Have any of you heard of Russia Day? Until yesterday, I surely hadn't. But as it turns out, Ami, Kevin and I attended a party in celebration of this holiday last night, which left us feeling similar to how Ami and I felt the first night we ventured out out to explore the nightlife scene in Mumbai - where ARE we????? (part 2)
The invitation to the party was relatively last minute and came from the most unexpected of sources: Kevin's pool buddy. I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but Kevin was approached by an older 60something gentleman after swimming his daily laps. The gentleman befriended Kevin, and they went out to coffee together. Ami and I have been teasing Kevin about it for a while, since it sounded slightly like the man was trying to pick Kevin up. When Kevin told us yesterday morning that he had received an invitation from Sanjay (the pool buddy) to go to a "Russian event" at a hotel in South Bombay, we surprised him by telling him to go for it! After all, it's a party, and who knows - it may be fun? He said he would go as long as we went with him, and we readily agreed. Worst case scenario, it will be a great story, right?
Kevin gets the details from Sanjay - the event requires formal attire and is taking place in the Trident Hotel, which is formerly the Oberoi hotel and is one of the swankiest in the city. I had brought one nice dress with me to Mumbai, just in case, and was pleased to be able to wear it. We're all getting excited - who knows what the party is all about, but at least we get to dress up!
We arrive slightly late to the event due to ridiculous traffic caused by the rains. Monsoon season is upon us, and the flooding in the streets slows down traffic everywhere you go. As we're pulling up to the hotel, we realize we don't know the name of the event, and try to figure out a way to ask "where is the Russian thingie?" without sounding like we're crashing the party (note to self: replace "thingie" with "party" while imitating a Russian accent and no one will suspect a thing). Thankfully the hotel had a sign directing us toward "Happy Russia Day" in one of the ballrooms, so we didn't have to ask anyone for directions (a huge relief, since it turns out that my fake Russian accent makes me sound like a drunk Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle).
Sanjay meets us outside the ballroom, and escorts us inside. There is clearly a registration table of some kind that we pass without giving it a second glance, and it occurs to me that we're technically crashing this party. I'm pretty sure that Sanjay isn't hosting this event (given that he's Indian, not Russian), so I'm mentally crossing my fingers, hoping that we won't get into trouble. After all, the Trident is a REALLY nice hotel, and as we walk into the ballroom, it's quickly obvious that this is a very high class affair. The women are wearing full length ball gowns, and then men are wearing Italian suits. As it turns out, however, no one at the event seemed to care whether we were invited or not! As long as you're dressed appropriately and can carry on chit chat with ridiculously rich people, people want you there, invitation or not.
We found out quickly that the event was in honor of Russia Day, which is a celebration of the Russian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is also the 400th anniversary of the ascension of the Romanov dynasty. Since we arrived late, we missed the performances scheduled for the evening, but we caught the last few minutes of people in traditional Russian garb doing folk dances in the middle of this ballroom that was literally dripping with crystal chandeliers. Seriously - where are we again?
Sanjay escorts us into the room and immediately takes us to the bar so that we can get started on the Russian vodka that everyone is drinking. I opt for a glass of white wine, which turns out to be disgusting and then switch to screwdrivers. I'm pretty sure they intentionally got nasty wine so that everyone would drink vodka. I'm not sure what the motivation behind this would be aside from Russians' affinity for vodka, but there's no other excuse to have such revolting wine served at such a fancy function.
As soon as we enter the room, these older men start coming up to Kevin and give him their business cards, shake his hand, and start talking to him about business deals. No joke. We have no clue why Kevin is being approached in this way, but shrug it off. Ami and I apparently are just here to be Kevin's arm candy, so we start scoping out the food situation. They had some delicious passed appetizers going around, plus a full buffet with both Russian and Indian food (think biryani and beet salad). Score. We start to circle the room and take in the crowd. Some of the gowns are absolutely beautiful - we overhear some statuesque blonde women telling a group of people that they're here in India from Russia for modeling. So yup, there were Russian models there. Some of the Indian women there were wearing beautiful saris - very "heavy" saris, which means that there are a lot of embellishments on them. We were trying to mentally calculate how expensive these gowns would be, and decided we probably just don't want to know...
As we're standing there admiring the clothes (and as Kevin is being surrounded by 5 different older gentlemen), a guy approaches Ami and me to start a conversation. He immediately gives us his business card, which doesn't tell us much aside from his name (Aditya), phone number, and the names of 5 different companies that he owns. He asks for our cards, and we sheepishly explain that we didn't bring any, so instead he has us write down our contact information on the back of one of his cards. "Lesson #1 for Indian parties, ladies: Always bring 100 business cards, and leave with none except the 100 you collect from other people." Yes, sir!
Kevin comes to join the conversation with an (un)intentionally funny line: "Geez, why do the sausages keep coming up to me tonight?" He was talking about the guy holding the sausage appetizers, but our minds immediately went into the gutter...
Aditya paints himself as quite the baller - starts telling us that he goes to parties like this every day, and that he can get us into essentially any event in Mumbai. The Bollywood awards show happening this Saturday? Sure, he can get us tickets! If only he had met us last week so that he could have brought us to the GQ "Most Fashionable Men in Mumbai" event last weekend! He then shows us photos of him with celebrities that he had taken at that particular event. Oh and then a photo of him and the owner of the Mumbai Indians (the regional cricket team). He introduces us to the Australian Consul General in the crowd, and I have a nice conversation with him about Perth. Next we're chatting with some billionaire owner of a chemical company here in India and his lavishly dressed wife. She was wearing one of the ridiculously expensive saris Ami and I had been admiring. She was also wearing kind of creepy blue colored contact lenses, and her makeup was intended to make her skin look lighter. She's a beautiful woman, and clearly she subscribes to the whole "whiter is better" standards of beauty present here. Aditya tells us that we should check tomorrow's paper and will likely see her photo on Page 3 - she's apparently a pretty well known socialite. The people we are surrounded by are in the uppermost echelons of Indian society. The guy eating dinner next to me is wearing HUGE black diamond cuff links. I'm surprised he didn't have a bodyguard with him, actually.
We stay for a few hours - enjoy some delicious food and damn good vodka, and then head out around 10:30. Aditya has invited us to go pretty much anywhere we want in Mumbai - including going to some of the most exclusive membership clubs here. Who knows if we'll actually take him up on the offer, but at the very least we found out that the American embassy is hosting a similar party on July 2nd (presumably to celebrate the 4th of July). Yes, we will be crashing that party too...
In other news....
I realized only last week that my shower here does have a hot water heater. My friend Johanne took a shower at my place last week before our house party, and she turned on the hot water heater before she did so. How did I miss this detail during the original tour of the apartment? I've been taking cold showers for a month! Oh, Katie, how dumb you are sometimes...
Last night I finally got rid of the phone that has been trying to ruin my life here in India. I had bought a cheap throwaway phone in the states before coming over here and had been using that rather than my iPhone. As it turns out, however, the phone was evil - it had a mind of its own. It would pocket dial the last person I had texted - several times in a row. Mr. Harmless Sociopath has been mocking me about this for weeks, since he had been at the receiving end of it so many times. It also would send flurries of blank text messages to people. The final straw was last night when it sent a bunch of text messages to Mr. Straight Talk, who then thought that I was mad at him or in some kind of trouble, and who responded by calling me several times in a row and texting me demanding an answer. I was eating dinner - chill, buddy! I decided enough was enough and when I got home I did the unthinkable - I cut my SIM card! The reason I hadn't just switched my SIM over to my iPhone weeks ago was that my Samsung takes a normal sized SIM, whereas the iPhone takes a micro SIM. I had read online about how you can cut your normal SIM into a micro, but I was terrified to ruin the SIM and then be without a phone for a week (since that's how long it would take to get it replaced here, knowing Vodafone). Last night I sucked it up and did it, and - yay! - it worked! So now I'm back on my iPhone and couldn't be happier.
Finally, some rotten news in the state of Maharashtra. We now have a fourth flatmate with a penchant for cheese and pooping in our cupboards. That's right, folks - we have a rat. I was the first to see him when I walked into the kitchen a few nights ago to get a mango (I may have developed a mango addiction). He had climbed onto the counter and chewed through the packaging of an unopened container of crackers that was left over from our party last week. He was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, so he went flying off the counter and scurried into the maintenance closet. I wish I could say that I reacted bravely and chased after the offending vermin with a machete, but I had a much more girlish reaction...I jumped out of my skin, shrieked in a high pitched voice, ran into my bedroom and locked the door. Oh and then I took a shower.
We have since removed the crackers, but that hasn't made our friend go away. Ami saw him the same night as I did, and Kevin almost stepped on him when we came home from work yesterday. We have since complained in the strongest possible terms to our landlord, who has promised to take care of it. Fingers crossed our new flatmate will be vacating the premises sooner rather than later.
Family and friends - send me emails! And Addie pics! And Tiki pics!
The invitation to the party was relatively last minute and came from the most unexpected of sources: Kevin's pool buddy. I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but Kevin was approached by an older 60something gentleman after swimming his daily laps. The gentleman befriended Kevin, and they went out to coffee together. Ami and I have been teasing Kevin about it for a while, since it sounded slightly like the man was trying to pick Kevin up. When Kevin told us yesterday morning that he had received an invitation from Sanjay (the pool buddy) to go to a "Russian event" at a hotel in South Bombay, we surprised him by telling him to go for it! After all, it's a party, and who knows - it may be fun? He said he would go as long as we went with him, and we readily agreed. Worst case scenario, it will be a great story, right?
Kevin gets the details from Sanjay - the event requires formal attire and is taking place in the Trident Hotel, which is formerly the Oberoi hotel and is one of the swankiest in the city. I had brought one nice dress with me to Mumbai, just in case, and was pleased to be able to wear it. We're all getting excited - who knows what the party is all about, but at least we get to dress up!
We arrive slightly late to the event due to ridiculous traffic caused by the rains. Monsoon season is upon us, and the flooding in the streets slows down traffic everywhere you go. As we're pulling up to the hotel, we realize we don't know the name of the event, and try to figure out a way to ask "where is the Russian thingie?" without sounding like we're crashing the party (note to self: replace "thingie" with "party" while imitating a Russian accent and no one will suspect a thing). Thankfully the hotel had a sign directing us toward "Happy Russia Day" in one of the ballrooms, so we didn't have to ask anyone for directions (a huge relief, since it turns out that my fake Russian accent makes me sound like a drunk Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle).
Sanjay meets us outside the ballroom, and escorts us inside. There is clearly a registration table of some kind that we pass without giving it a second glance, and it occurs to me that we're technically crashing this party. I'm pretty sure that Sanjay isn't hosting this event (given that he's Indian, not Russian), so I'm mentally crossing my fingers, hoping that we won't get into trouble. After all, the Trident is a REALLY nice hotel, and as we walk into the ballroom, it's quickly obvious that this is a very high class affair. The women are wearing full length ball gowns, and then men are wearing Italian suits. As it turns out, however, no one at the event seemed to care whether we were invited or not! As long as you're dressed appropriately and can carry on chit chat with ridiculously rich people, people want you there, invitation or not.
We found out quickly that the event was in honor of Russia Day, which is a celebration of the Russian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is also the 400th anniversary of the ascension of the Romanov dynasty. Since we arrived late, we missed the performances scheduled for the evening, but we caught the last few minutes of people in traditional Russian garb doing folk dances in the middle of this ballroom that was literally dripping with crystal chandeliers. Seriously - where are we again?
Sanjay escorts us into the room and immediately takes us to the bar so that we can get started on the Russian vodka that everyone is drinking. I opt for a glass of white wine, which turns out to be disgusting and then switch to screwdrivers. I'm pretty sure they intentionally got nasty wine so that everyone would drink vodka. I'm not sure what the motivation behind this would be aside from Russians' affinity for vodka, but there's no other excuse to have such revolting wine served at such a fancy function.
As soon as we enter the room, these older men start coming up to Kevin and give him their business cards, shake his hand, and start talking to him about business deals. No joke. We have no clue why Kevin is being approached in this way, but shrug it off. Ami and I apparently are just here to be Kevin's arm candy, so we start scoping out the food situation. They had some delicious passed appetizers going around, plus a full buffet with both Russian and Indian food (think biryani and beet salad). Score. We start to circle the room and take in the crowd. Some of the gowns are absolutely beautiful - we overhear some statuesque blonde women telling a group of people that they're here in India from Russia for modeling. So yup, there were Russian models there. Some of the Indian women there were wearing beautiful saris - very "heavy" saris, which means that there are a lot of embellishments on them. We were trying to mentally calculate how expensive these gowns would be, and decided we probably just don't want to know...
As we're standing there admiring the clothes (and as Kevin is being surrounded by 5 different older gentlemen), a guy approaches Ami and me to start a conversation. He immediately gives us his business card, which doesn't tell us much aside from his name (Aditya), phone number, and the names of 5 different companies that he owns. He asks for our cards, and we sheepishly explain that we didn't bring any, so instead he has us write down our contact information on the back of one of his cards. "Lesson #1 for Indian parties, ladies: Always bring 100 business cards, and leave with none except the 100 you collect from other people." Yes, sir!
Kevin comes to join the conversation with an (un)intentionally funny line: "Geez, why do the sausages keep coming up to me tonight?" He was talking about the guy holding the sausage appetizers, but our minds immediately went into the gutter...
Aditya paints himself as quite the baller - starts telling us that he goes to parties like this every day, and that he can get us into essentially any event in Mumbai. The Bollywood awards show happening this Saturday? Sure, he can get us tickets! If only he had met us last week so that he could have brought us to the GQ "Most Fashionable Men in Mumbai" event last weekend! He then shows us photos of him with celebrities that he had taken at that particular event. Oh and then a photo of him and the owner of the Mumbai Indians (the regional cricket team). He introduces us to the Australian Consul General in the crowd, and I have a nice conversation with him about Perth. Next we're chatting with some billionaire owner of a chemical company here in India and his lavishly dressed wife. She was wearing one of the ridiculously expensive saris Ami and I had been admiring. She was also wearing kind of creepy blue colored contact lenses, and her makeup was intended to make her skin look lighter. She's a beautiful woman, and clearly she subscribes to the whole "whiter is better" standards of beauty present here. Aditya tells us that we should check tomorrow's paper and will likely see her photo on Page 3 - she's apparently a pretty well known socialite. The people we are surrounded by are in the uppermost echelons of Indian society. The guy eating dinner next to me is wearing HUGE black diamond cuff links. I'm surprised he didn't have a bodyguard with him, actually.
We stay for a few hours - enjoy some delicious food and damn good vodka, and then head out around 10:30. Aditya has invited us to go pretty much anywhere we want in Mumbai - including going to some of the most exclusive membership clubs here. Who knows if we'll actually take him up on the offer, but at the very least we found out that the American embassy is hosting a similar party on July 2nd (presumably to celebrate the 4th of July). Yes, we will be crashing that party too...
In other news....
I realized only last week that my shower here does have a hot water heater. My friend Johanne took a shower at my place last week before our house party, and she turned on the hot water heater before she did so. How did I miss this detail during the original tour of the apartment? I've been taking cold showers for a month! Oh, Katie, how dumb you are sometimes...
Last night I finally got rid of the phone that has been trying to ruin my life here in India. I had bought a cheap throwaway phone in the states before coming over here and had been using that rather than my iPhone. As it turns out, however, the phone was evil - it had a mind of its own. It would pocket dial the last person I had texted - several times in a row. Mr. Harmless Sociopath has been mocking me about this for weeks, since he had been at the receiving end of it so many times. It also would send flurries of blank text messages to people. The final straw was last night when it sent a bunch of text messages to Mr. Straight Talk, who then thought that I was mad at him or in some kind of trouble, and who responded by calling me several times in a row and texting me demanding an answer. I was eating dinner - chill, buddy! I decided enough was enough and when I got home I did the unthinkable - I cut my SIM card! The reason I hadn't just switched my SIM over to my iPhone weeks ago was that my Samsung takes a normal sized SIM, whereas the iPhone takes a micro SIM. I had read online about how you can cut your normal SIM into a micro, but I was terrified to ruin the SIM and then be without a phone for a week (since that's how long it would take to get it replaced here, knowing Vodafone). Last night I sucked it up and did it, and - yay! - it worked! So now I'm back on my iPhone and couldn't be happier.
Finally, some rotten news in the state of Maharashtra. We now have a fourth flatmate with a penchant for cheese and pooping in our cupboards. That's right, folks - we have a rat. I was the first to see him when I walked into the kitchen a few nights ago to get a mango (I may have developed a mango addiction). He had climbed onto the counter and chewed through the packaging of an unopened container of crackers that was left over from our party last week. He was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, so he went flying off the counter and scurried into the maintenance closet. I wish I could say that I reacted bravely and chased after the offending vermin with a machete, but I had a much more girlish reaction...I jumped out of my skin, shrieked in a high pitched voice, ran into my bedroom and locked the door. Oh and then I took a shower.
We have since removed the crackers, but that hasn't made our friend go away. Ami saw him the same night as I did, and Kevin almost stepped on him when we came home from work yesterday. We have since complained in the strongest possible terms to our landlord, who has promised to take care of it. Fingers crossed our new flatmate will be vacating the premises sooner rather than later.
Family and friends - send me emails! And Addie pics! And Tiki pics!
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