A real longggggg weekend

Hi folks, my sincere apologies for being away for the past 10 days or so. We got a real looonggggg weekend of 6 days here - a couple of days for the weekend and 4 days for the Eid-Al-Adha(also called Bakrid back home in India). I thought of making this weekend an Internet-free one and never checked even my office mail, except when I went to office for a couple of hours during these 6 days.

Well, a lot of things happened during this weekend, including a Bachelor party and some unwanted shopping and lot of sleeping. I played cricket a couple of times and my weakness for fuller straight balls showed up yet again. I was bowled both the times and the last occasion, I sprained my shoulder while fielding. Now, it almost healed.

Coming to the bachelor party, guys from the Telugu community here wanted to host a bachelor party for quite some time. Don’t assume that all those guys were bachelors. Out of the total 16 people who attended the party, only 3 of us were bachelors and a couple of forced bachelors were also present. The party was held at my flat as it was the only bachelor flat around which can hold so many people. We hired a cook for the cooking and I had to clean the flat all by myself because most of my friends had office the day before the party. Believe me, I never thought that my flat had so many items(I saw some crockery which I never saw before)!!!! Anyways, I was too tired after all the cleaning as it’s been a long while since we cleaned the whole flat. I cleaned a whole 4 kilos of prawns while helping the cook(I never even touched a raw prawn before).

The day of the party has finally arrived. The age groups of the guests varied from 25 to 62. The eldest guy had a son who’s older than me. The menu was long but all the items were prepared at home itself. The menu included chicken 65, mutton sukka, pepper prawns, chicken curry, fried fish, onion pakodas, fried rice and carrot curry. The beverage list included Chivas Regal, Fosters and Grants. A total of three and half bottles of whisky made its way down the throats of attendees along with a couple of crates of beer. Another interesting aspect in the party was the rummy game which I played with a huge group after a real long time. I lost money in almost all the games except the last game in which I made some profit too(the stakes were higher in this one). The party finally finished at 4 45 AM the next day(it was the time when I bid adieu to the last of the guests).

So far, everything looked fine. But, our troubles started the next day when we had to do the cleaning of utensils, glasses and the whole flat all over again. The cook, who promised to visit us the next day, was nowhere to be seen and again all my friends had to go to office. It took us(me) almost two days to clean the whole mess one-by-one(we made plans to finish everything off in phases). Now, we are almost back to normal(hey, where’s my tiny aquarium which used to be right next to my laptop?).

Next big thing during these holidays was my unwanted shopping. My stupid shopping list included a 256 GB external hard disk, a 10.1 mega pixel CASIO digital camera, an electronic shaver(all are on discounted prices) etc. The main reason why this shopping is called unwanted is because I don’t really need any of these items and the second reason is this shopping was done when I was really running low on cash.

And yesterday, it was the Indian night at the Nation’s Art Festival here in Bahrain. I was very much depressed with that program because out of some 15 events during the night, only 5 or 6 really depicted the true Indian culture. Only Andhra Pradesh and Assam did their part well in depicting their culture. All other events are Bollywood based dances. But believe me, it was too hard to hold a handycam steady for long with the cold wind blowing hard at you.

Well folks, this is what happened during my absence from the Bloggerville. Will be around from now on.