Christ-Mitch time.

605pm
22.12.8
Christ-Mitch time.

So India apparently thinks the time to put up Christmas decorations is within a week of the day.




Which I accept as a very nice accomodation to Christians.


Though I'm of the opinion that the best time (in Christian countries) to have Christmas stuff up is from the first week of Advent to the last day of Christmas. But I also didn't expect an extreme minority to receive such a public acknowledgement. It would be akin to American Christians putting up Chaunnukah decorations. Which would be sort of a nice acknowledgement of our elder brother faith.

Sunday night, I attended Tia and Mitch's final wedding party. Which was the Bengali wedding reception.


It had fantastic Bengali food.


And for my second time, I had pan.


This time I liked it alot better and actually figured out how to enjoy it. I think the key is to chew a little, tuck it aside in your cheek, suck a little, and when it's run out of flavour, repeat. At the end, you just chew up the leaves and insides and swallow the remnant. The pan at the party was tricky though... they were inside of banana leaf pouches... which lucky for me, Mitch found out first when he bit into it and thought it was unpleasant pan. Relatives eventually explained that it was inside of a banana leaf. Thanks to his pioneering, I didn't have the chance to make the same mistake.

It was nice to be one of three (non-immediate family) people to participate in both the US and Indian segments. One was a professor at Washington Univ, who is a friend of Tia's dad, and the third was a friend of Mitch.

An interesting story about the party:
After eating, I was given a comment card which asked me to rate three things (one was food, one was service and I think the third was environment). I put very good on all, but in the comment box I put a note.
"The desert seemed to be not very good, but only average".
As I was filling out the form, it was obvious that the staff was watching me and waiting to see the results. And once I finished, they took the card ten feet away in visible distance and two people immediately read it. While reading, I could tell they were a bit disturbed and confused, as they were looking periodically at me and at the desert and were discussing amongst themselves. A few minutes later, I was walking around and they came up to me. They asked me about my comments and I explained, I had never had the deserts before so I wrote "seemed" not very good, since I had no reference. To which they explained that that's the way the deserts were supposed to be made (blandly).



I'm happy I was still around to clarify my comments, as I could see how they would be confused. But I also find it a very good example of cultural differences. In India, privacy is not honored above understanding. This is something I admire in many of it's various forms, but also something that is very very very alien to an American.
630pm