thursday

I woke up curiously bright eyed and bushy tailed. Youth is nice. In any case, we went off to work in the usual fashion - I was feeling good and less socially inept then usual!

Began work on the world music section which I have been assigned. I found some interesting information about a world music festival in the Malaysian rain forest I might like to cover. I happen to really enjoy world music so this works out well for me.

Since the office was being moved upstairs and thus in a state of profound disarray, Aneesa and I decided to leave early, adjourning for lunch at Beijing Bites. We had an interesting but delicious tropical chicken salad (pineapple can be a nice addition!) and some merely okay fried mushrooms and chili chicken. Finding a rickshaw thankfully proved to be less traumatic then usual. We hung out at Crosswords for a bit (the Nice Bookstore) and I perused yet more awesome Indian cookbooks.

We had decided to go to South Indies for dinner - a rather famous vegetarian restaurant apparently run by a 19 year old - (gosh i feel so useless) - but unfortunately we were completely unable to find it despite being repeatedly assured it was totally located on 100 Ft Road. We finally gave up, got out, and despite the protests of the rickshaw driver who TOTALLY KNEW WHERE IT WAS, went to the Bombay Post restaurant instead.

This place had an old Bollywood theme and was amusingly affected - I loved the doorman with a full twirly mustache and some sort of jodhpur afflicted safari outfit. The servers wore either glittery naval-blue uniforms or turbans, and some paan guys (chewy spice things wrapped up in leaves...hard to explain) waited at attention. The place specializes in Bombay style kebabs and tandoori, and the menu was salivation worthy. The kitchen was open and you could see the guys with their big white hats skewering delicious animal flesh upon silver rods and charring it over the fires. I took a few photos but they turned out crap. Most of my photos do.

I chose the stuffed tandoori broccoli, which sounds bizarre but ended up delicious. Broccoli was stuffed with paneer, nuts and pomegranate seeds, coated in a spicy flour, then roasted for a bit. This was super rich and very delicious, the charred and slightly bitter flavor of the broccoli playing nicely off the cheese.

We also tried the Bombay mutton kebabs, delicious chunks of meat cooked to a melty consistency with a thick coating of tandoori spices. This was served with super salty sambar (which I have not and never shall learn to like) and some delicious butter-coated garlic naan. The others got a few decadent looking paneer infused curry, and I did try their hyper spicy and delicious tandoori mushroom "salad".

The others wanted dessert, so we went to the Corner House ice cream shop, which proved disappointing. I passed, but the others claimed their chocolate ice cream tasted rather like soap. This didn't seem to stop the contented looking Indian youths sucking down Black Forest milkshakes (a national obsession)from patronizing the place well into the wee hours.

We decided to walk back, passing by the Leela Palace, probably the most swish hotel in Bangalore. It's a glorious and moodily lit edifice that seems to go on forever, with enough room to host seemingly every over-privileged potentate who swings through town. (Oddly enough it overlooks a particularly nawstry sort of shantytown, which presumably people can contemplate as they sip their tumblers of extremely expensive whiskey. Welcome to India.)

We walked down some back alleys which were deeply disorienting, mostly because there were lots and lots of stray dogs displaying entirely too much interest in our whereabouts. The stray dogs here generally are healthy and deeply unafraid of people, which is good for them but discouraging for me, mostly because I don't have a rabies vaccination and I do not like the idea of things biting me. (Or dying from convulsions and foaming at the mouth and God knows what else because I pissed off Fido.) Needless to say I tried to walk quickly.