Wednesday, April 9, 2008

There are only three flavors of India: Spicy, Spicer and SUPER Spicy

Every day for lunch in the office the manager I work with here has food ordered and delivered for us. Its nice to have it just show up and helps us stay productive. The first two days they got us some fairly "American" food so today when the suggestion was Indian "Veg" as they call it or something more my normal I decided lets be adventurous and go Indian "Veg", mostly because the India team eats what we eat. Many Indian's are Vegetarians because of their religion so there are vegetarian or "Veg" as they say options and "Non-Veg" options on every menu. I did end up with some more mild chicken brisas (I'm guessing at the spelling) for lunch and then I decided to try a little dab of the curry that came too. Bad idea... I tasted it and then proceeded to have my mouth feel like it had been numbed with Novocaine for the next 30 minutes. They were all laughing at me. I've been trying small portions of Indian food since I've been here and its been really good so far, but I've steered away from the more standard spicy food. But really there is nothing here that isn't spicy! We got pizza yesterday and the vegetarian pizza had a ridiculous amount of spices on it. I was so surprised at the first bite. Tomorrow I guess we are getting Mexican food for lunch. Who knew there would be Mexican in India?!


I did discover that one of my new favorite Indian foods is called Masala Dosa. Its essentially a sort of whole wheat crepe filled with curried potatoes and onions. It is SO yummy. Its a breakfast food and I order it every day. I also discovered Caffe Coffee Day, the local Starbucks if you will. Their lattes are quite a bit smaller than the huge sizes we have in the US, but its been pretty good. Today I did the conversion and realized I got a latte for about 1 US dollar. Seriously, that right there is a reason to move to India. Cheap coffee. But believe me there are many reasons not too also. For example the power goes out in the office at least once maybe a few times a day randomly. Thank goodness for laptop batteries and auto save!


Another observation... There is a servant to do every little task in India! There are guys who sit in the elevators and press buttons all day. There are guys who do nothing but clean the bathrooms all day. They are always lurking in the hall near the bathrooms. Yesterday I tried to clean up the lunch pizza boxes and got in trouble for doing so, because there are people to clean up after you. I feel like such a lazy slob here, but its just so ingrained in the culture. I mean people even expect the waiters to serve the meal to them in restaurants. I just reach over and serve myself and the waiters rush over try and take over for me. Seriously a different world here. I laugh because in the US they won't even empty my trash at work now!

The autorickshaws (which consequently are not allowed to come in to my hotels driveway and property area).


You can kind of see the cow wandering through traffic (this is rush hour). Every one just honks and drives around them because cows are sacred to the Hindu's. Many have their horns painted and decorated. They just wander the city. Some might have homes and others might be strays.

The night life in Bangalore... We went to this hysterical club on the top floor of a large office building that was totally empty because apparently we were there on the wrong night. Its extremely busy on Bollywood night (Indian pop music of sorts) but on our night it was 80's music and that obviously doesn't draw a crowd!

This is MG road, there's an MG road in every major city. Stand for: Mahatma Gandhi

3 comments:

meagan said...

I LOVE THIS BLOG!!
(and you too! :-)

h-i-p said...

What a crazy economic spread that you've witnessed...What interesting stories those people (in the "service" industry) must have!

Eating "Veg" must be interesting. When I was at the SDA conference in Texas we had some veggie meals since its sorta part of their religion too--not spicy, of course--but definitely very different.

Have fun and stay safe!!

Karen Kay said...

Great blog! I pray you are safe and not experiencing revolting stomach spasms from all the strange foods you are eating--you did say you packed the Pepto, right? Love ya Auntie Karen