Wednesday

Woke up per usual protocol and wandered down the street to purchase my nutritious daily pineapple. There's few better ways to wake up then dodging various forms of Indian traffic first thing in the morning. I also had to avoid the Terrifying Bull that's always tethered outside the turnoff to our street. I swear to God, they sharpen that monster's horns - which are painted a fetching sort of red and blue.

Usual long long long rickshaw voyage to work. Trucked merrily away on the World Music page, then not so covertly trolled Metafilter for a bit. People love to ask the oracle that is the internet intimate questions. I cannot explain it.

(internet - why is my life so strange? oh internet, why do i have opposable thumbs? internet, does my butt look big in this?)

Aneesa wasn't feeling well due to the lurking Bangalore crud, so we went for a long lunch at Juice Junction. I had my usual delicious fruit bowl - mmm, papaya - while they had extremely suspicious looking "european" sandwiches at Casa Piccola, the Indian answer to Western food. This apparantly means dousing everything in wine flavored cream sauce. Indians love them some cream sauce.

We stayed later then usual at work, then tooled on home, where I had another satisfying nap. I love taking those kind of hot weather afternoon naps where you stretch out as much as humanly possible to catch just a tiny bit of cold air, limbs dangling off the edge of the bed in all directions. I can stay like that for hours.

Ran out to my beloved Clay Pot for a dinner of prawns thoran, a Keralan dish of fried spicy prawns in shredded spicy coconut, seasoned with onion and two kinds of chili. Totally unhealthy and ridiculously delicious. I highly reccomend it. I may suffer from heartburn for the rest of my life but it will be a happy sort of heartburn.

We all wanted to Go Out, so I called that guy we met the other night at the Beach to see what was what. He claimed he could take us to the Beach, get us free drinks, then drive us over to Athena, the swanky dance club located in the Leela Palace hotel. I was suspicious, figuring he was just acting as a tout for the Beach to get our asses in the seats once again - but then again, I never argue with free drinks, so we rickshawed ourselves over there.

I was initally in a curiously antisocial mood, glowering moodily over the Beach's spread of artificial palmtrees, but a couple of glorious, glorious free whiskies perked me up considerably. I found myself dancing with extreme ineptness to Justin Timberlake's incomparable "SexyBack" with a nice-looking Indian boy, who was tragically a much better dancer then me. (Why do I attract the boys who CAN dance? Do I make them feel especially talented? Do they simply pity me?)

To my surprise, our benefactor waved us over and told us that, yep, we were gonna leave for Athena now if we so desired, he had two cars for us, and hey hey hey free drinks. Pleasantly surprised, we rounded everyone up and left - he and his friend both had very nice cars blaring the latest Bhangra hits as we made the short trip to the Leela, which was glowing luxuriously in the darkness. I have always had the occasional secret fantasy of pulling up to a luxury hotel then disembarking from a car looking deeply disenchanted with the universe, wearing very high heels. This fantasy has been fufilled.

In any case, we were ushered into the Special VIP Entrance, which meant we got to skirt the usual 1000 rupee entrance fee, presumably by virtue of being, well, Special. The club itself was actually very nice - set up in dark, moody colors, with white cubicles arrayed around the place for people to lounge attractively in. The music was good too, a nice midpoint behind the kind of hard ass techno that makes your brainstem ache and completely skanky ass hip hop -they even threw some fabulous Bollywood dance tunes in there. The crowd was upscale, laidback, and generally really cool, free of the glassy-eyed creeps that tend to hang around other Indian dance clubs. I also appreciated the quantity of women - being one of a couple girls in a real sausage festival sort of bar is always a spot awkward.

Being in the VIP area, we even had our own bar, which meant I got to enjoy requesting drinks from various men I'd just met and watching them scurry over to fetch them. If you had known me in my early life, you would realize this is not exactly an outcome I had anticipated while capturing cockroaches in jars while wearing an odiforeous Jurassic Park t-shirt. Life brings us to strange and curious places, or in this case, brings us free liquor and totally unmerited perks.

I may have got swozzled. I do know that I won the nightly Best Dancer award which was crystal and came in a nice little box. I presume this means the (attractive) DJ is either stupid or totally blind. But I appreciate it.

On the way out, we met one of our benefactor's brother, who apparantly is a Bollywood actor. He was decent looking enough and rather shy. I will look for him in a film someday.

We returned to the Villa at god knows what ungodly hour and I enjoyed a McVities Chocolate Disgestive Biscuit, possibly my new obsession. I do not know if they actually aid with digestion or if this is just an elaborate lie the English tell themselves. In any case, it was delicious.