i can feel an angel sliding up to me

While it is very gratifying to get multiple comments on inane posts, I know that I am playing a dangerous game, and that these comments will soon disappear as my fickle audience moves on to other pleasures. So, to reward you for your relative patience over the weekend, please allow me to regale you with tales of my recent exploits.

Friday, as you know, I indulged my love affair with murgh; specifically, I stuffed myself full of garlic naan and murgh makhni at Angeethi. We had gone out for a team dinner there, and I think I scared many people with my affinity for murgh; however, I got them to the point where several of them would say 'murgh' with me, long and low, like a cow mooing. This was quite gratifying, as I usually do not have any partners in insanity. As I have mentioned before, garlic naan is perhaps one of the best foods known to man, and I ate a ton of it. It is the perfect utensil for sopping up the tasty makhni sauce, and I can quite happily eat garlic naan and murgh makhni with my hands. This would not surprise those of you who saw me eating steak barely cooked and straight off the grill, although in that case I was eating it off the point of a knife. Speaking of steak, I would like to give a big thank-you to those of you who like telling me when you're enjoying steak; it really makes my exile much more comfortable.

After dinner, we went to a bar which was home to Retro Night; that is apparently an excuse to force the staff to wear absurdly mismatched outfits in an attempt to be 'retro'. I have only been there twice before, but the waiter remembered that I drink vodka cranberries, which was strange. It was extremely loud, particularly since our table was right beside a big bank of speakers, and so I couldn't hear anything and could only enjoy the sensation of having my breath forcibly drawn in time with the beat. We stayed there until they stopped playing music (which happened at 11:30, since everything closes early in a country that has a conservative culture; even the South 40 back home stays open later than that, and I'm from a red state). We were standing around outside waiting for the cars, when one of my coworkers ran into some people that he had met several months ago.

This is where the fun began. The people were very friendly, and quite insistent that we come home and party with them. Because I have been chafing at my self-imposed isolation and feel that I am not exploring enough, I readily acquiesced. Unfortunately, their place was in the middle of nowhere, quite literally--the street lights ended some ten or fifteen minutes before we got to the house, and there wasn't a soul to be seen, which was disconcerting in a country that seems to be drowning under the weight of a fast-growing populace. We had fun playing with the Magic 8-Ball, but that quickly grew old. There was this guy there who was like an archetype of everything that is wrong with today's youth; he insisted that we call him Z, and he was decked out in blinging gold chains that were just absurd. He talked a lot about how he has a knack for finding marijuana in the middle of nowhere, all about his past (in which he claimed to be a track athlete at some Midwestern university, although he did not have the build of a runner), and about other things mostly related to drugs. Needless to say, he did not quite fit in with my coworkers. Some of us left around 2, and I was so happy to get home.

There was one unexpected outcome of that night. As I was leaving, this guy asked me for my phone number. I couldn't not give it to him, so I gave it to him before leaving. He seemed nice enough, although he liked to punch my arm playfully while teasing me about being sixteen since I wasn't drinking; the punching kind of hurt, and now I'm creeped out that he was so insistent that I'm sixteen. The reason I'm creeped out is that he called me three times this morning before I'd even gotten out of bed, then sent me a text message saying that he guessed I was asleep, so sweet dreams, and he'd call me later. Weird. I forgot to take my phone to brunch, and he called two more times while I was out, then another time this afternoon. I haven't answered it and now don't intend to; I don't want to be mean, but it's kind of odd that he called so much today, and I'm afraid that if I answer, it will just turn into a complete fiasco.

I was also the recipient of some fun attention from some dude at the bazaar I went to this afternoon; there was a downpour for about five minutes, so I got stuck in the stall that I was in, and the guy there kept asking how he could go to America. I was like, 'dude, I don't know, can I pay for my stuff now', and he would ignore my desire to pay to ask again if I knew how he could go to America. He asked for my number as well, and I said that I didn't have my phone with me (which was a lie, and then I had to pray that Arod wouldn't call to find out where I was), and then he offered to give me his number but I declined, at which point he very sadly asked why I didn't want to be friends with him. The answer was that he was forty and creepy, and this was exacerbated by his next question, which was 'are you married?' I lied and said yes, although it was probably obvious that it was a lie, and then I fled into the storm. Yay. As I walked away, he yelled 'don't forget me!', which was just icing on the cake.

Anyway, back to Saturday. I had a great day--I went shopping *alone*, which was shocking, since usually I end up sharing a car very uncomfortably with three other people and the driver, and we all have to plan according to each others' needs, and so shopping is intensely unsatisfying. But I managed to secure a car for myself, and I went to Shoppers Stop and Hyderabad Central. Shoppers Stop sounds like a Target, but it's actually really upscale, and I got a pair of shoes there. Then I went to Hyderabad Central and got a salwar kameeze--they look and feel like pajamas, but they are quite fancy, and the de rigueur Indian outfit if you don't feel like wearing/can't wrap a sari. The pants are quite funny; they taper at the ankles, are really baggy in the legs and especially around the thighs, and then tie with a drawstring somewhere at or above the natural waist. But, the top is really a calf-length tunic thing, which covers most of the weirdness of the pants, and the outfit is super comfortable.

When I got home, I hadn't eaten yet, and I ran into Matt, who was also hungry and wanted to go shopping. We ended up going back to Hyderabad Central to eat in the Pizza Hut there. The waiter was way too attentive; he would come over and check on us every two minutes, which interrupted the flow of conversation but was quite entertaining. Then we did some desultory shopping; Hyderabad Central has a Shiseido makeup counter, which is extremely dangerous, and I walked away with what would become Lip Gloss #24. I took a nap in the afternoon, went to dinner at Owry's (tasty Chinese food), then out after to Dublin's, which is an Irish-style pub (sans Guinness) in the basement of the Kakatiya Sheraton. I bounced out of there early to avoid getting dragged back to the house party, and slept for an extremely long time.

Today was great as well; I had brunch, stopped at Himalaya bookstore to pick up a travel guide for Italy, and also stopped at the shoestore next door, where I procured three pairs of shoes. Ridiculous. Later, Arod and I went to this huge outdoor market; it was reminiscent of Rutledge (http://www.rutledgefleamarket.com/), which was where my family went to sell a bunch of turkeys during that halcyon summer when we raised over 2000 of the bastards. My father ended up trading a some of them for shepherds' crooks and other sundries, and I recall that there were lots of guns and dogs for sale. Anyway, there were no guns, dogs, or turkeys for sale here, so I suppose there aren't a lot of similarities, but it was very large, and there were a lot of vendors selling extremely cheap goods spread out over and under tarps. I got three more pairs of shoes (if you're counting, that's six pairs of shoes today, as well as a pair yesterday; this will hopefully be the high-water mark of my shoe-buying in India, although it's hard to stop, especially since the sandals I got at the bazaar were about US$3/pair), some bangles, and some gorgeous miniature drawings. It's apparently going for two more weeks, so I'll definitely have to go back. Shopping there was so much more fun than the sterile, western atmosphere of Shoppers Stop or Hyderabad Central, although since I was the only white person there I was attracting a lot of stares (and, apparently, desire for my green-card-providing skillz). It was also way way cheaper, and there was so much interesting stuff to see.

So that was my weekend. I did some shopping, did some stalker-avoiding, and did some sleeping. It was key. This week will be really hectic, but hopefully I'll get some sleep. Speaking of, it's time to go to bed!