dhoomed!
I have this Hindi song stuck in my head; it's the main song for the Bollywood movie 'Dhoom', and Regina and Arod are learning some dance moves to it so that they can eventually perform at one of the Friday meetings (the same meetings that have churned out memorable miming, a trivia show, and some guitar renditions of Led Zeppelin). It's super-catchy, which is unfortunate, since it's drowning out the usual techno soundtrack playing in my head.
Today was jam-packed with fun. I had breakfast (the best French toast ever), then read my book for an hour or so. Matt, Brian and I went to a museum this afternoon; the collection was started by one of the rulers of Hyderabad, and contains artifacts and pieces of art dating back to the 1st century AD. There was a strange juxtaposition of Indian and European artifacts; the weapons room contained both Indian swords and European chain mail, for example. It was ridiculously hot, since the museum isn't air conditioned, and so we only saw the first floor and decided that we would come back to explore again at some other point in time (i.e. after the monsoons cool the place down a bit). But, there were a few items of note:
1) The most impressive thing in the entire place wasn't even an Indian piece of art--it was a marble sculpture made by some Italian dude. The piece was called 'Veiled Rebecca', an artistic representation of a scene from the Bible when Rebecca draws a veil over her face when presented to Isaac for their betrothal. It was lifesize, carved out of a single block of marble, and it actually looked like a veil was covering her face and flowing down across her gown. The veil and her clothing were extremely lifelike; when I first walked into the room, not knowing what the statue was called, I thought that it was weird that it was shrouded in something. It was absolutely breathtaking.
2) On a lighter note (since there's always a lighter note with me), there was a room full of ivory, and it amused me to no end that the same people who probably killed elephants just for their tusks later carved elephants out of those same tusks. The best artifact was a knife carved out of ivory, with a handle topped by an elephant statuette. It was like the made the knife and put the elephant on top so that the wielder could go into the jungle and remember what he was supposed to kill. Brilliant!
3) There was a 'children's section' that was actually quite frightening. There were way too many examples of taxidermy; most of the specimens appeared to be decades old, and were much the worse for wear. There were a couple of birds that looked like they had just flown into the case and died there, since they weren't perched or posed anywhere, but were just lying rigid on the floor of the case. The best thing in the children's section, though, was the miniature exhibits on village life at the turn of the century. One scene had lots of water buffalo, farmers, etc...but there was one water buffalo lying on its side, clearly dead, and birds of prey had ripped out its intestines and were gorging themselves on his corpse. I know that it was just a model, rather than the real thing, but it was still shocking to see sculpted intestines in a children's section.
After the museum, we stopped at Coffee Day (the Indian equivalent of Starbucks), then came home. I took a nap and then went out to dinner with Lauren and Heather; we went to Angeethi again, and again it was tasty, although I was sad that they could only give me Thums-Up instead of Coke. Hopefully I will learn to appreciate the taste of Thums-Up soon, since it is v. popular here.
I then got roped into going to a club w/Arod and Regina; I'm glad I went, since it turned out to be quite amusing. The band was called the Bombay Rockers, but they were originally from Denmark...weird, huh? The venue was a lot like Frost Amphitheatre at Stanford--a series of steps leading down to the stage, sort of like the terracing used in farming to prevent erosion. We met up with some of the guys there, all of whom had started drinking way before us (or in my case, at all, since I didn't drink tonight--if there isn't any Old Monk, I won't drink it). We all ended up coming back to my place and several people played Halo 2.
I'm happy that I went out and did stuff today, but I'm retarded for agreeing to go to the zoo tomorrow; we're leaving at 8:15, and it's already 4am. Disaster! I'll post pictures later, but now I have to sleep.
Today was jam-packed with fun. I had breakfast (the best French toast ever), then read my book for an hour or so. Matt, Brian and I went to a museum this afternoon; the collection was started by one of the rulers of Hyderabad, and contains artifacts and pieces of art dating back to the 1st century AD. There was a strange juxtaposition of Indian and European artifacts; the weapons room contained both Indian swords and European chain mail, for example. It was ridiculously hot, since the museum isn't air conditioned, and so we only saw the first floor and decided that we would come back to explore again at some other point in time (i.e. after the monsoons cool the place down a bit). But, there were a few items of note:
1) The most impressive thing in the entire place wasn't even an Indian piece of art--it was a marble sculpture made by some Italian dude. The piece was called 'Veiled Rebecca', an artistic representation of a scene from the Bible when Rebecca draws a veil over her face when presented to Isaac for their betrothal. It was lifesize, carved out of a single block of marble, and it actually looked like a veil was covering her face and flowing down across her gown. The veil and her clothing were extremely lifelike; when I first walked into the room, not knowing what the statue was called, I thought that it was weird that it was shrouded in something. It was absolutely breathtaking.
2) On a lighter note (since there's always a lighter note with me), there was a room full of ivory, and it amused me to no end that the same people who probably killed elephants just for their tusks later carved elephants out of those same tusks. The best artifact was a knife carved out of ivory, with a handle topped by an elephant statuette. It was like the made the knife and put the elephant on top so that the wielder could go into the jungle and remember what he was supposed to kill. Brilliant!
3) There was a 'children's section' that was actually quite frightening. There were way too many examples of taxidermy; most of the specimens appeared to be decades old, and were much the worse for wear. There were a couple of birds that looked like they had just flown into the case and died there, since they weren't perched or posed anywhere, but were just lying rigid on the floor of the case. The best thing in the children's section, though, was the miniature exhibits on village life at the turn of the century. One scene had lots of water buffalo, farmers, etc...but there was one water buffalo lying on its side, clearly dead, and birds of prey had ripped out its intestines and were gorging themselves on his corpse. I know that it was just a model, rather than the real thing, but it was still shocking to see sculpted intestines in a children's section.
After the museum, we stopped at Coffee Day (the Indian equivalent of Starbucks), then came home. I took a nap and then went out to dinner with Lauren and Heather; we went to Angeethi again, and again it was tasty, although I was sad that they could only give me Thums-Up instead of Coke. Hopefully I will learn to appreciate the taste of Thums-Up soon, since it is v. popular here.
I then got roped into going to a club w/Arod and Regina; I'm glad I went, since it turned out to be quite amusing. The band was called the Bombay Rockers, but they were originally from Denmark...weird, huh? The venue was a lot like Frost Amphitheatre at Stanford--a series of steps leading down to the stage, sort of like the terracing used in farming to prevent erosion. We met up with some of the guys there, all of whom had started drinking way before us (or in my case, at all, since I didn't drink tonight--if there isn't any Old Monk, I won't drink it). We all ended up coming back to my place and several people played Halo 2.
I'm happy that I went out and did stuff today, but I'm retarded for agreeing to go to the zoo tomorrow; we're leaving at 8:15, and it's already 4am. Disaster! I'll post pictures later, but now I have to sleep.
posted by Sara @ 2:55 PM
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