heading for the wedding

yesterday i purchased a nice new khadi kurta (handmade indian shirt) to wear to the event, and i've joined the office gift pool. thus everything is taken care of. tonight i catch an overnight bus for chennai with some of my co worker buddies. the wedding is sunday at 7am--not saturday as i originally thought. not sure what the plan is on saturday, though the guys mentioned something about a "booze party" in the evening. hmm. maybe the plan is to finish a very long night at the wedding.

wedding?!

i'm invited to a wedding this weekend, but it's way the hell over in chennai (madras to you old timers) and it's saturday at 7am. yeah, that's right....7am. i also need to buy clothes and shoes to wear, and figure out a gift.

i've never been to an indian wedding. should i go? will it be a cultural experience i dare not miss, or a snoozer (which might be literal given the time of day)? if you have experince with these things help me out. i'm also getting a lot of different stories on acceptable dress. if possible, do suggest clothes and shoes i should wear and the gift i should bring. it would be nice if i could wear something that would be useful for more than indian weddings (e.g. something i could wear to work or out at night).

is cash an acceptable gift? what amount is reasonable?

youth camp

most of the people i hang out with here originally met through an organization i will call IYE (international youth exchange)*, where young people do volunteer work and live with a host family in some other country. this time of year, IYE runs a camp outside of bangalore to welcome the latest arrivals to india. B & V (the swede and the italian) & R & M2 & Y (the indian women) have all been affiliated with IYE in the past. even though most of them have nothing to do with IYE officially anymore, they enjoy visiting the camp, and this time they invited me to come along. i felt a little weird about going, given that i have nothing to do with IYE and that the Y in IYE doesn't exactly fit me to a T, but i figured it beats sitting at home with a cold. so, hopped up on cold medication, i packed a bag, grabbed my guitar, and met the gang for the ride out to camp on the outskirts of bangalore. before we got in the van, V took me aside and quagmiresquely** explained that this year's crop consisted of some 24 females and 3 males, the oldest amongst them pushing 21. I should have replied "giggity, giggity...all riiight"***, but being snotty and sick and most cripplingly of all, me, i just couldn't bring myself to become "that creepy old guy" for the weekend. I decided then and there that i'd leave that for V.

But that was before i fully appreciated the transformative effect of questionable cold medicine, hindi dance music, and the old monk (indian rum).****

to be continued.

* name altered so i don't get in trouble
** second quagmire (family guy) reference in the blog. dennis made the first. thanks dennis for opening that door.
*** third quagmire reference
**** foreshadowing used to increase readership.

a picture, proving i was there: