Salim Does The Orient: Cinco de fucking Mayo!

For Cinco de Mayo we decided to have a little gathering. There aren’t a whole lot of expats left here in India, so it wasn’t as though we could really organize anything bigger than a gathering. But sometimes a gathering is just the right size.

As with any party, we of course took it as an excuse to buy fireworks. I spent the afternoon running all over Hyderabad and managed to find shitty rum, good tequila, and questionable fireworks. And really what more could you want?

The new guy, Durand. He's been here about a week. And the sorta new girl, Jenni. She's been here a month or so.

No that's not photoshop. Nick's coat is really that color. It is a thing to behold.

Here is a video of the last one minute or so of a fifteen minute fireworks show. I wish there was a way to convey the sheer volume of ten thousand firecrackers going off as starbursts spit from a tiny cardboard box on the ground nearby. Unfortunately the microphone on my camera is on the back facing the user instead of the subject being filmed. I’m not sure what the logic behind that is but the result is a fireworks video, punctuated by my girlish screams of glee.

We got the fireworks out of the way before anyone got too wrecked, and then went back upstairs and got wrecked. There was eating. There was drinking. There was dancing. I avoided the last of these accept for a brief moment when Spaz and I reenacted the knife fight from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video. Oh, if only we’d had switchblades and red leather jackets!