Nothing New Under the Sun

Actually, there isn't much sun in Bangalore at the moment. It is strange to watch Wimbledon and realize that they are hotter in England than we are here in India. We haven't had much rain lately - just heavy winds and a constant layer of clouds.

We have been seeing old friends all week. On Thursday we had dinner at Ivan's house - he is a Swiss computer scientist - and saw our Indian friends Harish and Yadvinder, along with the French teachers, Julie and Anne-Julie (another naming idea for twins!). Then on Friday Harish invited us out with some Macromedia folks to a bar called Purple Haze. The music selection was hilarious - lots of Queen, some Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen and basically anything you could think of from the early 80s. The best part was there was a tv showing music videos. The Indians got quite a kick out of Freddie Mercury (they thought he looked gay). Th taught us how to count to ten in Hindi, and now they keep trying to get us to order things in restaurants.

Saturday we had dinner at Mainland China and then Lauren invited us back to her place for drinks. We stayed until the wee hours, which made it difficult to wake up early to go to the Nandi Hills. We had never been to the hills before, and it was a nice change from Bangalore - it's quite green and quiet, and there are interesting sights, like a place where Tipu Sultan used to drop people to their death.

Anyway, it's sad to see many of our friends getting ready to leave India. Anne-Julie is leaving on Saturday for a trip to the north, and then she's off to France. We have been talking about meeting up in Chandigarh it's a possibility, because we do want to go up there and our friend Yad is getting engaged. Supposedly people in Punjab really know how to party!