Bangalore, Day 7

[bjarvis]

This report will be relatively short as there's actually very little to report at all.

I was up at an early hour so I could skype with the boys back in DC before it was very late in their time zone. After a half-hour chat or so, I headed to the office.

There were two major tasks to accomplish today at work and both were completed. Enough said there.

Six of us went to the Museum Inn for lunch at a 4th floor buffet restaurant. I can officially claim now to have had an unquestionably no-holds barred Indian dinner: the only concession to my delicate western palette was bottled water instead of tap. The food was indeed spicy & hot but it was all within my comfort zone, if only just.

My only plans for tonight are to curl up with an ebook and generally vegetate. We'll see how long that plan lasts.

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

As you might guess I have a keen interest in everything you eat, particularly how it differs from Western versions.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Nice! The buffet sounds lovely. It's nice to be able to sample a bunch of different things without needing to commit to one when you're in a different/unfamiliar country.

Bill has just recently started to be comfortable with Skype and we've been skyping with each other when we are both in the same place at the same time. It really is worlds better than emailing back and forth.

Aside: (he's a bit of a luddite — computers were available while he was still working full-time, but they were used by the secretaries, so he never really learnt to pilot one until his (semi) retirement. Of course, he also didn't use a phone (his phone went to his secretary who would then make the phone call, and forward it back to his office), but he figured that out pretty easily.)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I wish I could tell you more about the food but I can't remember the item names and lack the food-specific vocabulary to do them justice.

The local cuisine here in the south of India tends to involve a lot of rice and little wheat. Naan, for example is a northern thing.

Yesterday's lunch included small samplings of thick veggie stews, both eaten by tearing off a strip of a thick tortilla-like bread, then scooping up & eating. (BTW, one typically only touches food with the right hand. Good thing I had been warned about that before committing a local faux pas.) We also had small logs --think of something the thickness of a hotdog weiner cut about two inches long-- composed of various vegetables rolled & compressed together.

The potatoes were served in small bite-sized chunks, coated with hot spices and grilled. Likewise, the fish portions at another station were spiced hot and appeared to have been pan seared.

There are typically 2-3 different types of rice at the buffet. Not just different methods of preparation, but different rices such as a medium length thin grain rice and a coarser, long grain thick rice. I'm sure the locals have as many different names for rice as Canadians do for snow. :-)

A thin green soup was served very hot in a very small cup, about double the size of a shot glass. Not sure what it was, but it tasted vaguely of pea soup.

I'm not a fan of yogurt which is served as an appetizer, a side dish and a dessert in different recipes, so I don't have much to report on that.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, buffets are fantastic, and it does seem to be the most popular lunch style here. I've seen far more buffets than non-buffet restaurants. Having to concoct one's own particular combo when one doesn't know what the hell the individual items are can be a challenge though. ;-)

I haven't used Skype much until recently. For the international calls, it's fantastic: I'm really surprised how well even video performs over my hotel's middling wifi bandwidth using my mobile phone as a camera & Skype node. My boss has initiated group video conferences using Skype as well, but my meagre netbook seems to have problems keeping up with the video.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

You've not mentioned it, but wondered if you've found out about "alternative" i.e. LGBT life in the sub-continent. Have you looked at all?

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Nope, haven't looked into it at all. I don't even know if it exists here in a fashion I'd recognize.