On Saturday my friends invited me to join them at the IIMB Cultural Festival. IIMB stands for the India Institute of Management - Bangalore, and it's the #2 business school in India. Which means it isn't just "good for a third world country" - it's REALLY good. Check out their acceptance rate: 250 people from 250,000 applicants. Wow. The top business school in the US is Harvard, which accepts 14.9% of applicants (vs. IIMB's 0.1%).
Anyway, a girl named Bettina was recently a foreign exchange student there, so she heard about this cultural festival. We met up at the auditorium and listened to a traditional singing competition. It seemed like everyone had perfect pitch - I wonder what would happen if there was a "Global Idol" instead of just the country competitions like "American Idol?" Anyway, after listening to a few performances, we went to listen to the main event - a big rock concert with a band called Strings (above). They're a Pakistani band that sings in Hindi, and out of thousands of people, I was one of maybe 5 white people in the crowd. Which, actually, was fine by me. I never felt uncomfortable, and - although I had no idea what they were saying - the energy of a rock concert translates very well. And naturally I ran up to the front of the crowd, near the stage.
After the Strings show we went across the street from the campus to buy a few beers, and then retreated to the rooftop terrace of a dorm room (Bettina pictured above, Raj / Harish / me below). It was a good chance to relax and listen to the second band, which was a mediocre jam band. And I had notably well-educated company - Bettina (IIMB), Harish (Stanford B-School), and Raj (also Standford B-School). Expats here seem to be the cream of the world's crop.
The final event of the evening (and it was getting late at this point) was, to me, the most interesting and culturally unique. IIMB often has parties in courtyard that they call the "L-Square." We heard a ruckus coming from L-Square, and so we drifted over. They had set up a projector and screen and were doing karaoke - really, one person would have a mic, but it was more of a group sing-along. The sheer number of people in such a small space (packed into stadium seating, and others sitting on the rooftops with their feet dangling over) was awesome. But not intimidating enough to discourage me from leading a rousing chorus of "Hit me baby one more time" by Britney Spears. It was a real crowd-pleaser.
This past weekend I went to the Maldives for four days / three nights. The Maldives are a chain of 1,000 small islands. They're so small that it's hard to find them on a map; they're southwest from India and in the Indian ocean. But they're known as having some of the best beaches in the world, and I can get to them easily from Bangalore. The water is crystal clear and the beaches are powder-white. The most amazing thing is the marine life. I took ten steps off of the beach and immediately there were fish swimming around me; blue ones, yellow ones, swimming between my legs and around me. The abundance of marine life can't be compared to anywhere I've been before. I took a day trip and snorkeled on a reef (it was about 10 - 15 feet deep), and I was in schools of hundreds of brilliant fish. What an amazing experience! I would definitely go again, maybe for a scuba trip. But on the other hand, there are so many other things in Asia that I want to see.
