In Da Club

Yesterday was a long day. As usual we got up at 730 to eat breakfast. After that, Viji took the remaining group to the foreign registrars office. You would think that for a city as big as Delhi there would be a huge building dedicated to registering foreigners but once again India has subverted our expectations. People were crammed into all the chairs available, and for about 20 minutes we had to stand in a line and wait for them to check us in. After that, we had to go outside and wait, which, considering the 110 degree weather, wasn't very comfortable. The place were sitting was a kind of courtyard, covered by a huge green tarp, which in-effect made us colorblind. Somebody brought cards (considering the last group had to wait for 5 hours), so we were pretty well entertained. I taught the group my new favorite card game, called Gumpsh, where you have a partner and you have to come up with a secret code to tell your partner what cards you have and how many of them. People's codes are pretty funny; when we played tonight Rae and I didn't even need to make up a code, we just spoke in Hebrew. Anyway, we ended up only being at the office for 2 hours total, so it really wasn't bad.

Lunch at the YWCA, and then Kat, Rae and I went on a few errands. Kat and I had gotten cell phones 2 days earlier, been told they would work within 90 minutes and they still didn't work so we went to go fix them while Rae needed to buy a phone. It was my first time taking an auto-rickshaw, also known as a tuk-tuk. The place we needed to go was about 10 minutes away which should cost about 30 rupees, about 75 cents, but the drivers would try to charge us 200 rupees. The problem was that none of us had small change, only 500 rupee notes. All we had collectively in small change was 20 rupees, so i flagged down about 8 or 9 rickshaws, trying to haggle them down to 20 rupees. All of them reacted in the same way by just driving off. it was about that time that Rae discovered that she had 10 more rupees, so we snagged the next rickshaw we saw and found our way to the phone store. As we get into the rickshaw, i get a text message on my phone, telling me it's been activated. This is a perfect example of Indian standard time: It's even worse than jewish standard Time. Jews are usually about 30 minutes late, whereas Indian standard time can range from 30 minutes to 2 days late.

When we got to the phone place, and Kat's phone was working within 2 minutes. While the girls were doing this, i found a store that sold indian sweets. They had gulab-jamin, which is my favorite indian dessert, so i ate a few of those. Rae didn't want to get her phone at the place we got ours because it took so long for our phones to work. Luckily, in our subsequent wanderings, we found a cell phone store that was actually cheaper than our cell phones, so Rae got her phone there. In order to get a cell phone in India, one needs to bring a passport, and passport pictures. So Rae gave her passport to one indian guy at the store, and he begins to walk out of the store. This freaked us all out, because that was Rachel's passport walking out the door to an unknown area, with an unknown man. So i walked out with him, and followed him just to make sure. He led me down a few alleys to a crowded hole-in-the-wall copying place, made a copy of the passport, and then walked back to the store. The area with the copy place was this really cool market, with really tiny shops crowded next to each other, each selling something unique. So after Rae got her phone, we went there and browsed the shops - I bought a few mangos.

Later that night we heard about this club called Urban Pind, where it was ladies night. Ladies night means that women drink for free, so 3 of the guys and 9 of the girls took a bunch of rickshaws to the club to check it out. Too bad the club was in an obscure part of Delhi, because our rickshaw driver stopped at least 7 times to ask directions from the locals. Our driver was so fun: honked his horn when there was absolutely nothing to honk at, sang songs loudly to himself, and took turns at a speed thought to turn the rickshaw over. The rickshaws here are so cool - tiny green 3-wheeled vehicles with the driver in front and a seat for 3 in the back. The streets in Delhi are ridiculous - first of all traffic goes the wrong way, and second of all, everyone drives as if they're playing bumper cars. The lane markings on the streets are a mere suggestion so motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, and scooters weave haphazardly through traffic. The cars get within inches of each other, and honking your horn, contrary to its use in america to express anger and annoyance just means hello here, and is in abundance. On the whole, driving in Delhi can only be described as organized chaos - it's much like a flock of birds being instantaneously synchronized in their flight pattern, but never bumping into one another.

Anyway, we got to the club which was really fun - 3 levels of partying going on, good music, and lots of interesting people. I met some french people who were visiting their friend in Delhi, and talked to them for a while. The heat of Delhi, even at night, plus the club-dancing atmosphere made sure that all of us were drenched in sweat after about 5 minutes, a feeling we've become used to. It's always a good idea to bring a handkerchief around to wipe off the shvitz. We stayed at the club for a long time, and then slowly left in our groups of four - one guy to each 3 girls. Our rickshaw on the way back, though more expensive than the previous one, didn't get lost many times, and returned us safely to the YWCA. Another successful day in Delhi.