It's Chennaice!

Well, it finally happened. I got to party late, very, very late in Chennai. Until 4 AM late, and I wasn't even at my home institute wasting time on the internet! The invitation was through one of my exchange student friends who had already had a second hand invitation. I was at least three degrees of separation from the host. NO worries, the entrance was "bring a swimsuit, bring booze." Sounds great! My kind of party. It turned out to be an excellent party indeed. Mostly foreigners and wealthy Indians who have spent plenty of time abroad. The place was some 5 miles south of the city and on a beach with a pool and the house was enormous. Inside were many bottles of goodnesses and many interesting people. Well, what else did I find? Women wearing bikinis! In INDIA! I thought that didn't happen. Of course the party was still close to 2 men: 1 woman. Oh well, can't win 'em all. The winter olympics were on tv LIVE, and we were sweating our asses off in the new chennai summer heat. What a treat!

Quote of the night, however, goes to the title of this post. I was briefly talking to some girl from southern california and she asked me how I like Chennai. Of course, I'm soured on it so I told her so. She was not happy to hear that. She said, "come on, it's Chennaice!" I was basically done with the conversation at that point. She told me how much she parties and how much she likes it here. Basically, we have seen completely different Chennais. I seen the one where the are very few English speakers and almost no foreigners. She has seen the one where foreigners who have obscene amounts of money can host parties because India is cheap relative to America. In any case, I enjoyed the hell out of myself listening to a nearly naked drunken german man playing saxophone by the pool to some mildly decent techno music, talking to native english speakers who have traveled the world and had interesting stories to tell, and drinking booze with them. So for the first time I could say I had a chennaice time. I was lucky enough to make acquaintances with several DJs around town and getting the numbers of some people who host similar parties around town. Hopefully this won't be a one time deal. So, maybe Chennai is beginning to look up in the smallest way.