Poker Nights

Last Tuesday was the weekly poker night, and, as you can probably guess, I didn’t get very far. Theoretically in poker the newbies should get pretty far because nobody knows how to read them, but noooo, not for me. Then on Wednesday a guy called Dave came down here from Mumbai to start recording a CD with us. The CD is for n English workbook. You know, the type of CD that the kids in the class make fun of? Yeah, that one. We practiced on Wednesday and Thursday. Which was pretty funny actually. There are certain things in the English language that if you keep repeating and say it slowly, it sounds absolutely stupid. For instance, one of the phrases we repeated the most was the question “What do you do?” (as in ’what’s your occupation’). You try say that with the emphasis on the right part and slowly. See what I mean? Anyway we recorded the CD on Friday in an actual recording studio at one of the staff’s house. Her brother is a musician and it’s a really sweet get up he’s got going on. We ended up being there the whole day, from 10:30 till 6:00, but we managed to get it all done. We also managed to take some sweet pictures too. One of the guys we were with thought he was a model and, because that’s so contagious, it didn’t take long for the rest of us to think that. You’ll see the pictures soon enough. Facebook. After the recording we went to the cinema and let me tell you, no cinema I’ve ever been too compares to this one. It cost about two pounds (3.50ish dollars) a ticket and each seat was like one of those single sofa thingys that nobody really knows the name of. You know, like a really cushiony chair? Anyway, yeah, every seat was like that except for the front row that was wooden chairs (but they cost 13p, about 19 cence) and the sound and picture was just as good as any other cinema, but the building was so much bigger than any others at home. The film we saw (it wasn’t my choice, it was the girls we were with) was the Michael Jackson one. I forgot the name of it. After seeing it I finally have a set opinion about ol’ Jacko. Are you ready for it? I think he’s probably one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever seen, but he’s a musical genius. Some of the things he comes up with is amazing. And the way they filmed it wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought they’d do it so that he’d be glorified as the greatest person on earth, but it wasn’t actually that way. Some of the parts seemed filmed in such a way that it seemed like they were planning on people laughing at him. But anyway, like I said, musical genius. So after that we all went to girls house again to play poker. I went with a guy named Blesson to go get the poker chips. We ended up reaching 100 km/hour on a motorbike. That was a thrill and a half. Oh and he also let me drive his bike while he was waiting for his friend. It was the first time I’d ridden a motorbike and I didn’t stall it!! Well, I didn’t when I started it but then I found myself headed straight for a wall and he didn’t tell me the breaks so in that split second of a brick wall coming to greet me I decided it would be best if I stalled it to stop it. Don’t laugh at me, it’s the only way I knew how. Then we headed back to girls place with me sitting on the back holding the poker chips, and that was when we hit 100, with me holding on to the poker chips with one hand, and the back of the bike with the other. Good stuff. And in the end we didn’t even play poker. We just hung out, which was pretty cool too though. Then on Saturday Dave left, and we went to Spencer’s Plaza (a big mall near us) and just looked around and bought a few things. From there we went to Sparky’s Diner and helped out with their Halloween bash thing they had. I was in charge of a game that involved darts and balloons. The aim of the game was to pop the balloons with darts. The balloons were all lined up on a board that the darts were supposed to stick into. Yeah they didn’t. Darts are very scary when thy bounce back after someone throws them. Especially when you’re sitting about a foot and a half away from the board. I got stabbed with them at least three times (and when I say ‘stabbed’ I mean pricked, but when I say I got ‘pricked’ three times it doesn’t quite have the same effect). But anyway we got free food cause we worked so that was pretty cool. Then Sunday we ended up not going to church because my phone (the alarm) died halfway through the night. But we did go to the youth thingy afterwards and ended up leading a church in the evening the other side of Chennai. Oh yeah, and throughout all of this my phone was changing sim cards because none of them decided to work. I had 4 sim cards in 4 days. On the way to leading the church we past a bridge that had collapsed with a lorry that had two wheels on the road and the rest was leaning into the collapsed bridge. That at was pretty epic. After the service we headed back, stopped at Coffee Day (the equivalent to Starbucks) and then went to Sparky’s for Dinner, our traditional Sunday dinner. Monday was pretty much the same as usual, and then Tuesday was another poker night, one which, again, I didn’t get very far in, although Tom, one of the guys I’m with, came second. Good stuff.