Today Is MICA Day

So today was MICA Day. Essentially it is the day that MICA was "born" into this world and so every year they celebrate the institution's birthday. The tradition here is to have a day's worth of celebrations, beginning with a Luncheon on the lawn, then a Teacher's-Day-like performance, and ends off with Sankalp which is like their Paparazzi.

The luncheon was pretty cool, cause I like lawn lunches and this one didn't really disappoint. There was a little confusion with the setting up of 3 stations though, 2 served Indian food and the 3rd had "Chinese" food. This means that you get 黄面 mixed with some sauce, or kway teow mixed with another kind of sauce. They call it chop suey here.

Then we had the afternoon performance which is the one time that the students get to make fun of their lecturers through doing impressions of them, and also the day the teachers dance and sing for the students. It was quite a riot seeing the school director and registrar (both serious looking wizened oldish-looking gentlemen) both dancing along to some Bollywood songs side-by-side the admin/technical staff.

Due to my lack of imagination and speed, we did not manage to get a photo of my face throughout the proceedings. Hence, this picture provided by South Park should give you a clue. And yes, this was the face I had on most of the afternoon as stranger and stranger things happened on stage. There was a solo dance act that mimed a movie song-and-dance sequence,
there was giving out of 5-year long-service awards, there was freestyle Hindi "poetry slam" of sorts (because I don't know what the hell the dude was going on about, but he'd recite a few lines, the students would cheer and then the 3 other male faculty - this dude's one of the technicians - would begin to dance with him in a celebratory fashion. Hence:


It should also be mentioned that the stage and lights and music was almost exactly like getai back home. I've got a video that should give one an inkling, but I'm lazy at the moment to load it up.

We played Ultimate Frisbee in the evening till it was too dark to see anything, then moved to play badminton on a fortuitous day when everyone had gone to see the plays. We finished up, showered then went for dinner, after which we decided to pop by the 4/4th play that was still going on.

And then I step in to a familiar sight of Harold Pinter's Mountain Language. It is a very short play, so we were out of there pretty quickly.