic marketing slogan-no doubt the product of the top advertising minds from places as far flung as Changi and Jurong- might be tempted to fly out here and wantonly spend your money in Singapore: It is absolutely correct.

Singapore is by far the most unique Asian destination. It is the only place you can travel in the Eastern world that is completely and utterly BORING.

Let me say it again, for you chaps who may have missed that the first time.

SINGAPORE. IS. FUCKING. BORING.

Let me reassure you that this is not just the view of a Singaporean who lived here for the past 21 years of his life. I have here some quotations:

" Fuckin' hell, what is there to do here besides fuckin' shop, Sentosa, and fuckin' eat man?" - Aaron Calder, Australia.
" I've been here 3 days and I doubt there is anything more for me to do." - Rahul, India
" That's it?" Jennifer and Janet Maulen, USA
" Fuck this. I'm moving to KL" Sim, neo-Malaysian.

I arrived in Singapore on Thursday at 1:20 am, by 8pm on Friday I was ready to leave. Having had 6 good meals in Singapore, a couple of cups of teh tarik, walked down Orchard Road, and driven /past/ Sentosa ( I mean seriously, who really goes to Sentosa for anything but the man-made beach anyway?) Singapore and I were ready to part ways. There's something seriously lacking in Singapore. It's the lack of...depth, of genuine culture. Not that made-for-tourist rubbish you see during the "festivals". Real culture. From where I'm standing, Singapore is just a great collection of shops and restaurants.

" But Nick! Singapore is Clean and Safe too!"

Well I guess if that's what you're looking for then you can quite easily find a bit of Singapore no matter which country you're in. Just hop in your car and take a little drive to the hospital! It's clean! Sterile, in fact... just like Singapore! If you stand on Orchard Road and take a really deep breath you can still smell the disinfectant. And if it's safety you crave, visit your nearest police post and bask in its warm glow.

Oh yes. If anyone starts spouting any rubbish about the local food being so incredible, wonderful, amazing, blahblahblah... Puh-lease! Have you BEEN to Malaysia recently? The local food, I swear to you, is much much better. To top it all off, it's cheaper as well!

If only it were feasible for my family to migrate. That is a lovely prospect, and one that is hopefully not too far in the future. Don't get me wrong... Singapore is a fantastic place to visit... for two or three days, but I wouldn't want to live here.

Shit Happens

It all began last friday. I received a call from my father telling me the Indian Embassy in Singapore had refused to process my visa application without my presence. Considering that Li'er received her tourist visa without any trouble whatsoever, I found myself very pissed off and seriously debating the parentage of the entire staff of the Singapore Indian Embassy. Unfortunately, I couldn't do a damn thing about it, and I had find something to do to fill up my time while waiting for my passport to be fedexed back to me.

Sadly, the only thing that I could find to do was help Ming move house. That's not to say I didn't /want/ to help Ming, I certainly didn't want her to move (and clean) everything on her own, it's just that I don't really like moving, and especially cleaning. Some people are surprised by this, they assume just because I'm anal about keeping my kitchen and bathroom clean I must somehow enjoy doing it. They don't understand, I hate cleaning... HATE IT! I just do it because I hate a filthy kitchen and bathroom even more. So anyway, Ming has a lot of stuff. A lot of it. I moved "boxes" (she insists on calling her luggage "boxes", must be a sichuan-guangzhou thing) and cleaned her kitchen until Sunday. And then I fell sick.

Well ok, that's not entirely fair. I felt I was coming down with something since thursday, but certainly the moving didn't help.

Anyway, while all this physical labour was going on, I considered my options. I could have done two things:

1.) Stayed in the US and processed my visa through the Consulate in Chicago, or
2.) Returned to SG to process my visa there.

Somewhere between cleaning the fridge and mopping the kitchen floor I decided I would do the latter. It would cost a little more... alright, a lot more, but I would still save about a week or more in processing. Considering my internship is only 16 weeks long, losing an entire week is quite a significant percentage off the time I could be sipping chai and riding in auto rickshaws:

Flying to Singapore: 900USD
Flying to India: 600 USD
Arriving in Delhi one week early to sip chai and ride in auto-rickshaws: Priceless.

So as soon as my passport arrived on Monday morning, I ran out of the house and booked a flight back to Singapore for the very next day. Quite honestly, my dedication to going to India is surpising even to me. So I'm back in Singapore and I'm bored already. But that's a story for my next post...