The scandalous wedding dancers – must have for any wedding.

The happy couple.

I’m practicing my awkward white-boy dance moves.

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I only wish I could have worn the MC Hammer pants as well….

Balancing act

Geno and I trying to ignore Kinger’s ramblings

The actual wedding ceremony

More of the first evening’s festivities

The first evening’s entertainment

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I like how Indian weddings are set up – at least I this one. The wedding area actually consisted of two areas – an inside (and air conditioned) room with caterers serving drinks. Outside this room was a patio area where the actual wedding ceremony took place. The patio had a canopy where the couple would sit along with a Hindu holy man (terminology?) and his assistant (?). Around the canopy were pillows for guests to sit down and watch the ceremony. The ceremony was quite long so people drifted between the patio and inside. It was all very informal – for the guests anyway. During the ceremony people would move in close for a few pictures, head inside for a drink or two, then come back out and watch some more of the ceremony. Side conversations were going on throughout – both indoors and outdoors. After the ceremony was complete everyone headed to a dining room downstairs for a tasty buffet. Food is a very important part of an Indian wedding, which was all good by me – I was in heaven eating Indian food for 10 days. All the food, especially this evening, was exceptional.

One of the more annoying parts of the wedding was the camera crew who were at all the events. The camera crew wasn’t so much the problem as the “burn your retina to a crisp” spotlight on the video camera. These guys had managed to strap a large industrial halogen light to the top of the camera. There is no doubt in my mind that if aliens ever come to earth it will be because they will see this camera spotlight hundreds of light-years away – most likely blinding half of them in the process. I’m sure some guy in the International Space Station was like, “why the heck is there a bright light that keeps coming on around Delhi?” The portable supernova also necessitated the crew to walk around with a 100’ extension cord plugged into a wall outlet – because I’m sure even a car battery would only be able to power this bad-boy for about 10 milliseconds. I would love to see the video this camera took. I’m sure every segment had people giving a classic “deer caught in the headlights” pose. I know that’s the pose I gave because it was the only pose I could give – I couldn’t see anything else but that light. After the first night I seriously considered wearing sunglasses to all future events. A fair portion of the various wedding events consisted of me trying to avoid the camera crew. I felt bad for Liz and Josh. Hopefully their vision was not permanently impaired.

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I managed to have a few minor scared during the week in the US. One night I stayed with my sister and nearly locked myself out of her house. She and her fiancé had already left for work and I was moping around getting ready to leave. She lives in the second floor of a two story house with the landlord living on the first floor. While getting ready I head a loud meowing coming from behind one of the doors in my sisters house. Curious I opened the door where there was a shared stairway. Immediately the cat bounced up the stairs towards me. It was cute so I stopped down to pet it. It was obvious the cat was more interested in my sisters apartment than me and he/she (didn’t look at it that close) tried to get past me into the apartment. Oh, no you don’t little cat. I closed the door to stop it from going in. As soon as I closed it I realized I probably just locked myself out. Sure enough I did. Immediately I had visions of walking to my sisters office in my T-shirt, boxer shirts and socks to get her key. Luckily, the front door was left unlocked so I was able to get back in. Whew, almost a close one.

The second close call involved my sister’s car which I borrowed all week. On Sunday night I got together with a couple friends and was drinking with them when my sister called. She wanted to tell me that she passed a car with the lights on in the parking lot which looked a lot like hers. She got close to it and found out it was hers! I had left the light on. Luckily I had also forgotten to lock the passenger door so she was able to get into the car to turn off the lights.

The third involved my mother’s treadmill. I stayed with my parents a couple days and meandered into the basement where my mother had a new treadmill I hadn’t seen yet. Most treadmills I’ve been on have a button you press repeatedly to increase speed. This treadmill had a dial – heretofore known as “the most sensitive dial known to man”. I turn the dial a fraction of an inch and all of a sudden the treadmill is moving … well, let’s just say way faster than I thought it would be. I nearly slammed my head on the controls and launched myself off the back. Luckily my lightning fast reflexes were able to recover. My father (who saw it all) had a good laugh out of it though.

Because I used frequent flier miles (and I live in a backwards Eastern European capital that no one travels to) I had two changeovers on my flight. The most interesting was arriving into Newark. About 30 minutes before landing the announcement comes over the loudspeaker asking anyone with medical knowledge to press their service light. Now that is not something you want to hear on a plane – unless you immediately think of the movie “Airplane” and start laughing out loud while people look at you like you are a psychopath. Of course then you try to think if you had the chicken or the fish and the laughing stops. So anyway, the “incident” was only 5 or 6 rows in front of me so I was sort of able to see what was going on. They had her on oxygen through to the landing but I was never able to figure out what exactly the problem was. If you ask me it was the 35 MPH cross winds the plane was flying through on its approach. I almost needed oxygen too. So we get to the gate and the flight attendant tells everyone to stay in their seats so the EMTs waiting at the airport can get to the patient. After a 9 hour flight no one is super happy about this, but we all understand the reasons. So we dock and wait. Then we wait some more. Yea, now there is a crack EMT squad at Newark. They were probably late because they had to take that annoying little train from another terminal and wait in a 4 mile security line. After about 5 minutes a Port Authority police officer comes on board. He’s not sure what to do so he calls for EMTs. Weren’t they already supposed to be there? Didn’t someone call ahead? What, was the basketball game not over yet? Anyway, there is only so long you can get passengers to sit on a docked plane after a 9 hour flight so eventually we all piled into the aisles scrambled off the plane despite flight attendants urging us to stay seated. Well, it’s 175 passengers vs. 5 flight attendants so we won. I never did see an EMT. The moral of the story – don’t get sick on an airplane landing at Newark.

Rant: Newark is the only airport I’ve been to where, when you connect flights ON THE SAME AIRLINE, you have to go through the whole security process again. Thus on one trip from the US to Bulgaria I had to go through three full security checks (and associated lines). The one in Newark is a pain because first you go through a bomb detection scanner (or I assume that’s what it was) that blows air on you, then you have to go through a metal detector. The interesting thing is that all three security checks found different reasons to halt me. The first is was my belt. On the second, my belt was ok, but the pack of gum (with metallic wrapper) set off the alarm. On the third one nothing set off the alarm. I love the consistency.

Well, I finally made it back to BG. I was thinking in my 6 hour layover in Milan that there should be rooms with cots that you can rent by the hour. The cots can be divided by cubicle walls. There is a special room for snorers. There aren’t any alarms to disturb sleepers – either an attendant can wake you up or install a special alarm that vibrates the bed. I would have gladly paid 20 euro for a few hours of comfortable sleep. Those airport chairs just don’t cut it.

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