Bollywood Soiree

Here is my costume - there was a lot of pinning involved, which in some small way lead to an unfortunate turn of events much later in the evening.

We practiced for 5 weeks leading up to the performance, and honestly, most of the time it really sucked. Somehow, just like last year, it all gelled at the very last moment. I brought lots of Bindis (3rd eye jewelry) from home which were a big hit.

Goofing off before the performance backstage

On stage!

 

I had a little dance solo :)

Most of the moves were inspired by the ending of the movie Slumdog Millionaire - we used the feature song "Jai Ho"

 

Some of the shuttle women are extremely talented in the dancing department - wish I was!

So, the whole evening was a huge hit! We were the finale after many other fabulous women performers. Over $2500 was raised for a children's charity in Christchurch. I'll post the video when it come out.

Later on, things took a turn for the worst, involving major dehydration (I didn't want to drink water because I was pinned into my sari and going to the bathroom was tricky), an empty stomach, exhaustion, overexertion from a few days before (15 miles of running with a 20-pound backpack in preparation for the marathon), and then a couple of sips from a fellow shuttle driver's drink (and yes, I do mean only a couple of sips - I was not drunk). I fainted or passed out and ended up hitting my head (even though my petite boss heroically caught me as I fell) and was brought by the paramedics on a stretcher to the clinic where I stayed overnight with IV fluids being pumped into me. This happened at the bar in front of scores of people, so it was beyond humiliating. Unfortunately there is absolutely no place to hide here.

The good thing is that people do stupid things all the time here, so my incident is already "so last week." The next day another shuttle driver got lost in the fog out on the ice for 4 hours with a van full of people and they had to send out search teams. Then yesterday, two shuttle drivers forgot to check in after a hike and the SAR team was starting to get mobilized. Last week a shuttle driver didn't properly pull up the air brake button on Ivan and the 67,000 lb bus rolled down over some wooden curbs and right through the power lines causing $1000 in damage. And that's just in the shuttles department!