10:00AM Saturday: Wake Up, clean the apartment
1:00PM: Phone calls, Diwali greetings mainly
2:00 : Unthaw frozen pizza, burnt it in solidarity with burnt cake, eat whatever was left of it and wash it all down with coke
3:00 : Re-edit a poem, not happy with it yet.
4:00 : Rest, read books.
5:00 : Iron clothes. Take out trash.
6:00 : Get ready to go out.
7:00PM : Dinner at Heaven with 70 people, at one point an American girl of Indian origin was sitting across me. Also met a Polish physician who moved from Dentistry to general medicine; that is unusual. Most people were nice. Notable Anomaly: An obnoxious Italian gay man makes a pass. I leave the dinner and move to the lounge.
10:00PM: Run into the usual crowd. So many familiar faces. This is what is great about this town, you do run into the same people everywhere. With some, I speak for a fleeting minute before they have to go. We walk outside and stand in the light drizzle chatting.
11:40PM: Run into more people. Heaven is packed with about 150 people. We shuttle between inside and outside. Run into a UN friend from Canada and we debate on Catherine McKinnon's legal cannon and if sexual intercourse is really penetration or enveloping(the syntax of male hegemony). Intense academic discussion on the syntax of gender relations for a Saturday night party! Fortunately, I don't think many people heard the dorky conversation. She is writing a book on women's issues and gender politics. We talk about Germaine Greer(strictly the 70's vintage Greer. I have no idea what she is thinking these days with her new work. She really sounds nutty in "The Whole Woman") and I say I am disappointed how feminism in the 70s really marginalized the double-marginalized: women of color. She agrees. She doesn't publish on feminist journals for the same reason. She is going to send me some papers and we will have a proper lunch sans alcohol to talk about this more. She will be in Saudi Arabia next week in a helicopter wearing a burkha. I hope her boss would allow her to expense the cost of the Burkha. It starts to drizzle further. We all move inside into the little cubby hole. Everybody has a drink. The two Aussies are going to Shakers. I get invited to a group breakfast tomorrow at 10:00 AM.
1:30AM Sunday: I manage to convince everyone including the feminist UN person to go to shakers. We walk the whole distance. Inside, we run into the Minister of Culture for a middle-eastern country. We move across to the other side. Run into more people.
3:00 : I want to go home. Poeple ask me to stay for another 5 minutes. I volunteered to walk the Indian girl home because she lives on my way. She is not ready to leave.
4:00AM Sunday: We leave the place. She is apologetic when she discovers that it is actually 4:00 and not 1:30 as she thought.
4:20: I walk her down to her door step. She asks me to sit down on the bench outside for 2 minutes.
5:00 : I leave her at the door and walk to my place. It is getting really chilly and I am not wearing a jacket.
5:15 : Arrive home.
6:00AM Sunday : Write this before going to sleep.
In case anyone is wondering why I haven't written anything interesting or intellegent, here is why:-)
