Sunday

This was a very boring day and I am sorry you have to read this. But so it goes.

We decided to stay on Thippasandra, which meant I got to sleep in late. For me this means the decadent hour of 8:00 because, like my father, I do not actually need sleep like a normal, well adjusted human being. In any case.

I faffed around for a little bit then decided to walk down Thippasandra to buy a nutrient filled morning diet coke and watch the cattle carts rumble down the road. I also passed by the friendly neighborhood porn theater. This place looks eminently sketchy, a low slung puke brown sort of building, frequented by seedy looking guys at all hours. Posters with slatternly looking Western women adorn the place, which probably should have tipped me off as to why the wink wink nudge nudge behavior around that building was ESPECIALLY bad. I am amused to find that they offer a matinee porno showing. I wouldn't think that most people could summon up the will to really get into a dirty film at 11 in the morning but I suppose I should never underestimate humanity.

I was starving, and since Carli and Aneesa both had tummy lurgy, I popped into the Breeze for my usual delicious fish tikka. I waited for Carli and Aneesa to reappear but they didn't, so I decided to walk back home and go to bed.

I met up with the whole gang again at the Breeze just as it began to rain - those hard afternoon rains Bangalore seems to specialize in, that come and go with suprising speed. I decided this would be a good day to lie around and make serious inroads into Larry McMurty's fabulous Lonesome Dove, and damned if that isn't exactly what I did.

We had been sorta-commanded by Asha on behalf of I to I to go participate in a soccer game with the kid's YMCA team, which would apparantly be filmed for an Australian travel show. (I know, this is convuluted.)For some curious reason I agreed to this, although I am one of the least coordinated people on the planet and thus useful only as something to bounce the ball off of on a soccer field. But I was in one of my very occasional up for anything moods, so I threw on my gym shorts and my Practical Shoes (ewww!) and decided to go.

Despite the rain, Asha picked us all up in her jeep and off we went. The playing field was, I am not making this up, located in a cemetery, full of skinny and over-excited kids kicking around old soccer balls (which would occasionally lodge themselves behind gravestones and crypts, looking at us with hungry, competitive eyes. They were obviously gonna kick our asses.

We skirmished for a while and I played my version of soccer, which mostly means chasing the ball up and down the field and trying not to get hit in the face. The film crew then pulled up in a large professional van.

The film crew was comprised of a team of four Aussies: a jovial fat guy who kept on calling us "ladies", a tall blonde host called Jules (who the kids gleefully abbreviated to Mango Juice), and two camera men, one of whom kept on staring at me in a somewhat creepy way. (Dunno why. I was wearing practical shoes. No one likes practical shoes.)

They interviewed me, Aneesa, Lorraine, and Carli about our exciting adventures in volunteering, with more emphasis on Lorraine and Carli since they were working with adorable disadvantaged children and we were totally not. I can't say how I performed in my first adventure in broadcast journalism: I think I confused them by giving a long convuluted answer to the "so why are ya here" question, that involved among other things Bangalore's economic situation in relation to Hong Kong and cultural immersion. There were probably too many big words. (Dupuy Family Motto: Never use a small word where a big one will do.)

I'm just glad I remembered to put on lipstick.

We hung around a while later, kicking around the ball, then were returned to the villa.

I decided to head out for dinner and went down to The Clay Pot once again with Julie and Ella. We had tasty coconut milk infused fish molie, vegetable curry, chicken vindaloo, and various appams (spongy rice cake sort of things Kerelans flip for.) And we adjourned once again to the Night Boozer. I hope to hell they make t-shirts because I really want one. It was Lorraine's last night so we saw her off with some cheap booze and extremely bad card playing, which is really emblamatic of what we're all about if you think about it. Seems like she got outta Bangalore safely and in good time, which is really all one can ask.