Outsourced

I don't know if you have ever watched the NBC show Outsourced, I love it.

I have almost choked on what I was eating from laughing so hard while watching it. Why?

The show is about an American who has to work in India and him learning about the culture and nuances. The similarities between the show and what we deal with living in Sri Lanka are very close.

In one episode the "head bobble" is explained to him. "Sometimes it means yes, sometimes it means no, sometimes it means maybe". Scary thing is after you've been here awhile you can actually tell what head bobble is which. Case in point, I was at this event and this girl asked a gentleman to take our picture. He pointed the camera and bobbled his head, I knew that meant, "Nope, didn't get the picture", she showed him how to use the camera and he tried again and bobbled, my guess this was a "Maybe", it was, one more try and another head bobble, he took a good picture. Scary thing is, I have caught myself head bobbling a time or two.

Other aspects of the show deal with the food, cleanliness, tuk tuks, food poisoning, things we deal with pretty on a daily basis.

Believe me, the show is much funnier if you have ever lived in India or Sri Lanka.

American Experience - PBS Series

I am somewhat of a history buff, for no other reason asides the fact that I am somewhat of a history buff. Which is probably why I enjoy the PBS series American Experience. They are like mini history lessons all in 50 minutes. Just finished watching one about the Dust Bowl, very informative.

And as Forrest Gump would say "And that's all I have to say about that"

Which reminds me, have I ever blogged how I was almost an extra in the movie Forrest Gump and how Chris and I will never watch it together as I can point out so many people that I knew and the roles they played as extras in the film?

Guess now that I have mentioned it I will have to blog about it soon!

My Name is Kahn or Bollywood Meets Forrest Gump

A collective HUH? From my blog readers. "My name is Khan"?, "bollywood"? whatchutalking bout Doc?

Chris and I saw the movie "My name is Khan" last night, and wouldn't you know the Washington Post had an article about it in the Sunday edition:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030405760.html?hpid=topnews

So if you haven't guessed without reading the article it is an Indian movie, it was subtitled but some portions were in English.

In my opinion the movie portrayed the U.S.A. in a bad light, just about every stereotypical bad American was in the movie.

But the "Forrest Gump" connections, I wasn't sure, but the more I thought about it, absolutely. So here I go:

MNIK = My name is Khan FG = Forrest Gump

FG = Forrest has a special gift, running
MNIK = Khan has a special gift, repairing things

FG = Meets the President
MNIK = Khan meets the President

FG = Life is like a box of chocolates
MNIK = My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist

FG = Has a personal mission, goes cross country.
MNIK = Has a personal mission, goes cross country

FG = Life changes because of a hurricane
MNIK = More or less, life changes because of a hurricane

FG = Forrest calls his Mom, Momma and his wanna be girlfriends name is Jenny
MNIK = Character named Momma Jenny

FG = Wins the Medal of Honor
MNIK = Momma Jenny's son dies in the Iraq war and is awarded the Medal of Honor (They don't say this but it is displayed with his picture)

FG = Ends up in Georgia
MNIK = Khan ends up in Georgia

There are probably a few more connections that I can't think of right now, I'll add them later as I think about it.

The Irony - Tango

Just returned from a Valentines Day party of sorts. While there we were entertained by a couple that performed several tango dances for the party goers with an explanation of the history of the dances.

The irony? We lived two years in Montevideo, Uruguay. Maybe not exactly home to the tango, but pretty much it's twin sister to its birthplace of Buenos Aires. Never once saw a tango show and never once went "across the river" to Buenos Aires!

We come halfway across the world and we see a tango dance performed by a diplomatic couple that was stationed in Buenos Aires.

The Movie Theater Experience

Just returned from watching Avatar at the Liberty Cinema Theater. It was a pretty neat experience.

First I went to the theater and purchased 2 box seat tickets for the 7:00PM showing. It was 400 Rupees per ticket. Regular seating was something like 235 and balcony seating 325.
I could have reserved and purchased the tickets on the web but I couldn't get the web site to recognize my national identity card number.

We caught a ride to the theater, although we could have walked. There was no lines outside but the place was packed.

We showed the usher our tickets and he escorted is to our box seat.

It was an enclosed box area on the ground floor in the back of the theater. It had its own door and 2 seats without a middle armrest for special close together snuggling.

I bought a Coke and bottle of water before the show began all for 100 Rupees, not even $.90USSD.

At the halfway point during the movie there was an intermission. The lines were pretty long at the snack counter. There wasn't much asides chips and bags of popped popcorn (Not the hot stuff) and peanuts. The prices were really inexpensive.

When the movie started again the entire theater was full of the sound of crinkling bags, it was pretty funny.

At the end of the movie we waited for the theater to thin out, it was kind of embaressing as everyone is looking at us, in our box seat.

Don't ask me about the movie...

The TV Dilemna

I was on a mission to setup our 32" television and hook it up the the satellite cable here and see if I could view any channels. See our television purchaed in the U.S.A. is of the NTSC format and here in Sri Lanka the television and DVD format is PAL. I believe NTSC format is only for North America, well lets go to Wikipedia and find out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC (Korea, Taiwan and Japan as well)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL (Pretty much everywhere else!)

This is why we purchased a dual format (NTSC/PAL) DVD player, only to find out Uruguay had its own version of PAL (PAL-N).

Our entertainment center is not large enough to accommodate a 32" television so I had to sit it on top. I threaded a coax cable through the one of the back panels and down to the VCR (Where the satellite cable is connected). I thought this should be easy, unplug one cable and replace with another only to find out that even the PAL television cables were different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_connectors (Look at first picture).

It might be a moot point anyway as I might not be able to view any channels. I know in Uruguay when we used DirectTV we were able to watch satellite channels and no local channels, was hoping for the same here.

My next mission is to see if I can buy a PAL to NTSC converter connector, we'll see!