Snippets..

Shirts vs Skins: In California, soccer is played with one team wearing shirts and the other no shirts. Whenver I join the soccer match, I'm usually made a skin. Surprisingly, it is me that has the most hair on my chest of all the men there. I usually get a lot of weird looks, but I have become immune to that. My pants unfortunately are also usually falling off - the price to pay for starvation in an alien land.

Unusually, the men hesitate to take off their shirts when the women don't seem to have any problem doing so. It's the exact opposite of India. Of course, most of the men playing are Mexican. There is some exceptional South American talent on display with passing and movement of the highest calibre. However, understanding their language is quite tough. Shouts of "Middle" were misunderstood by me to be "Mero" which means Mere in Spanish. I further mistook this to be "Slow" so I kept slowing the pace of the game rather than whipping in a cross to the middle of the field. It didn't take me long to stop playing, quite predictably.

Wine Tasting: Robert Mondavi Winery (Yountville, CA) offers conducted tours of the establishment. The philosophy they use to market their wine is as follows: they do not sell in the open market. However, when visitors come to their establishment, they are allowed to buy them here. The exclusivity of these wines adds to the hype and their price. (Eric Cartman would have been proud) For this reason, it is considered a very good wine. Quality of wine depends on many factors. Hype is a very important one.

The tour however, excellently showcased the facilities, culminating in a round of wine tasting. Three wines were brought to us. A Fume Blanc, Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Sauvignon were allowed out of the vault and a crash course in how to taste a wine was delivered. Abstract terms like body of the wine and some others I've conveniently forgotten were discussed. So each wine was swirled in the glass, smelt and tasted. It might have looked bad if I gargled it or spat it back in the glass, so I had to swallow mine.

Later, we retired to an exclusive tasting room for a taste of some desert wines, the Muscat wine being a hit. Other wines such as the Sirrah and Zinfandel also went down well. The ladies seemed to particularly like the desert wines because they were fruitier and sweeter. After all the wine tasting, I still preferred the 2001 Cabernet we had with lunch from the Silverado wineyard across the street at Oakville.

Halloween: This is the occasion where most women take the opportunity to dress like a slut. It is accepted at this time of the year. Trick or treat and such customs are lost in university towns. DP is the most crowded this time of year. It is packed with people with barely place to move. Usually the most vibrant street in IV, DP lives up to it's reputation, providing a great place to party every Friday. Being next to the ocean, the location is perfect for all the parties. Usually podiums are erected on front yards, allowing aspiring rock bands a place to showcase their music. Music is all over the street as are also the smell of stale beer and weed. Shoes tied to electricity lines are more common here than in all of IV.

It is estimated that every day, five people get charged in IV for alcohol related transgressions, four are in DP. On Halloween, this number is scaled by a factor of at least twenty. Police are all over DP, trying to keep hooligans in check. A lot of people from out of town come in to DP on Halloween night or the weekend before to party. The men have a field day at Halloween. Social pleasantry breaks down to such an extent that shouts of "Did you grab my ass?" rent the air with alarming frequency. Slaps are doled out at a similar rate too. A lot of men wear cardboard boxes on the head with signs such as "Kissing Booth, 1$ a pop". Considering such a bold and desperate move, it's a surprise that they do get a few kisses, with most of the women being in an inebriated state anyway. Most men come to DP for Halloween to "hook up". The others, like me, just go for curiosity as a first-timer. If you're around at Halloween, don't miss DP at any cost.