Did quite a few things so far this long weekend...and its not even over yet! Went for an Indian classical concert (Jagjit singh) with my cousins, which was simply superb! The guy's voice is amazing! And the lyrics of his songs, those I could understand anyway, were to die for. He sang in Urdu, which is very similar to Hindi, and he sang a type of song called a ghazal. This is a very poetic form of music, not easily sung(well). During some of the songs especially, he put his life experiences into the lyrics and you could almost feel the emotion...the hurt and the loss that he himself went thru. While I could not really understand the language, I could understand him.

And his instrumentalists were given free reign as well. They played some amazing stuff. In a form called sawaal-jawaap, which I had only ever known by reputation before: where one instrument will play a short musical stanza(akin to asking a question) and another instrument will have to respond within a specific set of musical guidelines(give an answer). The sitarist, the tabla player and the keyboardist all got into the act, and they played faster and faster and faster, until their instruments created a shimmerring soundscape that left us all enthralled. The company was great too! Tipuda has a terrific sense of humour, and we were just making ironic comments and laughing away at almost everything. We really had a great time. By the time we came home it was 1230am.

Next day, I woke up at one. I had a splitting migraine when I first woke up at 730, so I decided to take a panadol, pop 2 gelusils, and go back to sleep. This remedy only partially worked: My head felt heavy the rest of the day. Jason had also finsihed the fence by the time I woke up, so that pretty much left me with nothing to do. So I went out to them, took out a few field chairs and the three of us (Lorne, the neighbour) sat down and began to chat. We were joined by nannudi and Denise(jason's mum). Later, we went to buy dinner( and I bought me a new pair of running shoes, which I then proceeded to test out straight away...I love jogging here!). After a dinner of hotdogs, grilled fish, barbecued yam, roasted capsicum and corn, we proceeded to another neighbour's house, where we sat out in the yard, with a stove in front of us in the chilly evening air, a glass of warm wine in hand, and chatting underneath the stars while the kids played on the trampoline. Jason and I joined in too, ocassionally, eliciting screams of terror from them. :)

On the way back, as we walked over to our house at night, looking down at the city below from the top of this hill, a memory came to me... of another hill in another continent, where I told someone one of the other reasons for coming here. If that person is reading this...its not working. Guess I was wrong.