Author: Nic Olson

After two months, I finally made my way to the Aizawl Tennis Club, to see what I could find out. I found out that tennis is awesome. I always knew this, but now, I know it all the more.

Me finding the place was definitely fate. I was in some tall building with Ray, getting some paperwork done, and I took a few steps toward a window, looked down, and there was a tennis court. Meant to be together.

I arrived at the court around 10am, just to stop by and see what was up. They saw my big head poking over the concrete fence, and when I was searching for the entrance, they found me and welcomed me in. To get to the court you had to go through the back of the tennis club canteen, hidden behind a whole bunch of things, I never would’ve found it. The court was a beautiful sight. Look at those pictures.. Wow. When I got there, there was only one racquet between 5 people, and they quickly let me play, fed me balls, I fed them balls, they ran me hard, I got tired, lost my breath. Very little was spoken, because none of them spoke any good English, but they managed to let me know that people would be there around 3pm to hit some more. The court was just concrete, with a painted surface, so it took me a while to get used to the surface. The ball didn’t stick at all, it just hit the ground and flew. It seemed to almost gain speed. I got used to it though, and then it was nothing.

I left, headed to a huge Mizoram Chapchar Kut Festival(don’t ask me what it means), with about 8 million people in the Assam Rifle football field. Dances, plays, singing, iced cream, photos with strangers, many more cute girls, and little English. I’ll put up some photos soon. They are crazy.

Back to the game of Champions. After quite a few hours of festivaling, I headed back to the tennis courts, around 3, like they said. When I got there, there was like 6 racquets, and they were willing to share with me again. I played 3 sets of doubles, with some Mizos, and boy did it feel good. They were all really great players, and it was so fun to play again. I played with a guy that reminded me of Nadal. Just the way he looked, and he was wearing goofy girl pant/shorts, but he was likely better than Nadal, and I didn’t hate him near as much as I hate Nadal. I took a break, met a whole bunch of people, talked some Mizo and English, they fed me some chow, and then I played a bit more tennis. Total, about 3 hours of tennis today, maybe more. They said they meet every day around 3pm, and told me to come back very soon. Tomorrow they said.. I will go back, undoubtedly, but it is a long drive, and it will cost me pretty hard after a while. But boy, was it worth it.

I’m pretty sure I played against Sania Mirza and won. If I were going to be any lady tennis player in the last decade I would be The Swiss Miss. I’ve always had a crush on Martina. But then there is the obvious, Maria Sharapova. She’s my age, and is quite the talent, and is just a little bit hot. We are getting married, just as soon as she knows I exist. There is just something about a girl that plays tennis…Uhh.. I like Andre Agassi the best.

Oh boy. You know this one is going to be good.

I have been researching, quite a bit here, about what they use to define different words. For example, the words girlfriend, boyfriend and love, are used in pretty much backwards ways to what I am used to. They go like this. A girlfriend is ­anyone that you love, and this (without getting into a huge discussion about the steps of dating) I can mostly agree with. But, the part that says anyone, and the way they use the word love… wow. You can love a girl, without ever talking to her, making eye contact with her, or knowing her name. Yeah, that’s right, you can LOVE her, without doing these things. So, girlfriends and boyfriends come pretty easy around here, from what I understand. I think I have an even 3 dozen girlfriends now… If only it were that easy.

In my time here, I have also encountered a few girls. It turns out that Mizoram people, the Mizos, are a beautiful people. Like all the best looking people from Japan moved to India, and bred with all the best looking Indian people, and started a new state. But, anyways, with some of them, since I am a white guy around their age, we have had to have a few photo opps, and I hate these. So much. One of these photo girls asked me to go to a wedding with her. Her aunty’s wedding. Her aunty that I have never met. I think that she just wanted to show off her white friend. I told her, something along the lines of, ‘Ohhhh. I love weddings. I would really really like to go! Can I even dress up all nice, and meet people I don’t know? Maybe even put on a smile for 4 hours?’ So, being the amazing gentleman I am, I went. It was a rough few hours. We missed the actual wedding due to traffic jams, and when we got there, she grabbed hold of my hand, and that was about it for me. My arms were in my pockets or crossed the rest of the time. After the wedding we hit up the reception-like event. I took a head count, and I think there were about three-hundred-thousand people there, all gathering for food. They had literal buckets of rice. More food than I have ever seen, in huge huge huge cauldron like pots. The food was sweet, but I was getting a little restless about this time. After supper, I felt better, and hung out with some strangers. Made some friends with some kids, took some photos with some girls, had a few laughs, made a few friends, and eventually had a good time. The good time I had later definitely made up for the weaker time I had earlier. I just figured that if I kept telling myself that it sucked, it would. But, I changed it around, told myself it was a good experience, and then I had a ball. It’s all in the mind. Mind games, you guys.

A few days before this, on another occasion, one of the sixteen year old girls asked me what I thought about marriage. Ohhhhhhh. Well, I think that marriage is a beautiful symbol of love and devotion to a soul mate, and I think for true happiness, you must get married young, like 18. I’ll just leave it at that.

So, in conclusion: weddings suck in all countries, girls are the same all over the world, Nic eats way too much almost every meal, and eating pork, beef, chicken and fish all in one meal, makes me gassy…

Hahah, ohhh.

Turns out that I didn’t really fully explain what I do in India all the time, and lots of people think it is just sunshine and lollipops. Well, if it were, the sunshine would be hot like an underam, and the lollipops would taste like hard work. Here is what I do everyday.

I wake up anywhere from 6:00 to 7:30, depending on how loud the guys are singing in the bathroom, or horking up a loogie, or how tired I am. Every morning, one of the guys, I don’t know who, must go to the bathroom, and sit at the trough-like sink and horks up good phlegm and saliva mixture, about as loud as you could imagine. You can hear the scraping at the back of his throat collecting the goods, from miles away. It’s a special way to wake up.
Once I get up, usually once the noise has decreased a bit, I wash my face, dunk my head in some water, and every now and then, I go have a shower. Finishing this, I come back to my room, clothe my body, sometimes shave, do some computering, reading, music listening when Becky comes and alerts me that breakfast is ready.
Short aside: Becky is easily the hardest working girl I’ve met. Maybe it is that the Canadian girls I know only know how to shop and talk loud, but she works the longest days, doing some hard work and helping out everywhere.

Each morning I eat breakfast India style. Breakfast is composed of rice, chili peppers, dahl (lentil soup that you put on your rice) sometimes dry fish, potatoes, eggplant, cabbage, chick peas, chutneys, other great delights. I don’t miss our sweet-to-death Canadian breakfast much; this is the real way to wake up. Rice for life. I should get a tattoo that says that.

After breakfast, I usually head down to my room for a bit more computing, reading, musicing before school starts at 9.

School begins at 9 and ends at 11:50 or so, depending on if Sir Nic feels like a jerk or not and wants to make his students to more math. I could say a lot about the school day, but I’ll save that for another blog. Each day consists of Math and English, and then in a rotation, Science, Social Studies, Computers and Typing. We don’t really have much for textbooks, so I make an awful lot of worksheets to do. I teach grade 4 and grade 6 in these subjects. I think the words, ‘Be quiet Andrew’ and ‘Do some work’ have lost all meaning, the amount of times I say them… at least 30 times an hour.

12o’clock means lunch time. I eat lunch upstairs with Ray and Ellen, usually consisting of soup, bread, crackers, tea, sometimes a cookie or two. Lunch is a good meal too. Lots of good food and listening to Andrew talk for 30 minutes straight. After this, I head downstairs, sometimes play some football, sometimes read, sometimes get ready for school.

At 1:20 I have school again, for 40 minutes. This is a new schedule addition, where Nic teaches Bible. Yeah, Western really prepared me for being a Bible teacher.

At 2pm, I am finished teaching and go for a good dose of learning how to teach, as well as gaining some Bible knowledge from Pu Ray. I enjoy these classes. I learn lots, it’s usually funny, I know lots of answers, I take lots of notes, I do my memory work.

Anywhere from 3-430, depending on if Ray is feeling preachy or not, I am finished school for the day, and I am free to do what I please. This often means football/soccer, reading, hanging out, filling water tanks, planning for classes, climbing trees with Andrew, checking out my biceps and stuff. You know.

Sometimes when supper rolls around, I decide to eat with the college guys under Becky’s artful cooking, or I head upstairs to treat myself to a made-with-love Ellen Canadian dish. Either way, it is great. Becky’s supper is usually rice and dahl, sometimes there is some meat. Mostly the same as breakfast. Ellen cooks anything from hamburgers to spaghetti to potatoes and gravy to one of my favourites, pancakes or lasagna. Ohhh yeah. Following supper, I have a cup of tea, hang out with the guys or Ray and Ellen, listen to new languages or listen to Andrew’s made up languages.

730 is devotional. Devo is old fashioned, like me, so I like it. A few hymns, a few prayers, a few words. Sometimes I focus so hard to understand what the person is preaching through their accents, that it is like I am lip reading, so that can be a lot of work, but the guys have some good things to say. Post devo there is usually a carim battle. I am a champ, by the way. some computing, and sleeping. I usually go to bed around 930 or 10, because I’m an old man, and 930pm is the new marijuana.….?

This is the main outline of my weekday. More often than not, I end up say nuts to computering, and go walk around outside for a while, hang out with the guys, help Ellen do things, get ready for school, clean my room and stuff. Weekends mostly consist of relaxing. Preparing for school the next week, sleeping, taking pictures, hanging out, marking exams, playing football, getting dates. All the things dreams are made of, really.

Well, I hope this shows that I am pretty busy, and this trip isn’t all about having myself a good time, although you can be sure that I am livin’ the dream. You can be sure.

Today I get to go to a wedding. I love weddings, so this should play out really well.

What the blog is Glitz? What the heck is blog? Whatthe beef is heck?

Today I bought a $100 pair of jeans. Yeah, I know. But, they actually only cost me about $20 Canadian (the cashier and I did the math, on a calculator nonetheless). I’m not going to bother saying where I got them, because I’ll only get made fun of, but they are a nice pair of jeans, and I needed a new pair. The store was so nice, it was one of those parts of Aizawl where I walked in and asked myself, ‘Did Regina just get nicer?’. It was well furnished, to say the least….

I also hit up a store called The Colors of Bennetton. I figured it was some British store because what other country would use a world as stupid and proper as ‘Bennetton’, and I had some time to kill, so I thought I’d check it out. Up a flight of stairs, on the second floor, on top of some dirty-as-sin hardware shop, was India’s American Eagle. Hardwood flooring, mannequins, cute girl working the till, trendy shirts and polos. I didn’t get anything here, assuming it would be too expensive, and figured I could buy Melissa something there, but then she wouldn’t know if it was from India or Indiana, or Indianapolis, or ….California.?

Stop number three on my glam tour was the Adidas store. I may have mentioned this place before, but it is crazy nice. You walk inside, and it is easily nicer than any other store in Saskatchewan, maybe even Canada, and then you walk outside and nothing, for miles, shines like it does. It is like the dirt and garbage are repelled by the high prices of the authentic Adidas apparel. I bought some sandals. I have been looking for a pair since I arrived in India, and no one has a pair for my size 12 whoppers, so, I found a pair of 11’s that I could sneak into that cost me about $20 Canadian as well. I know, steep for sandals, especially from India, but they are nice, and about 8 cute girls sold them to me, and I needed a pair bad.

My main goal of hitting up town today, was to get a computer fixed, and as far as I know, I got that accomplished. This one guy must have had six cigarettes when he was working on my computer for an hour. Like that one guy on Jurassic Park, you know. I think it was Samuel L. Jackson. He smoked, you know, and worked on computers.

I’d love to go ahead and start this blog with one of those lines like ‘Why do these things always happen to me?’ or ‘Have you ever had one of those nights?’, but that would be totally cliché. But then again, it would also be totally cliché to start one of these blogs with one of those lines about not starting your blog with total clichés.

But, as I may or may not have said before, I’m the movie-man on Friday nights. Oh yeah, I said that before. In that one, where I talked about things, and Walt….
Anyway, I enjoy being the movie-man, making children smile, making college guys smile, making me smile, but this week wasn’t as cool. One of those ones.
First of all, setting up was just fine, everything worked. But, when it came time to begin the movie, obviously it crapped out on me. The picture wouldn’t show, and half of the sound wouldn’t work. Big deal, we’ll watch the movie anyways (when I fixed the picture, duh). Also, it was my week to choose a movie, so naturally, I picked Rocky. A beautiful love story between a punch drunk (does that mean when you get punched enough you act like a dope, or is it like when you get drunk off punch?) and a little pet shop worker, as well as a few workout scenes and fights in between.

About a third of the way into the movie, India strikes again, and the power goes out. Once I find my flashlight, walk to the screen to make sure my assumption is right, the power comes back on. Once I go lay down, watch about 10 more minutes of the classic, the power goes out again, for another ten seconds, and comes back on, once I am in front of everyone, looking like a dope. Then, ten minutes later, the power goes out one more time (good things happen in threes) and this time it seems to be out for good. The kids go outside, play in the dark. This was the night’s best part, chasing children, picking them up like sacks of rice. Ten minutes later, power is on.

In case you didn’t know, Rocky I through V and continuing on through Rocky Balboa, are movies with lots of talking, and sad parts, until the last 10 minutes when Rocky fights some huge dude, bleeds from the eyes, and yells for his pet-shop dream girl. Tonight, we got to the part where Rocky meets Apollo Creed in the ring, and they were just about to ring the bell to start the fight. This time, the power didn’t go out, but something so stupid happened, that I won’t even bother explaining it. But it was unfortunate, that is for sure.

I felt bad. These kids probably struggled through this movie, thinking it was boring, and when I was going to prove them wrong, and the best part of the movie is about to happen, everything goes to nuts. I just hope these kids grow up knowing that Stallone is a gem, and Rocky is a cinema classic, and not remembering ‘that stupid white dude that liked the stupidest movie and couldn’t even work a dvd player.’ It is harder than pushing play, I promise.

p.s. when there was kissing, I covered up the projector. I don’t want these kids to get any ideas, kissing causes learning disabilities and instant carpal tunnel.

Here’s a few short introductions of some of guys here that I live with, hopefully to give you a better idea of the great people of India.

This guy is Bidyut, pronounced something like Beed-yoot, or quickly, Beedoot. He’s the weirdest guy I’ve met so far, but is pretty hilarious to be around. He always hugs and tries to hold hands. He calls me ‘my dear’, salutes me every now and then, and eats more rice than I thought was possible. He and I are tight. One time I jokingly told him to be quiet while someone was talking, then he proceeded to sing ‘Silent Night, Silent Jesus’ a beautiful song, you can be sure.

This guy is Mahindra. There are many trucks here called Mahendra, but I guess here is no relation. He sometimes reminds me of Al Pacino, with less swears and shooting people, and a bit more pleasant, but there is something. He studies very hard, practices his typing and reads often, but still balances all that out by playing football and carim with the guys. He has a great sense of humour, one like mine, so you know it’s good. Pretty sweet dude.

The one of the right is Hratchung, pronounced Ratch-OOng. He has kinda reminded me of Nathan T. the dude that lived in the basement for a while, and I guess I have a few reasons. I might be crazy, but I think he looks like him, and I think he kinda acts like him, and he is often trying to set me up with one of 4 girls, like Nathan always did. He also loves the Backstreet Boys, something Nathan loved. He came into my room one day with ‘I want it that way’ ready to play on his jumpdrive. I laughed for hours. He is a National Bible College graduate (so the guys here call him Billy Graham), and wants to move to Korea to hit up the CofC School there. He’s about 27 or so, used to teach school, and is now becoming a preacher. That teacher preacher combo is usually pretty unstoppable. Just look at Ray. Unstoppable.

These are just three of the guys I’ve hung out with. I’ll put up some more intros to other guys someday, whenever i have something funny to say about them.

Where I live, there are at least 7 languages flying around. Mizo, Kom, Assamese, Hindi, Burmese, English, other ones I don’t know, and Englindi(thanks ty). Since there are so many, and it would be impossible to remember even 3 words in each, I figured I’d learn Mizo, the language of the place I live, so I could maybe communicate with people in Aizawl, if I didn’t sound like an idiot.

I have so far learned 10 or so words, a few phrases and am trying to learn more each day. I know Mizo for thank you, hello, goodbye, yes, no, would you like some tea?, yes, I like some tea, sit down, wow, and that might be all of them. But still, it’s a struggle to remember all these. I had a Mizo teacher for a while, she was planning on teaching me a word a day until I left, but, it turns out, that she left before I did. Daisy and her husband got up and headed out one fine Saturday night, leaving me illiterate. Like Rocky Balboa.

Now I have Andrew and Autumn to teach me, as well as a bunch of college guys and girls that speak like 9 languages each. I’d say Becky would be the most reliable, but she likely knows a good dozen languages. As much as I hate French, I now regret only being able to speak one language. Canadians have it easy. Everyone around them speaks the same language, without accents, for miles, and everyone wants to learn our language. French is taught in schools, I still don’t really know why, because I would never use it, but it would still be nice to know more than one language.

The names of humans is also like a language here. The way they say their names is so cool, everyone sounds like a movie star or a kungfu master, until I say their names, they sound like the names of idiot hippy children from Cali. My accent ruins everything. When a girl told me her name was Mashiati, it sounded sweet, but he only thing I could get out of my mouth was Machete. Not as graceful.

The names of towns do the same thing to me. They don’t spell the name of a town the same everywhere. In some places they call it Chanmari, some places Chandmary, some places Chandmarieiy. And that just doesn’t help. Get it straight, India, get it straight. Help a white brotha out.

I already wrote a blog today, but I took it down, because this one is way more important.

check out another new means song HERE.
so good it makes my knees weak, my face smiley, my gut hurt, my head bob.
wow.