If you buy a men’s suit here, it is pretty much the same thing as a men’s suit in the U.S. But if you get a ladies suit, it is an entirely different animal. (For what I mean, google “ladies suit” and “womens suit” and compare the images, unless Google is refining my results based on my location…) Basically, a Ladies Suit in India refers to a salwar kameez. A Women’s Suit remains a western business suit.

You can buy ready-made “suits” at the mall. But, more commonly, what you do is buy a top (with the decorative front already in place with a length of material around it), the matching pants material, and the dupatta, the matching scarf. Then you take it to the tailor. I suppose this enables shops to keep quite a variety of colors, patterns, and styles without having to stock one for each size.

I did this. Well, actually my co-worker did. She took me to Atta Market, the street market near the Sector 18 metro station that gives me culture shock every time I walk through, and helped me pick out a suit and find a tailor. (This was in my July 23rd entry.)

So, when I returned from my road trip, she picked up the suits from the tailor for me and I tried them on. Then, like a good half to two-thirds of the women at my office already do, I wore it to work!

Me in a Suit

Although I like the suit, I was not all that impressed with the tailoring, to be honest. It cost over $10 for everything, which was cheap, but not as cheap as I was expecting.

I thought having anything custom tailored with all my measurements meant that it would fit really awesome. It did fit. That’s something. But it fit pretty much exactly the way the suit I bought at the mall fits. Chest too tight. Waist too loose. Tight pants too tight. Slit seemed kind of high. Maybe they just follow a Small-Medium-Large pattern and pick one based off the measurements? Or maybe this is the way they are supposed to fit…

They did not bother to thread the waist string, so I had to do it myself, which took some clever problem-solving on my part. (They actually forgot to give me a waist string on the other one, so I had to borrow one from another pair of pants.) I haven’t tried the looser pants yet – I got one of each – but they sure look poofy when I specifically asked that “they not be quite so poofy.” They probably misunderstood me.

So our office had another sporting event weekend. Last time, it was badminton. This time, it was volleyball!

The event took place at Indus Valley Public School which was luckily, near our work and easy to find on Google Maps and luckily, right next to a huge water tower that you couldn’t miss and luckily, nowhere near the acutal Indus river valley which I now know is several hours drive north of here. Since I was not in a hurry, I took a bicycle rickshaw. He determinedly went in a really roundabout direction despite my (granted, mild) pointing in the other direction and then he charged me more than triple what the autorickshaw rate would have been.

I was very fortunate that someone from work recognized me when I arrived. Because the guards at the school gate did not understand me and had no idea what I was talking about. Also, the organizers had told us that they would be there starting at noon, but they must have been misinformed because school was still going on at Saturday noon and they weren’t letting anyone in.

And this is where I learned that Indian students have to go to school on Saturday, just like Japanese kids used to. I’m so spoiled.

Techies Partcipating in a Physical Competition

So, a sports event company put the tournament on, as you can tell by the banner. They provided the net, the referee, a scorer, and best of all, snack boxes! It was an all-day event in the hot sun, and just getting chips and water from the concession stand would have been inadequate. The boxes had a pastry thing with a spicy sauce packet, mango juice, chips, and a cupcake. They also had chairs and a place in the shade to sit.

The games were fun. The bummer part was that there was only one net for about 14 teams. So hours of waiting for fifteen minutes of fun, basically. They did have balls to practice with on the basketball court or the field (trying to stay out of the way of the guys playing cricket as well as the ostriches), but most of them were so hard, it hurt to play with. And I wanted to save my forearms for the actual game. Also, it was hot.

Yes, you read that right

I asked someone why we couldn’t just use the one softer ball we had since, after all, this was just for fun. But then they informed me that we wouldn’t be following the proper rules then. This is not the first time that someone told me that the *reason* we were doing something was because it was a rule. To me, that is not a reason. I will follow almost any rule if I can understand a rationale behind it. (I’m actually quite complacent compared to a lot of people I know who won’t follow rules they aren’t forced to if they are inconvenient.) But I generally balk at following a rule that doesn’t make sense to me. For example, our company wants us to key in to the door, even when it is already open. Their reasoning was to “prevent tailgating” which I called shenanigans on as a: this is standard company BS, b: the stairs usually aren’t locked during the day, and c: the janitors who come in to clean at night are *known thieves* so what are you preventing again? Also, there are always at least two receptionists in the lobby watching you. Then later, I found out they could actually keep attendance that way (which I also did not believe, but then they proved it by showing me my spotty record.) So I started keying in. But what I will not do is key in to *both* the front door and the inner front door off the lobby which stands wide open most of the time. Because that makes no sense for any of the aforementioned reasons. However, just about every other employee does this, I’m serious. For a country that seems keen on bending rules, especially regarding money, I find the observation I’ve made strange.

Anyway, rant over. So most of the players on the team I was assigned to did not show. So we combined our team with another who had most of their team not show as well. But we did not play any additional games. (On one hand, I don’t blame people for not wanting to come. Most have about a 1-2 hour commute just to get to central Noida. On the other hand, why sign up, then?) We did not end up winning any of our games, but they were all close, which made it exciting. I didn’t know anyone, pretty much, but lots of them knew me.

To reach the tournament the next day, I just took an autorickshaw instead… who determinedly went a really roundabout way despite my (less mild) pointing in the other direction and then balked when I only paid him double the rate for going direct, insisting that me saying “Sector 62” about six times really sounded like “Sector 63.” Sigh. The going rate is a buck, though, so I can’t be too upset. Incidentally. I didn’t argue with the bicycle rickshaw either because I was in a good mood and I know those guys are pretty dirt poor (though he really rubbed it in by wiping off fake sweat a little too often during the ride.) But I didn’t pay the auto driver any extra for not listening to me. Just the normal (double!) rate.

At least they aren’t on strike anymore.

I learned that not only do they have sunscreen in India (I have met Indians who don’t know what SPF is and why would they need to), but someone brought some with them! This was good because, having assumed the volleyball was indoors in the same way that I assumed the badminton was outdoors, I did not bring any. That did not excuse the second day, though, where I still did not put any on and forgot to ask until a couple hours later by which time, it was too late to avoid a pink face.

In unrelated news, I love my bidet / health faucet. I’m just as surprised as anyone about this. How have I lived without one of these all this time? I mean, it took me weeks, months, to even get used to the idea of squirting water down there and try it out a few times. But now I’m going to look into installing one at home because I don’t want to go back to using a lot of toilet paper instead of knowing it’s enough the first wipe.

It is a bit wetter, I’ll grant you that. And, in some places, like a couple places on my road trip, you just have to deal with being wet because there ain’t no toilet paper. But there is always something to wash off with even if it is just a little bucket under a faucet.