A good Friday night in Chennai

With a trip to Bangalore hanging in the near future, I'd decided it was time to have people over to my place finally. I'm friends with several German exchange students at IIT Madras and my good Italian friend is visiting my institute for a few months as well as having my sister in town. Sadly, as is well known to all westerners living in Chennai, and all avid readers of this blog, there is no nightlife here. It's not Chennaice. It's not even close. Perhaps, if one has certain necessities (money, driver, spouse, hates having real fun) it can be considered "Chennot bad." But "Chennaice?" The more I hear that phrase over and over in my head, the more I think about how ridiculous it is to me.

So anyway, I had to make up my own night life. I invited the Germans and the Italian over for drinks on my balcony. We commenced our activities in the mosquito full night at midnight. First though, we had to get the germans to my place. Did I mention I hate rickshaw drivers in Chennai? I got on the phone with their driver who was coming from less than a mile away and told him exactly where to go, with about 4 BIG landmarks. These landmarks included... I major thoroughfare, a river which divides the city in two, the Tamil Nadu State Judicial Academy (not a small place) and the only state bank of India ATM within several blocks. Of course, he said he knew where that was. He was lying. But after more discussions and some more coaxing, I finally managed to steer him with a little yellow mosquito taxi full of four fully grown germans to my place. I don't have much in my place, but luckily, I had just stocked up on booze because of all the visitors we've been having recently. So we had plenty to go around. I also opened up a bottle of Lebanese table wine and passed it around just to show off how good our wine is in lebanon (and also convince more people to visit). We drank for a little under two hours. Then everyone got tired and went home. But hey, at least (as the Modern Drunkard says) "The only one allowed to announce 'last call' is the floor." There was no last call, just tired people who went home under their own choosing.

So it wasn't perfect, I didn't have a nice iPod selection to play, nor AC, nor enough furniture to sit on, but by God (by the many gods) we had ourselves a Friday night like it should be (almost).