Sunday night at the movies

Sunday May 4, midnight - Panjim, Goa

Before he left for India, Andy ran down the list of all the summer movies he's going to miss because he'll be gone. One movie at the top of his list was Ironman. Imagine his delight when he was reading the paper at breakfast this morning, and saw that there is a movie theater in Panjim, the capital of Goa, about 45 minutes away. We talked to the cook at our hotel and he said it was a nice theater, and that the movie would be in English. Well, I have never seen Andy so happy - he was giddy, like a little kid at Christmas.

After dinner Sunday night, we got a cab (pretty much a deathcab), and made the drive to Panjim. Now, I have to say this cab ride was crazy. It completely reminded me of the Knight Bus in Harry Potter. We were riding in this VW-bus-type car, and the driver had music blaring, he was swerving all over the road, honking left and right - Indian Style Driving to the extreme! But we made it safely to the INOX theater, and proceeded to purchase our tickets.

A few things that are different about seeing a movie in India:

* They have assigned seating.

* They serve Indian food, in addition to popcorn (many flavors of popcorn, at that).

* They all stand and sing the Indian National Anthem before the movie starts.

* They have an intermission halfway through. The movie just stopped, everyone got up and went to concessions, and then five minutes later, the movie started back up again.

Despite the few oddities about the theater, the movie was awesome, and completely fulfilled Andy's desire for a good old American movie, complete with Robert Downey Jr. as a giant robot. I think for a couple of hours we even forgot we were sunburned.