Jingle Bell Rock

One of my all-time favourite movies is Mean Girls. Now, if you haven't seen it, don't write it off as a teenage piece of fluff. And if you have seen it and didn't like it, then it's highly likely I don't like you because you clearly have no sense of humour. This was the movie that really shot Lindsay Lohan to stardom, but let's leave our opinions of her out of the judgement of the movie.

Anyway, bit of background for those of you who haven't seen it (but you really should be out the door headed to the video shop to rent it)... The main character, Cady, is a girl who grew up in Africa and was home-schooled by her zoologist American parents. They move back to the US when she's 16, she starts going to a regular high school and has to quickly come to grips with the girl politics.

There's one scene where Cady is discussing with a couple of her friends why she can't see them that night, because she has to practice with "The Plastics" (the cool - and mean - girl group) for their act at the school Christmas concert.

Cady: We're doing a dance to this song...

Janis & Damien [in unison]: Jingle Bell Rock.

Cady: You guys know that song?

Janis: Everybody in the English-speaking world knows that song. They do it every year.

Now, cut back to Berna and I - driving from Darjeeling to Gangtok in a share jeep. A song with a very catchy chorus in English comes on the radio. I start singing along to the chorus and bopping away in my seat, before realising something. I don't know the words to the verses because they are, in fact, in Hindi. I turn to Berna and ask, "Is this song popular in the English-speaking world?" She looks at me with slight bewilderment and replies emphatically, "No."

Shit I'm going to struggle back home after a year of not using toilet paper, cutlery or anything that would be considered "manners" in the Western world, totally out of date with the music scene but scarily in touch with the latest Bollywood hits. 8 weeks til touchdown...

Unexplained absence

Sorry to all 2 of my regular readers... been in India... again... with Berna (my sister, for anyone not related to me who happens to read this blog)...

If you think this year hasn't exactly been work, work, work - you'd be right. Yay for taxes!

Negligent Bideshi Aunty

Another thing I may have mentioned just once or twice is my little friend next door, Momu. She has just turned two, and entered the "terrible twos" big time. She asks "what's this?" about everything. She has a very short temper if she doesn't get her way. But she's so so so cute that it's almost impossible to stand firm and not give in to her 2-year-old demands. She calls me "Moni" but often other people refer to me as her "bideshi aunty" (bideshi = foreigner).

One of Momu's favourite things is to go upstairs to my "house" - if I haven't seen her for a few days, the first thing she'll say is, "go upstairs!" I think it helps that I am a total slob, so my room is invariably a pig-sty with plenty of interesting things everywhere for little girls to find.

I was on the phone the other night, while Momu was upstairs with me. She was having a great time going into my room, then coming out to the lounge room where I was sitting, with her newest discovered object to find out what it was. After about 20 minutes of this, however, she came out looking very sheepish and pointed to her pants, saying "shi-shi" (Bangla for wee-wee). Thus ended Episode 1 of Negligent Bideshi Aunty.

Episode 2 is somewhat self-explanatory from the following photo:I love the look on her face, it's as if she knows full well that she's found something that firmly belongs in the "adults only" category. She sounded so cute saying "beer" though!

Not appropriate

Yesterday, I cooked up a big pot of a lentils and vegetables for my dinner... and today's lunch... and tonight's dinner... and tomorrow's lunch... and tomorrow's dinner. Typical single person cooking, really - same as what I used to frequently do back home.

The others who live here find that quite intriguing, and one of the men was asking me about it tonight.

Tofail: You not cook tonight?

Me: No.

T: But you eat?

M: Yes, I cooked this last night. One day of cooking, then three days of eating. It's a good system.

T: But if you are cooking for two person, then is not three days eating.

M: Well, no. But I am only cooking for one person.

T: But when will you cook for two person? [NB: This is not an attempt to weasel a free meal out of me, cos they don't like my cooking. This is an indirect way of asking when I will get married.]

M: Ummmm... I don't know. [Brainwave.] Only Allah knows!

T: But how do you know Allah knows?

M: Ummmm...

T: Did he tell you to eat tonight? Now?

M: [Somewhat confused.] Ummmm... [Brainwave.] Yes! I heard the singing from the mosque, but because I do not understand Arabic, I think this is Allah telling me to eat my dinner.

T: [Cracks up laughing.] This is not appropriate.

Short hair!

Now, I may have mentioned (just once or twice... or a million times) that my short hair is a constant source of confusion and concern for Bangladeshis. Beautiful women have long black hair. The only reasons a woman would have short hair are because she is sick, has lice or is crazy. Many, many times I have tried to point out the virtues of short hair (cooler in summer, easy to look after, suits my face etc) but with no success in swaying peoples' opinion. The standard trifecta of questions (what is your name / country / marital status) includes a bonus question for me: why do you have short hair?

The first time I had a hair cut here, the colleague who took me got a severe telling off by all the others upon seeing my trimmed locks on our return. When wearing a sari at a work function the other day, one of the most senior staff members told me that everything about my appearance was "most excellent - the only problem is you do not have beautiful long hair." [I also got told I was "heavy shundor*" which I was initially offended by, until I realised that "heavy" is one of those words whose meaning gets lost in translation.]

* shundor = beautiful

So I could hardly contain my excitement a couple of months ago when I spotted a female news reader - with short hair! I pointed this out to the other people who live with me, but they just dismissed this, saying, "But this is not Bengali system."

And then, at another work function today, I met a very funky young Bangladeshi woman with short hair. She was most surprised when I asked for her photograph, wondering what the hell was so photogenic about her. When I said it was because of her short hair, I don't think she could have been any more pleased than if I'd said it's because she is an Aishwarya Rai lookalike. This groovy chick has spent lots of time in Burma studying with Buddhist monks there, trekked illegally into Thailand and Cambodia, so far refused to get married... Pretty different to most other Bangladeshi women.
When I looked at the photo later, I was filled with jealousy cos her haircut's way cooler than mine! I should have asked where she had it done...

World AIDS Day 2008

Happy World AIDS Day!

I spent this morning at an event in the Shit organised by the NGO I'm working with here, along with some other NGOs in the area and the local government. We started (well and truly on Bangla time at 11am, not 10am as advertised) with a "rally" - marching from the local government office to the edge of town, narrowly escaping being hit by oncoming buses and trucks on the busiest highway in the country. An interesting route, I thought, where we passed about 20 onlookers only, started approaching the busy part of town where we may have had an audience but turned around and went back to the local government office. This rally involved about 100 people, all wearing little hat-type things with something written on them in Bangla, and accompanied by a 3-piece marching band in full costume. Really. These Bangladeshis know how to put on a good program.

Then there were speeches by various important people in town, including my lovely self of course. I'm getting better at these sorts of things - I've worked out the trick is to speak quickly in my strongest Australian accent so nobody understands me anyway - and I'm also getting more assertive about not sitting on stage if I don't want to.

So it's been a great morning, but spent a bit more time there than I would have liked as I had patients to see at the therapy centre. I made a quick exit to head over there, before getting a call from my supervisor a minute later demanding that I come back to take tea with the local government social welfare officer. There were two reasons I didn't want to do this - (1) it was taking me away from my real work and (2) the guy in question was fairly young and I suspected that this was a ploy to scope me out as a potential wife. I made some quite strong protestations but my supervisor wouldn't hear of it... "You must come, he is a very important man for us!"

Reluctantly I went back to take tea with this guy, who within seconds of my arrival informed me that the rules stating that government officers couldn't marry foreigners have been changed so did I want to marry him? I tried my most polite but firm refusal and tried several times to change the subject, but he just kept banging on about it. "But you are not married... you don't have a boyfriend..." - as if it was the only possible logical solution to my "problem". The awkwardness of the situation was certainly not helped by my colleagues who were present, elaborating on my description of where I live ("Sitakund" - to which they added the exact location of my dwellingplace) and kindly giving him my mobile number after I'd left.

One of those "I love Banglade-... f#$cking Bang-... I lo-... f#$cki-... I love Ba-..." kind of days.

You can't be saving the world ALL the time

I just got back from Dhaka after my volunteer group's quarterly meeting... on the bus.

Why did I get the bus, when I'd already booked a plane ticket for 7:50am in the morning (so I could get back to work, being the diligent person that I am)?

Because I'd gotten so shit-faced the night before that I bloody slept through my tax-payer-funded flight.

Please accept my humble apology, Australian tax-payers far and wide who are reading this.

It was a very good lesson to learn... why I should not book flights in advance, because I am totally useless at catching them (remember the 3 flights missed in one day the weekend I came to Adelaide for mum's 60th and was also moving house in Melbourne?).