Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Saturday, June 17, 2006
An Icelanders Indian Memories
My Worst India Moment(s)
On my way home to The City Beautiful I took a Sleeper Bus fro Udaipur to Delhi. Ofcourse my bunker bed was the ONLY one not to have curtains. So, ofcourse, the lovely Indian men sleeping around me all had their curtains open for the view. I turned to the window and tried to ignore it and sleep.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to something stroking my butt. I decided someone had been passing by and accidentally bumped into me (now, after all this time in India, don´t ask me why I gave these Indians the benefit of the doubt).
A few seconds later, I got stroked a second time. I realized it was no accident. So, when the third stroke came, I rushed up and saw an Indian jump behind the curtains of his bunker bed across the hallway.
I opened the curtains and started yelling “Excuse me, excuse me” at the man who lay there pretending to be fast asleep. After a few loud “Excuse me´s” he pretended to wake up with a confuzed expression on his face. Pathetic! I screamed a few well-picked words in Hindi, but seeing as I had been working with children during my traineeship, my vocabulary was limited to colours, animal names and such. In the end (as I usually did with the children) I made him apologize: “Bollo: Sorry – Bollo: Sorry”. What an asshole!
The story is not finished! After a whole night on the bus, I took a bus from Delhi to Chandigarh, ran some errands in Sector 17 and 35 and took a rickshaw back home to the traineehouse. Now, when I took of my clothes to take a shower, I noticed a BIG hole in the back of my trousers. YES, the Indian gentleman had been cutting a hole in my trousers when I was sleeping. And, I had walked around Delhi and Chandigarh with my underwear showing the whole day.
Amazing Indian Men
My Best Indian Moment
Oddly enough, I had to think for a while before I could find a good moment from India... most of my memories seem to involve harassments of one sort or another.
I will give my “Best Indian Moment” to my favorite stalker: Narinder Singh “The Guardian of Tourists”. As I´m sure many of you did, I had the pleasure of bumping into him quite often.
He had the best explanation to why Indian men think they are “all that”. They concider themselves to have very large Johns. So large in fact, that us western women would much rather be with an Indian man than one of our own. Now, I never experienced an Indian John during my stay. Obviously a grave mistake. Can anyone vouch for this?
Amazing Indian Confusion
Funniest Indian Moment
In the beginning of my traineeship there were about thirty trainees around. Someone had heard of a circus coming to town and we all baught tickets. I hadn´t had much experience with India or Indians at that time, so I went, expecting a circus – a real circus.
Dear lord! It was the most awful entertainment.
There was a man on stage making his dogs roll over for ten minutes.
A girl lay on the ground and an huge elephant layed on top of her. I would have been more disgusted if it hadn´t been for the ridiculous giant advertisement for “Mandir Taylors – Suits and Sarees” hanging over the elephants back which kept my attention.
The best moment was when twenty girls came to the stage holding flags. They walked around in circles for five minutes, without doing so much as waving one flag.
All this, and more, went on to the most hilarous music. Repeatedly they´d play Circus-versions of The Beatles “Hey Jude” and Phil Collins “Groovy Kind of Love”.
Amazing Indian Entertainment
On my way home to The City Beautiful I took a Sleeper Bus fro Udaipur to Delhi. Ofcourse my bunker bed was the ONLY one not to have curtains. So, ofcourse, the lovely Indian men sleeping around me all had their curtains open for the view. I turned to the window and tried to ignore it and sleep.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to something stroking my butt. I decided someone had been passing by and accidentally bumped into me (now, after all this time in India, don´t ask me why I gave these Indians the benefit of the doubt).
A few seconds later, I got stroked a second time. I realized it was no accident. So, when the third stroke came, I rushed up and saw an Indian jump behind the curtains of his bunker bed across the hallway.
I opened the curtains and started yelling “Excuse me, excuse me” at the man who lay there pretending to be fast asleep. After a few loud “Excuse me´s” he pretended to wake up with a confuzed expression on his face. Pathetic! I screamed a few well-picked words in Hindi, but seeing as I had been working with children during my traineeship, my vocabulary was limited to colours, animal names and such. In the end (as I usually did with the children) I made him apologize: “Bollo: Sorry – Bollo: Sorry”. What an asshole!
The story is not finished! After a whole night on the bus, I took a bus from Delhi to Chandigarh, ran some errands in Sector 17 and 35 and took a rickshaw back home to the traineehouse. Now, when I took of my clothes to take a shower, I noticed a BIG hole in the back of my trousers. YES, the Indian gentleman had been cutting a hole in my trousers when I was sleeping. And, I had walked around Delhi and Chandigarh with my underwear showing the whole day.
Amazing Indian Men
My Best Indian Moment
Oddly enough, I had to think for a while before I could find a good moment from India... most of my memories seem to involve harassments of one sort or another.
I will give my “Best Indian Moment” to my favorite stalker: Narinder Singh “The Guardian of Tourists”. As I´m sure many of you did, I had the pleasure of bumping into him quite often.
He had the best explanation to why Indian men think they are “all that”. They concider themselves to have very large Johns. So large in fact, that us western women would much rather be with an Indian man than one of our own. Now, I never experienced an Indian John during my stay. Obviously a grave mistake. Can anyone vouch for this?
Amazing Indian Confusion
Funniest Indian Moment
In the beginning of my traineeship there were about thirty trainees around. Someone had heard of a circus coming to town and we all baught tickets. I hadn´t had much experience with India or Indians at that time, so I went, expecting a circus – a real circus.
Dear lord! It was the most awful entertainment.
There was a man on stage making his dogs roll over for ten minutes.
A girl lay on the ground and an huge elephant layed on top of her. I would have been more disgusted if it hadn´t been for the ridiculous giant advertisement for “Mandir Taylors – Suits and Sarees” hanging over the elephants back which kept my attention.
The best moment was when twenty girls came to the stage holding flags. They walked around in circles for five minutes, without doing so much as waving one flag.
All this, and more, went on to the most hilarous music. Repeatedly they´d play Circus-versions of The Beatles “Hey Jude” and Phil Collins “Groovy Kind of Love”.
Amazing Indian Entertainment
Friday, June 16, 2006
Granny Jean is leaving Chandigarh!
Granny Jean
Never without a drink in her hand...
And very cranky when she doesn't get her 8pm!
But where would we have been without you DJ-ing. Certainly the international dance styles wouldn't have bloomed so well!
So on behalf of all the past traines, current trainees, stalkers and wierdos you've met along the way, Chandigarh will miss you.
Enjoy Egypt!!!
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Best/Worst/Funniest Awards
Damn you for making me reminisce, Sam!
Best Moment
It has to be shooting the movie… spending a day kissing Dobi while dressed as a soldier – you can’t go wrong with that really! And then dressing up as a rather dashing Navy Captain which meant I could recreate the scene where Richard Gere picks up his lady and walks off into the sunset with any obliging young lady. I want to be a movie star! …again!
A close second has to be when, a few days after arriving in Panchkula, I was getting ready to go to Manali and got talking to Kent, who I hadn’t really spoke to that much beforehand, and told him that I was really looking forward to going away for the weekend. When he asked why, I promptly told him that it was because I wouldn’t have to see his ugly face while I was away. And so it was that a friendship was born based upon friendly insults from Kent, and honest insults on my part (just kidding Kent…)
Worst Moment
Having random things stolen from my room, and my first bike, Agnes, taken for a joy ride, abused and then returned as a complete wreck. Only to be repaired and stolen a couple of weeks afterwards. Or maybe it was getting my second bike stolen. I also heard rumours that my third bike was stolen as I left the country…
Funniest Moment
Salvador is better at telling this story, but I’ll have a go anyway…
It all happened during one of the traditional RMS trainee’s Saturday Chats between myself, Vladan, Salvador, Marian and Arno/Parno.
During his time in India, Arno developed an evil personality at RMS, Parno, owing to some confusion between pork and porn (that’s another story though…) and we were talking rubbish about that during a group MSN chat, when we started to wonder why Marian was being so quiet (this was his first time joining in the conversation) So we guessed that it was because the evil Parno spirits (at this stage I’d like to point out that we were working Saturdays, and so even the slightest distraction became amusing…) had infected him.
I think it’s also worthwhile to note at this point that Marian’s keyboard was quite temperamental, and only some of the keys worked – a problem he had raised a couple of times before, but of course being in India, nothing was done about.
So when Marian tried to defend himself, all that he could say was a clearly demonically possessed “hshffmmwinf” or something along those lines… and now I can get around to the Funniest Moment bit…
This garbled comment was enough to crack me up, but I was managing to control my laughter - until I heard Vladan laughing out loud way over at the other end of the office. The laughter was still pretty much under control until I looked over my shoulder to see what state Salvador was in. At this point Salvador also looked over at me, in pretty much the same state I was and once eye contact was made we were both pushed over the edge into uncontrollable laughter. Salvador was beyond control now, so thought it would be best if he left the office and seek solitude in the toilets to calm himself down. Only to make himself laugh even more with the realisation that his attempts to suppress his laughter resulted in some rather dubious groaning sounds coming from the toilet cubicle…
And so he had to leave the toilets which weren’t helping his situation and leave the building completely for a cigarette break. Only now as he was struggling to control his laughing, the owner of the company happened to walk past and ask him how he was doing…
Salvador’s description, and acting out what happened, when he finally returned to the office rounded off the whole event nicely, ensuring that no work would be completed for the rest of the day as we kept falling back into laughter about it all.
And I know the post is already quiet long now anyway, but I also need to mention my close second… when during a horror movie, The Grudge, Benjamin managed to recreate the ‘scary’ noise that had been used throughout the movie, during one of the tense scenes by slurping the remains of his drink through his straw… that in itself slaughtered me, but Johanna’s persistent confusion about why me and Ben were laughing meant that my face hurt from laughing way into the journey back from Fun Republic.
Best Moment
It has to be shooting the movie… spending a day kissing Dobi while dressed as a soldier – you can’t go wrong with that really! And then dressing up as a rather dashing Navy Captain which meant I could recreate the scene where Richard Gere picks up his lady and walks off into the sunset with any obliging young lady. I want to be a movie star! …again!
A close second has to be when, a few days after arriving in Panchkula, I was getting ready to go to Manali and got talking to Kent, who I hadn’t really spoke to that much beforehand, and told him that I was really looking forward to going away for the weekend. When he asked why, I promptly told him that it was because I wouldn’t have to see his ugly face while I was away. And so it was that a friendship was born based upon friendly insults from Kent, and honest insults on my part (just kidding Kent…)
Worst Moment
Having random things stolen from my room, and my first bike, Agnes, taken for a joy ride, abused and then returned as a complete wreck. Only to be repaired and stolen a couple of weeks afterwards. Or maybe it was getting my second bike stolen. I also heard rumours that my third bike was stolen as I left the country…
Funniest Moment
Salvador is better at telling this story, but I’ll have a go anyway…
It all happened during one of the traditional RMS trainee’s Saturday Chats between myself, Vladan, Salvador, Marian and Arno/Parno.
During his time in India, Arno developed an evil personality at RMS, Parno, owing to some confusion between pork and porn (that’s another story though…) and we were talking rubbish about that during a group MSN chat, when we started to wonder why Marian was being so quiet (this was his first time joining in the conversation) So we guessed that it was because the evil Parno spirits (at this stage I’d like to point out that we were working Saturdays, and so even the slightest distraction became amusing…) had infected him.
I think it’s also worthwhile to note at this point that Marian’s keyboard was quite temperamental, and only some of the keys worked – a problem he had raised a couple of times before, but of course being in India, nothing was done about.
So when Marian tried to defend himself, all that he could say was a clearly demonically possessed “hshffmmwinf” or something along those lines… and now I can get around to the Funniest Moment bit…
This garbled comment was enough to crack me up, but I was managing to control my laughter - until I heard Vladan laughing out loud way over at the other end of the office. The laughter was still pretty much under control until I looked over my shoulder to see what state Salvador was in. At this point Salvador also looked over at me, in pretty much the same state I was and once eye contact was made we were both pushed over the edge into uncontrollable laughter. Salvador was beyond control now, so thought it would be best if he left the office and seek solitude in the toilets to calm himself down. Only to make himself laugh even more with the realisation that his attempts to suppress his laughter resulted in some rather dubious groaning sounds coming from the toilet cubicle…
And so he had to leave the toilets which weren’t helping his situation and leave the building completely for a cigarette break. Only now as he was struggling to control his laughing, the owner of the company happened to walk past and ask him how he was doing…
Salvador’s description, and acting out what happened, when he finally returned to the office rounded off the whole event nicely, ensuring that no work would be completed for the rest of the day as we kept falling back into laughter about it all.
And I know the post is already quiet long now anyway, but I also need to mention my close second… when during a horror movie, The Grudge, Benjamin managed to recreate the ‘scary’ noise that had been used throughout the movie, during one of the tense scenes by slurping the remains of his drink through his straw… that in itself slaughtered me, but Johanna’s persistent confusion about why me and Ben were laughing meant that my face hurt from laughing way into the journey back from Fun Republic.
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