Motorbike adventure...

Here is a funny opening sentence:

I have spent this morning bombing round trivandrum city centre on the back of a motorbike, trying to buy tickets to see jadugar anand, the worlds fastest magician.

For the past two weeks we have been surrounded by posters and billboards advertising the magic show that is in town, I dont want to elaborate too much on this as I'm bound to do a post on it after I've seen it, but lets just say the line off the poster that excites me is "Blink, and the elephant vanishes".

So we decided yesterday to go and get tickets - Dennis came round on his motorbike about 10am this morning and it was pretty cool to be heading round the city on a bike for a change, although the brown trouser factor was raised a few notches feeling so exposed to the madmen that drive these roads.

We found the ticket office, and bought 5 tickets for 750rs. Bargain. I just hope he's as good as he claims - more to follow.

It was also nice to get to know dennis a little better. We stopped off at his house, met his mother and his little 7 month daughter, fiona. Fiona wasnt too pleased to see me but ah well it seems I have that effect on babies. That said a strange man with funny clothes and an interesting skin colour bursting in your house unnanounced is bound to put the frigteners up any young tot.

After we bought the tickets we went out to the coastline and walked round the "tourist gardens". Dennis was filling me in on the ins and outs of arranged marriages and I was fighting the typical westerners corner of "Yeah but how can you marry someone you dont know". Dennis gave me an interesting viewpoint to think about though, he said that as marriages were arranged here, people have less expectation to be happy together in marriage so as time goes on, you tend not to get bitter and dissapointed with how things turn out. This means that you either get lucky and fall in love and live happily ever after, or you think "I cant really stand my wife but who cares anyway because I never thought it would work" - Either way your not left feeling any resentment towards your partner. Interesting. He also said his uncle got "love married" (not arranged) and after 10 years got divorced, where his parents were an arranged marriage and are still together after all this time! Pro's and cons for both sides of the coin I guess but food for thought.

Right - its blazing sunshine outside, I'm going to the beach.