Nitu's Day
Today I took pictures
A cousin's "boyfriend's family" is coming over to visit. There's apparently a ceremony of sorts to mark the occasion, and there are many gifts. It's also that cousin's birthday. Another one of my cousins has also come over for the occasion. "Cousin" is sort of used as a bad word in Australia sometimes, but I've been having a ball with my cousins, whether it's D&M chats at 2am or just talking crap... also at 2am. It's good to have other people in my age bracket to talk to on this trip where most of the people I meet are my parents' age.
As it turns out, a theory I've had for a while seems to be holding up - the culture gap between generations is greater than the culture gap between countries (at least, in modern times). It felt rather special when one of my cousins turned on Metallica's "Nothing else matters" and said it's one of her favourite songs, as well as "certain movies":http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230165/ which she claimed "described her life" because she was in a band when she was younger.
I took a lot of pictures during the day, which weren't just for me this time. After showing the family, they think I'm becoming a good photographer. This is a promising sign. It'd be nice to win a competition or something. Honestly though, it's the massive F-Stop on my 50mm lens which does all the work. It's still hard to do all the social stuff to get people interested in getting a picture taken, but I'm getting some practise there.
During the evening we went to a club. Not a dance club, rather a club with members which has a bunch of amenities, including tennis courts, a swimming pool, restaurants, bars, a movie theater, etc. Jamshedpur is like Wollongong in Australia, in that it's main industry is steel, and one company (Tata in Jamshedpur, BHP in Wollongong) pretty much runs the town. Tata has gone so far as to build a bunch of infrastructure for the place, including parks and stuff. This club is owned by them. It feels like a creepy "companies as governments" things, but there's good ice cream and that eases the mind.
The club's bowling alley was closed for some reason, as was the pool. India is beginning to disappoint me in the way things are done around here. It's like a procrastinating high school student. It doesn't help that my parents do things at snail's pace, and the only thing on their mind is food and sleep. My mum just woke up and told me she "had a lot of fun" because she "slept for so long".
Having said that, I had a rather good time just hanging around at a cafe (real coffee!) just chatting with my brother and one of my cousins.
I took a lot of pictures during the day, which weren't just for me this time. After showing the family, they think I'm becoming a good photographer. This is a promising sign. It'd be nice to win a competition or something. Honestly though, it's the massive F-Stop on my 50mm lens which does all the work. It's still hard to do all the social stuff to get people interested in getting a picture taken, but I'm getting some practise there.
During the evening we went to a club. Not a dance club, rather a club with members which has a bunch of amenities, including tennis courts, a swimming pool, restaurants, bars, a movie theater, etc. Jamshedpur is like Wollongong in Australia, in that it's main industry is steel, and one company (Tata in Jamshedpur, BHP in Wollongong) pretty much runs the town. Tata has gone so far as to build a bunch of infrastructure for the place, including parks and stuff. This club is owned by them. It feels like a creepy "companies as governments" things, but there's good ice cream and that eases the mind.
The club's bowling alley was closed for some reason, as was the pool. India is beginning to disappoint me in the way things are done around here. It's like a procrastinating high school student. It doesn't help that my parents do things at snail's pace, and the only thing on their mind is food and sleep. My mum just woke up and told me she "had a lot of fun" because she "slept for so long".
Having said that, I had a rather good time just hanging around at a cafe (real coffee!) just chatting with my brother and one of my cousins.