Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I'm on a roll here.

Still to come -

Meeting almost blind man who likes to set up couples for marriage purposes.

ALL of the family.

Lots and lots of church.

Train parotta - the death inducing kind.

Touring malleshwaram with bikerdude.

Eating epic andhra meal.

Meeting c in crowded mall in filmi style.

Avoiding the marriage topic.

Shopping like there are no malls in America.

Dinner at cousin's house with very strange man and nieces with dance performance.

Airlines with kb.

Bangalore club massage.

Upendra pichaar.











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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Saar why you have brought me to wrong city?

We were about 20 minutes away from Bangalore. I had eaten my 'Muslim meal' which I did not recall ordering but ate gladly since it was basically chicken curry, rice and rasmalai. This British man on my first flight offered to buy it from me if I didn't want it. I took one look at the meal he was about to eat and gasped in horror. Anyway that was 20 hours ago and now I was almost home. I wasn't sure what to feel.

I was about to get emotional when the pilot made an announcement. There was fog in Bangalore. Nobody took him very seriously. "Still it is early no, it'll clear soon" the knowledgeable uncles said. Ten minutes later we were told the fog was still pretty bad. Bad enough for them to take us to madras. Madras!

A couple of hours later we were still at the airport. We were asked to collect our baggage. I was able to locate only one bag and two kind men were helping me locate the other. Finally they said "inge ille ma, neenge anga poi complain pannange."

After filling out the required paper work I went outside expecting a bus to take us to our hotel. They had promised us we'd get to Bangalore later that evening on the same flight. Instead I found myself waiting with a group of people led by a man in a safari suit and a sign. He was sending us in taxis to the hotel. I was made to get in a taxi with a middle aged man and his bags. I sat in the back with some 6 suitcases that looked like they were about to collapse any minute. To make matters worse our driver was mad. I mean sure I hadn't driven in India in 5 years but Houston had plenty of rash drivers. This guy was on a whole other level though. He drove the entire way on the wrong side of the road. As soon as he saw a vehicle approach he would merge to the left. I was genuinely terrified. I distracted myself by looking out the windows at signs like 'Fitter, Tuner - 10th pass' and giant politicians in cooling glasses. The driver at this point had started complaining about safari suit man who had forgotten to give him a receipt. He said he would need it at the hotel so he could get paid. Co passenger started to reassure him in Hindi. Driver looked at him like he was crazy.

"Hindi nahin aata?"

"Tora Tora aata hain saar. Aana yeneke receipt kudukalanga."

I had to translate for the two. It wasn't pretty.


It took an hour to get to the hotel but once we got there I was very impressed. They checked under the car for bombs. They checked my bags, they gave me a serious pat down. It was way more serious than any airport pat down I had received.

The room was nice. I was very excited at the thought of taking a bath after 24 hours. I had also spotted my first hot tamizh boy in the lobby. I was generally in a much better mood.

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Do not forget the giant toblerone.

My flight did not get cancelled. It was on time. I did not get stuck in heathrow, in fact I barely had time to get from one gate to the next. When I got to my gate boarding had started but there was a line, long enough i decided for me to run across to the duty free shop and pick up all the giant toblerone that would fit in my arms. When I got back the line was still there so i decided now would be a good time to pack the chocolate in my pull along.

It wouldn't close.

I sat on the floor repacking the damn thing while the line in the front of me moved away. Then this man walks up and I'm thinking yay someone's here to help me zip my bag up. He goes "err, are you in the line?" I sigh and tell him he can get ahead of me. Ten minutes later I have my suitcase zipped and I stand up to do a cheer. Silly man then applauds my effort and turns back around. BlogBooster-The most productive way for mobile blogging. BlogBooster is a multi-service blog editor for iPhone, Android, WebOs and your desktop

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I really don't want to spend christmas in heathrow.

So my tickets were booked, my passport had finally been renewed and I was excited to go home after 5 years. The problem was I was flying British Airways and heathrow freaks out if it gets more than a couple of inches of snow. The weekend before I was scheduled to fly out heathrow declared itself closed. CNN showed video of people stuck at the airport, sleeping on the floors, running out of food. They interviewed someone who had waited in line for an hour only to find out they were all out of muffins. I pictured myself being there, spending christmas with angry strangers, all of us upset at the lack of muffins.

To be continued.
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Test

I'd like to blame two things for my lack of blogging. One is twitter. It's easy, it's instant and then since I've talked about something the minute it's happened I don't feel the need to go back and talk about it more in detail.

Then there's my iPhone which I love and my laptop which died, which I haven't really missed. Tweeting from my phone is awesome and I hadn't really thought about blogging from my phone but I figured why the hell not? I have stories to tell, mostly from my India trip and since there's so many I'm going to just do short ones. Many short posts is the goal. Wish my luck.

P.S. We're World Champions. WHAT??!

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