April 2009 - Posts - The Expat Blog

April 2009 - Posts

Expats say the darndest things

Posted by Melissa A. Bell at 
This may come as a surprise to people, but I don’t actually like to go out, especially to cocktail parties where I don’t know many people. I always wind up talking to the one person at the entire party who either wants to tell me the entire saga of his blighted love affair that ended ten years ago or the girl who really thinks the guy likes her—right...

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Cheers for IPL deals!

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
Pubs in Delhi are good places to be these days. Now that the IPL has been moved to South Africa (as a friend so aptly put it) "Only a really suicidal pub won't have some IPL deal going on". So what this means apart from the fact that you can watch the matches on big screen, is that you get some great offers on food and beer (yay!) and...

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Of accents, assimilation and accomodation

Posted by Jonathan Sidhu at 
In Delhi, most expatriates seem deeply self-conscious of how they fit (or don’t) into their new (or not-so-new) surroundings. Being image-conscious obviously isn’t unique to this part of the world. But I’d venture the range of possibilities of ‘scenes’ for expatriates make the perennial assimilation vs. accommodation debate more pronounced. I’ve met...

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From the wrong side of town

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
Every city has multiple faces. The slums and the residential areas, the ghettos and the huge apartment complexes, the lower middle class housing and the glitzy commercial areas. We all know these faces exist, yet only truly know one face. We live, school, work and socialize within the contours of that one face and know little else about the other faces...

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Scrabbling my way through Delhi

Posted by Jonathan Sidhu at 
I knew that moving to Delhi would require a certain cultural education. But lately I've mostly just wanted to play Scrabble -- as I wade through burdensome acronyms. I am told that I'm an NRI (or an ABCD!), eligible for a PIO or OCI card. The general elections fill newspaper headlines with CPM, BJP or SP. Did you know the Congress Party also...

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Five Indian films to help you understand the entire Indian psyche.

Posted by Melissa A. Bell at 
Ah, I love generalizing. No, this will not help you understand the entire Indian psyche. There is no Indian psyche, as the general elections are gleefully teaching us. Without further ado, my totally unscientific list of the five movies that you must see so you don't feel like such a friggin' expat when your friends look at you with pity and...

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Brief introductions

Posted by Jonathan Sidhu at 
Good afternoon Livemint readers- This post will be a brief introduction. As Melissa and the other expat bloggers have set the bar high with their tales of racism, sexual harassment and smacking little children, I hope that I too can offer the occasionally informed opinion about cultural confusion as an exile. Preferably I'll do that without beating...

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Confessions of an arrogant Expat: Why didn’t I learn how to speak Hindi?

Posted by Melissa A. Bell at 
First it was summer in February. Then it was back to winter for a little while. Then it was monsoons for a weekend. And now it's the summer again. The turbulence in the air seems to be stirring up turbulence in my head. One day, I’m overly proud, content, in love with wonderful me. The next (i.e. today) I realize I’m a slime-bag, egotistical jerk...

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"Will you ride me?” a.k.a. dating tips for the Average Indian Male

Posted by Melissa A. Bell at 
A couple months ago, my fave blogger, Sushmita Bose over at Still Single in the City got me (and a lot of other people judging by the hue and cry on the comments) thinking about the Average Indian Male . She wrote: One other write-up on the AIM describes him as... "[full of] a kind of hollow excitement of being perpetually at the cusp of puberty...

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