There was a cultural show at the business school last night. The idea was that folks would get up and do a performance of something that shows some of their home country's culture. There was an Australian singing "Waltzing Matilda", Bulgarian dancing, a Chinese girl singing the hell out of a karaoke song, an ass-load of *Indian dancing, and of course, Ean and Reba doing Tales From The Birdbath. I guess that means that we're "Seattle" culture. This makes me laugh. This makes me laugh a LOT. :) So, a drum kit and amp were rented, we practised 1 hour before the show, shanghaied a buddy into singing backups on Chichen Itza (thanks, Andrew), and settled on 4 songs. Before we got started I explained to the crowd that not all music from Seattle was loud, grungy and fast. I also pointed out that everybody there does seem to be in a band, for whatever reason. I gave props to Olympia and talked about wussy lofi pop music, and then we whooped it out! People seemed to really like it, and and cheered a lot for us. I've been congratulated about 1 zillion times since then. That always feels good. I think that the MBAs are psyched to have a "punk guy" or whatever it is they think I am, on the program. It's sort of rare out here. Funny thing is, whatever it is that I am is super common at home, and the thing that makes me really weird there is that I'm at Oxford! Figure that one out. The auditorium was well packed, maybe 200 people were in there, screaming their heads off. Most of them were my friends, so all the warm support is a little bit to be expected. I have to say that I felt really really good being on a stage again though, I realise that I miss it a lot. Reba and I decided that we're going to start playing music again, as soon as I'm done with the MBA. After the show, we went to a disco and danced with the (mostly Indian) MBAs all night.
*Brief note on Indian Dancing: The music is this sort of Indian sounding techno-house stuff with lots of breakdowns and that weird sort of yodely sounding eastern vocal style... but the important point is that these people are really really into dancing. They have group dance routines they all know, and totally whip them out at the discos spontaneously. Every weekend all night dancing appears to be a very typical pastime. It's not quite as bumpy grindy as Americans get, though. I suspect that this has something to do with how sexuality is always metaphorically represented by dance routines in Bollywood movies. Maybe these dance moves are all super sexy turnons for these folks, and it just doesn't look like it to us? Dunno. I get the feeling that discos are a very big industry in India, and a lot of parties focus around this.
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HOORAY FOR BIRDBATH!
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