09/01/08 - My last day in India

I can’t believe the trip is almost over! In many ways, I’m ready to get home and back to life, but I’m really going to miss the people and places I’ve gotten to know here in India. I can say for certain that this is not my last trip to India!

We started the day with absolutely the best meal of the trip. Giju’s mother is an incredible cook! She uses some form of coconut in almost everything she prepares, which just means heaven on earth for me! We had these rice flour pancake-like patties made with just a hint of coconut milk (I think they were called palapum) that were just incredible! I think I ate 5 patties with tons of the coconut based chicken stew. It was a great way to remember the food in India! I guess it’s always best to have the best saved for last.

Giju’s brother, Biju, took off the morning from work and took us out to Kovalam Beach where we enjoyed more of the beautiful scenery and got a chance to sit and enjoy milkshakes at an open air restaurant. The milkshakes were made from wonderful fresh fruit. I, of course, had the coconut, Arieh had the mango, and Kristen had the banana. They were all delicious and refreshing. I will really miss all of the incredible fresh fruit juices we’ve gotten to enjoy here. I’ve especially loved the fresh grape and watermelon juices!

After getting back from the beach, Sandeep, the director of Giju’s other music video, met us back at the house to show Giju the rough cut. I didn’t get a chance to see it for myself, but I did hear that it was really innovative and artistic! I’m really looking forward to getting to see it for myself!

Sadly, the time had come to say good-bye for myself. Jon and I headed back to the airport after saying, “see you later”. I can’t say “good-bye” because I know in my heart that I’ll be back again! We arrived in the Bangalore airport at 10:30PM where we tried to stay awake all night at the Café Coffee Day to try to get back to US time and not suffer too much from jet lag. We’ve both got to get back to work as soon as we get home! Jon was more successful than me. He made it through the entire night. I needed a couple of hours of sleep. We caught our flight at 7:00AM on 09/02 in India and, after over 20 hours of flying, we’ll be arriving back to San Francisco at 6:15PM on 09/02 in California.

08/30-31/08 - The houseboat in Kerala

We headed out for our 6:00AM flight to Cochin this morning along with Pradipto. It was so wonderful having him join us for a little relaxation. I was so excited to actually sit down and get to know him a little better after only getting to chat with him in bursts during the shoot and prepping for the shoot. After a week without much actual rest, everyone was just plain beat. There was a lot of sleeping on the plane and sleeping in the car ride to Hanapi, where we were getting on the houseboat. The country was so beautiful, I didn’t want to miss a thing by closing my eyes so I still didn’t manage to get a whole lot of sleep. I’ll save my sleeping for the long hours of flying home!

Views from the car ride from the Cochin airport to the houseboat:

We arrived at the house of the owner of the houseboats where we met he and his wife before heading over to the dock. When Giju had told me we were taking a houseboat, I imagined a very modest floating structure… not the mansion on the water that we ended up on! I absolutely could not imagine a better way to unwind from the hectic days of dancing and filming. We floated down the backwaters relaxing outside on the front of the boat enjoying amazing scenery! With the calmness of the water and the quiet ride, most people took nice long naps in the sun. With all the excitement and beauty, again, I just didn’t want to close my eyes! Kerala was so green and beautiful. All I could think about was how much my parents would have loved to be on the boat.

Views from the houseboat:


When we docked, it was lightly raining. They took us out onto two canoes for a nice ride in the rain. Again, I thought about my parents and how much fun they would have here. Arieh, Elena, and I were in one canoe and Giju, Kris, Jon, and Pradipto were in the other. Our boat had two extra paddles so Arieh and I got to do a little paddling to make our boat go further and faster. The other boat only had the one paddle for the host. That poor guy had to do all the rowing himself with even more people in the boat!



As with the rest of the trip, we were well taken care of and extremely well fed. They served incredible meals and snacks of fried plantains and spring rolls, but the real treats came with these enormous prawns! They brought them onto the boat from a local dock and they were the largest and bluest prawns I’d ever seen. When they came out cooked, red, and slathered in spices, I almost could contain the drool! The other incredible treat was this coconut nectar that was poured from the stem of the coconut tree where the young coconuts are growing. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it and I might be wrong about where the nectar came from. I didn’t quite understand it when it was told to me. The taste was very interesting. The nectar had certainly undergone some kind of alcoholic fermentation and tasted a little like Kombucha. It was an interesting and tasty treat in small doses!

We were provided with beautiful accommodations and three nice rooms, but Elena and I elected to sleep out on the benches in the front of the boat that had open glass to look out onto the water. It was absolutely incredible to wake up looking out over the water in the early morning sun! When we woke up they prepared another beautiful meal and we took another short ride back to the docks.


Upon arrival, we were taken back to the boat owner’s house and he arranged for us to go to his woodworking shop. Sitting in his home was pretty amazing. There were incredible amounts of intricate woodworking and details from floor to ceiling. His shop was completely filled with all kinds of lovely wood crafts. I picked up lots of fantastic souvenirs to bring home! I really enjoy purchasing art from local artists and especially from people I actually get to meet and get to know. I hope my friends and family back home enjoy the wooden gifts as much as me!

After our little shopping adventure, it was time to say good-bye to Pradipto and Elena. They were headed off to catch flights back home. It was tough to say good-bye. I really enjoyed the chance to get to know Pradipto a little better. He really is an amazing person. I’m glad he has a place in Union City so we’ll get to meet again when he comes to visit!

Giju, Arieh, Jon, Kristen, and I headed off to Thiruvananthapuram (yeah, say that 5 times fast!) to meet Giju’s family. We got chances to see a little more of the beautiful scenery and catch up on some more sleep on the ~3 hour car ride. We arrived at Giju’s house in the late afternoon where we got to meet his parents, brother, sister-in-law, and their two boys, Rohan and Ryan. The boys were so adorable and I really enjoyed getting to sit and chat with Giju’s sister-in-law in the evening while Kristen and Arieh went to go see the doctor. Sadly, everyone on the trip has had one ailment or another. Happily, seeing doctors and getting medications are really inexpensive!

08/29/08 - Shoot Day 2: Garage Scenes

Happily, they needed to shoot Kristen’s acting scenes with her “family” in the morning so our call time wasn’t until noon. It was nice to get to sleep in a little bit. The car was scheduled to pick us up from the flat at 10:30AM so I was up at 8:30AM making sure I was completely ready and mothering everyone else to get them up too. Elena got up as early as me since she needed to go out and run some errands in the morning. At 10:30, Elena was still not back, but I shooed everyone out of the apartment to head out anyways. We all waited outside at the curb asking the most frequent question of the trip: Where’s Elena? At 11:00AM, we decided that we needed to get going or we would be late so Lourd, being the incredible gentleman that he is, volunteered to stay and wait for Elena and to catch a rickshaw with her once she got back. We must have just missed her as we exited the complex and, thankfully, she still made it to the set by noon.

Today we shot all the garage scenes and I got to wear the costume with “the orange boob”, aka "unaboob." (The picture should be explanation enough…) It was quite the running joke all day! I had so much fun today shooting the video, but have decided that I just may not be cut out for the camera. In general, I get incredibly nervous every time we do a show, but at least the show only lasts a few minutes and then it’s over. I spent the last two days of the shoot incredibly sick with nervousness! Every time Pradipto yelled, “Stand by”, I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. Hopefully, it doesn’t come through on camera! I would hate to ruin Giju’s fantastic video!

In general, today was much more relaxed than the first day. We didn’t have the huge cast of extras and not nearly as many group shots. Most of the shots today involved just Kristen and Giju. Your jaws are going to drop when you see the finished product. They both look so AMAZING!! Because we weren’t in a ton of shots, I actually got the time to just hang out and get to know the crew a little better. I had a really nice conversation with Biswajeet and Dipali. The close crew of Pradipto, Dipali, Biswajeet, and Dheeman are so incredible! They have such a wide variety of talents and together, they form this unbelievable synergy. It was energizing just being around them. If I ever got the opportunity to work with any of them again, I would jump on it in a heartbeat! I feel so fortunate to have been a part of such a positive experience.

The shoot wrapped earlier than I had expected and we were done around 7:30PM. We all headed back to the flat, changed, and headed out for some after-partying. We ended up at this very sheek and hip club, Poison. It really reminded me of the Las Vegas club scene. The funniest part came when we tried to enter and they wouldn’t let Giju in because he had sandals on (of course they were super “stylish” sandals, but boys are not allowed to come in with open-toed shoes never-the-less). After a little negotiation with the bouncer, Gautam graciously donated his black socks to Giju and he just got to dance the night away with dress shoes and no socks. What a trooper! This was the first night in a club without salsa. We danced for hours to house and Bollywood. It was so much fun to see all the locals tear it up. In some ways, it’s a little like line dancing where everyone kind of knows the sequences of moves that go with certain songs. If I lived in India, I think I’d get hooked!

After dancing, I got to go out to eat with Giju, Kristen, and Dipali. It was a nice chance to chat a little and hang out with Dipali before leaving. She really is an amazing person. She really took care of all of us on set making sure we all got cold medication, B vitamins, and lots of tender loving care. I will really miss her company when we leave.

After eating, we went back to the flat arriving around 2:00AM. We were catching a 6:00AM flight to Kerala (Cochin) so we had to leave at 3:30AM. That gave us a solid 1.5 hours to pack, shower, and be ready to go. Sleep has been pretty optional this entire trip! It was really hard to say good-bye and I found myself fighting back a whole host of tears. I really feel like I’ve made some forever friends and certainly hope to make it back to India again to visit them. I hope they know there is always an open invitation for them to come stay with me in California! Lourd, Bindu, Richard, and Madan took such great care of me during my stay in India. I’ll be forever grateful!