Nihao Macau!

The 10th IIFA award ceremony at the Venetian in Macau was held last Saturday. I had never been to a movie awards ceremony and this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to grab a peek. 3 VIP passes for the event (the boss of our friend from Hong Kong got these passes for us) ensured our (me with both the Vinods) attendance at the event.

The 1 hour turbojet ferry ride from Hong Kong to Macau was interesting and eventful. The ferry area, on disembarking, has shuttle buses to all the casinos. We reached the Venetian by about 3:30 in the afternoon, collected our passes for the event and decided to try our luck at the casinos.

The 10,500,000 sq ft Venetian is a sight to behold! This place doesn’t fail to amaze me every time we visit it. The Venetian, with its 3000 suites, claims to be large enough to hold “ninety Boeing 747 jumbo jets” and houses the largest casino in the world! Now, that’s something. It feels like Venice, with its canals, gondoliers on their gondolas, food and the ambience has been created again for the Asians here! We walked around the place for a while, clicked a few pictures and grabbed a quick meal at one of their many restaurants. Lady luck did not accompany us this time and we were not successful in making any big fast-bucks at the casino, although I will remember Venetian as the casino where I made my first ever win last year!

Around 7pm we reached the Cotai Arena, the IIFA awards venue. The event “promptly” commenced at 9pm, almost 2 hours later than the scheduled event time. Come on.. its an Indian Awards event…what else did you expect! The event however was a huge success, thanks to the scale of the set-up and meticulous execution, which undoubtedly is one of China’s forte!

Barring the absence of the King Khan and his “friends”, there was a good “star” attendance which included the Big B and his clan, the Roshans, the Chopras, the Kapoors (Anil Kapoor this time) etc. The hosts Boman Irani, Ritesh Deshmukh and Lara Datta managed their tasks well and brought the house down on splits with their humour. Abhishek and Ash’s public proclamation of their love for each other, and Hrithik’s act to credit his “style icon” award to his wife Suzanne appeared to be desperate efforts to swing the media in the “right” direction away from the controversies of Ms.Ciesla and Ms.Mori respectively. However, Boman’s imitation of Anil Kapoor, Antakshari by the stars, spoof of the movies that were nominated under the “best film” category and good stage performances by a lot of the actors and actresses ensured a lively and eventful program.