What a week!!

It’s been a highly eventful week. Starting last Saturday, till yesterday, was filled with fun, work, and some new surprises too.

The last weekend had been a long one – four days off from Saturday to Tuesday for Chinese New Year. Therefore, four of us set out on Saturday to China Town here to look at the Chinese New Year decorations there. Two of us were Indians, and the other two Singaporean Chinese. Thanks to these two, who were really patient to answer all my ‘What’s this? Why is it like this’ questions. There was one Chinese gong that was kept outside a restaurant that kept me amused all the time. I hit it enthusiastically every time I was near it. I’m sure the guys in the restaurant had been wishing hard they could just throw me out. The two friends really made the trip one of fun.

After returning, we left at once to watch Rang De Basanti. I was thrilled. A huge gang was going, and we were joining them. More than anything, what made me more thrilled was that this was the first ever movie whose night show I was watching. ;) The movie was awesome, and I realised with surprise, that I could, after all, understand conversational Hindi much better than I had thought. After some roaming about on campus, I finally came back at 4:30 in the morning.

Spent the next three days in absolute laziness, watching movies, reading books, and at rare times, finishing my assignments. With Wednesday came a frenzy of activities. I had to meet up with my university’s corporate communications department as I was a ‘press’ member covering an important event: Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam sir was coming to our university!!!

The d-day was Thursday and I was all excited, as I was apparently one of the few who was allowed to bring my camera to shoot pictures, (though many brought their cameras) and I had a red star on my badge to signify ‘Press’, while my friends only had an orange dot. :P (Childish pleasure, but it still made me feel important!)

And minutes before HE actually arrived, my camera had run out of batteries! Totally unfair, I thought, and went around asking people if they, ‘by any chance’, had extra batteries, until someone told me I could get them in a shop that was pretty close by. I ran, my heeled shoes and all (punishment for trying to look formal, I’m never gonna wear those again!), and managed to come on time.

God..when Kalam finally came, I was shaking with excitement. I snapped pictures away like crazy, clicking almost every move of his. He looked every bit like a wizened old man, reminding me of some old people, looking at all the honour done to him with a child-like amusement on his face, every muscle in his face expressing interest in the Lion dance and Dragon dance that was going on. A great man, truly.

His speech was quite different than I expected: it was a lot of technical stuff, which, well, sort of went over my head. I had been expecting one of the more, well, should I say, inspiring speeches of his that I’ve heard in India.

After the speech, we had awesome Indian food. Food we hadn’t really eaten in a long time. God, even thinking about it makes me wish I could eat it again. Sigh!!
Some of my friends somehow managed to get his autograph and take a picture with him while we were busy eating. We were disappointed, no doubt, but by the time we had started to go to the place where they’d taken pictures with him, he had already left. ;)
On the whole, the day was great.

And yesterday, my friend and I tried our hand at proper cooking; and surprisingly it turned out pretty well! I was thrilled as I chopped onions without breaking down into tears (it’s a big feat for me because I never enter the kitchen when my mother is chopping onions!). we were so proud of ourselves, that we took pictures of the food that we’d cooked :). Heights of joblessness, eh?

Life is now back to normal. I realised with utter horror, that I have a photo-montage assignment to turn in the coming week: pulliyar suzhi kooda podala. But ah, things will work out, I know.

Long post! :)