OK, due to time constraints I'm going to keep this short.
A little over a week ago, Katie and I started that mostly fun task of registering at stores for wedding gifts. Making a wish-list as a couple can be very enjoyable; it can also be quite a hassle. I think Katie summarized what made this mostly fun for us: "we have kind of similar tastes." I think I can sign on-board with this. Granted, there are always going to be gender-based differences in tastes (she like floral prints, I'm not such a big fan) but most of the time we were able to find good compromises. We had also talked about our "registration strategy" before-hand as well as making pre-registration trips just to see what kind of things we needed to be thinking about. The little bit of extra effort made the day quite enjoyable.
Well, almost.
Our last stop for the day was Dillard's. Katie wanted to get silverware from there and, more importantly, this was the only major store within a 100 mile radius of her hometown. If we didn't register here, there wasn't going to be an easy way for family and friends from that section of her life to figure out what to get us. We needed to put a Dillard's list together and that was the way it was.
We would have done better to go home and skip that last stop for the evening.
After a brief stroll around to get an idea of what the store had available we approached the very elegant registry desk and announced our intentions. After a very hurried introduction and having a small booklet passed to us to fill out, the clerk was off helping some other customer. We filled out all the appropriate information on the front page as requested and waited for her to return.
And waited, and waited. It was probably close to ten minutes before she got back to us. This did not bode well.
During that time I started leafing though the booklet. Why did there need to be so many pages? We gave all the essential information on the front; what were the rest of the pages for? A quick glance and my heart sank. Page after page of blanks fields with headings like "Kitchen Utensils", "Flatware", "Dinnerware" greeted my eyes; we were going to WRITE DOWN all the items we wanted to register for? Was this some kind of joke? After two experiences at stores where we merrily hopped, skipped, and scanned our way through the registry this seemed a sick twisted version of reality. She wasn't serious was she?
Yes, yes she was. She eventually came back and had just enough time to start us on picking our first item before she was yanked away by another "emergency." Katie and I debated the merits of the various silverware choices and eventually decided on a pattern we both liked. It took about fifteen more minutes before our registry clerk was able to get back with us. She carefully WROTE DOWN our choice in silverware, smiled, and asked what else we had in mind. In a five minute burst of registry-definition we added another fifteen items. To be honest I don't know if she was able to even fully write down each item before we were on to the next. We just needed to keep her fully occupied so that our blitz could not be so easily halted. As we finished our pass through the smaller kitchen items and turned to move on to the larger items we paused just long enough that she was able to be once again pulled into another crisis.
And that pretty much sealed the deal. As Katie and I were discussing which items we wanted to add when she came back again we both, nearly tacitly, decided that this was enough. Our next round would be the last and we would finish up the registry online. By the end of the trip, we had managed to get about 25 items on our list in the span of one hour.
Maybe one of these days Dillard's will make its way into the 21st century. We are hoping that day happens soon. Like maybe sometime before our wedding.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005
Dawali
This past Friday night Katie and I went to a Diwali festival put on by the Indian Student Association here at Wichita State. The evening started with some food which I thought was just fine but more than one Indian student said he could make better stuff at home. That's right, he; apparently these guys can cook. In my experiences with Indian cooking getting the right spice mixture can be very tricky. Most of the time, I do the best I can and end up "patching-up" with improvisation to get the food to a point where I like how it tastes. Now that I think about it, that almost ensures that the food will be in-authentic (not that I have a super good idea what authentic tastes like.) Suffice it to say that I have a long way to go before I can even catch up with the cooking skill of many of these Indian guys. Maybe I can con one of them to show me how to make the culinary magic work.
The second "half" of the evening was a talent-show-ish mostly-dancing series of performances. (It got started about an hour later than "scheduled"; Katie's Indian co-worker with whom we spent the evening was highly apologetic that things were running so far behind schedule. He seemed honestly irritated that the show started that late. I, on the other hand, expected nothing less. The irony of this is highly amusing to me.)
The first act of the show was an hour-long performance by a professional traditional Indian dancer. She was not at all impressed by the rowdy, party-loving nature of the crowd and spared no verbal expense in letting us know this. In between nearly every dance she took a few minutes to tell us we needed to respect her performance more and that any kind of inappropriate vocalizations from the crowd (that is to say, more than politely clapping at the end of the dance) would result in early termination of her performance. In short, she was the equivalent of an opera prima donna being asked to sing at "American Idol." It was not a good match and I think both the she and the audience were happy when she (finally) finished her part of the evening. For me, I enjoyed the first half-hour but by 45 min. was ready to move on. Yup, I'm a cultural bigot.
Though we didn't stay for the entire rest of the show, the rest of the acts were very entertaining. The performers showed no fear and seemed to either have a lot of natural talent or had practiced quite a while. Most of the acts were group pop dance-ish and the rows and rows of guys behind us loudly showed their appreciation. I learned that long, loud, high whistling seemed to be the Indian equivalent of clapping; I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to hear again after dozens of those guys really laid into it. Next time, I'm bringing earplugs.
I think I was most amazed at how many of the students seemed to lack any sense of embarrassment or stage-fright. There seemed to be no end of singing and dancing acts and members of the audience worked their way onto stage on several occasions or used the aisles of the auditorium as little dance halls to join in with on-stage performance. The group as a whole seemed to corporately feel much more at ease with themselves. Maybe its a function of forming an Indian bubble here in Wichita for the evening or maybe this was a reflection of a part of Indian culture I haven't seen before; probably its some of both.
Overall, great evening. Next time, I'm taking a nap before-hand so I can stay up later and probably can just plan on showing up a half-hour after the published time.
The second "half" of the evening was a talent-show-ish mostly-dancing series of performances. (It got started about an hour later than "scheduled"; Katie's Indian co-worker with whom we spent the evening was highly apologetic that things were running so far behind schedule. He seemed honestly irritated that the show started that late. I, on the other hand, expected nothing less. The irony of this is highly amusing to me.)
The first act of the show was an hour-long performance by a professional traditional Indian dancer. She was not at all impressed by the rowdy, party-loving nature of the crowd and spared no verbal expense in letting us know this. In between nearly every dance she took a few minutes to tell us we needed to respect her performance more and that any kind of inappropriate vocalizations from the crowd (that is to say, more than politely clapping at the end of the dance) would result in early termination of her performance. In short, she was the equivalent of an opera prima donna being asked to sing at "American Idol." It was not a good match and I think both the she and the audience were happy when she (finally) finished her part of the evening. For me, I enjoyed the first half-hour but by 45 min. was ready to move on. Yup, I'm a cultural bigot.
Though we didn't stay for the entire rest of the show, the rest of the acts were very entertaining. The performers showed no fear and seemed to either have a lot of natural talent or had practiced quite a while. Most of the acts were group pop dance-ish and the rows and rows of guys behind us loudly showed their appreciation. I learned that long, loud, high whistling seemed to be the Indian equivalent of clapping; I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to hear again after dozens of those guys really laid into it. Next time, I'm bringing earplugs.
I think I was most amazed at how many of the students seemed to lack any sense of embarrassment or stage-fright. There seemed to be no end of singing and dancing acts and members of the audience worked their way onto stage on several occasions or used the aisles of the auditorium as little dance halls to join in with on-stage performance. The group as a whole seemed to corporately feel much more at ease with themselves. Maybe its a function of forming an Indian bubble here in Wichita for the evening or maybe this was a reflection of a part of Indian culture I haven't seen before; probably its some of both.
Overall, great evening. Next time, I'm taking a nap before-hand so I can stay up later and probably can just plan on showing up a half-hour after the published time.
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