Miss Adventures

If you’re a member of the Amazon Associates program, then you can provide a link for visitors to your site to donate to the American Red Cross. It’s as easy as purchasing a book, and 100% of the proceeds go to the ARC for the tsunami relief efforts. See the Amazon box on the right [...]

My friend Rohit and some others have set up a blog to help consolidate information on the earthquake, tsunamis, and resulting relief efforts. Great great idea. I hope to put in a little time on the blog providing links to aid organizations and the like in the next few days. Though, if you check out [...]

Wedding
First of all, I should say that this side of India is doing just fine – so far. The news of the earthquake and tsunamis hit home in a really surreal way, as I spent more than two hours on the Arabian Sea on Sunday. We were invited to a wedding in the coastal town [...]

I can’t believe I’m even going to comment on this, as it’s a ridiculous tabloid issue. But the big media news around here for the last week or so has been the outrage over a celebrity kiss caught on a cell phone camera. Someone snapped a pic of actors Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur in [...]

Law 36 of the 48 Laws of Power states, “Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them Is the Best Revenge.” Admittedly, I have regarded the whole Bollywood scene with a bit of disdain, and I’ve tried my damnedest to ignore it. Of course, that was until Anthony and I had the chance [...]

No one ever said finding a Christmas tree in Bombay would be easy. But that’s exactly what we set out to do this past weekend.

Sometimes I have very good luck, such as I did this weekend when I scored two, last-minute, free tickets to see ‘La Traviata’ at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). The event was part of the whole ‘Festa Italiana,’ a two-week event featuring Italian art, culture, and business.
The NCPA, located at the southernmost [...]

A delightful Bollywood jab in this week’s Onion:
Bollywood Remake Of Fahrenheit 9/11Criticizes Bush Administration Through Show-Stopping Musical Numbers

Yeah, making fun of Bollywood is just too easy sometimes. Of course, I’m not the only one who does it. There’s also my writer friend Rohit (who’s been threatening to read my blog) who wrote this funny piece [...]

Looking back from India, it’s amazing the kinds of things we (Americans, Europeans, others) take for granted each time we’re in the kitchen. I had one of those moments the other day when I was roasting peppers. The peppers had steeped in a bag and their scalding skins were ready to be peeled off. However, [...]

So I have to apologize for being out of touch for over a week, but I have a good excuse…I finally found a yoga instructor. Yeah, you’d think that finding a yogi in India would be easy. (You certainly see a lot of lithe, bearded men that look like they sit in lotus position all [...]

Late Sunday afternoon was time to go on our guided tour of Cochin. After a stop to view the shore, some shady rain trees, and the Chinese fishing nets (a row of big nets attached to cranes that were once used to mine the Arabian Sea for fish), we moved on the Mattancherry Palace, the [...]

One of my favorite dialogues from Seinfeld has to be the one where Jerry and George discuss their favorite explorers. [mp3] Jerry likes Magellan. George likes DeSoto:
Jerry: What did he do?
George: Discovered the Mississippi.
Jerry: Like they wouldn’t have discovered that anyway!
Well, I’ve always liked Vasco da Gama. Columbus may have discovered America, but he was [...]

The second leg of our Kerala weekend took place aboard a Kettuvalam, or houseboat. Historically, Kettuvalams were used to transport rice, coir, or other products down the Keralan backwaters. But most of the ones you’ll see these days have been reincarnated as houseboats for tourists. For the most part, the Kettuvalams are welcomed [...]

It’s a true testament to a place when, after arriving, you feel that you never want to leave. That was my first impression of Kerala. The state on the southern tip of India is greener than green, with an overabundance of coconut palms, rice paddies, and fresh water lakes dotted with floating hyacinths and [...]

Bombay has been incredibly merry for the past several weeks because of Ramzan (aka, Ramadan) and the run-up to Diwali. In fact, Bombay has sort-of lived up to its name: BOMB-Bay. Neighborhood kids are setting off massively loud fireworks at all hours of the day, and the boom can be quite disconcerting to [...]

There was only one way to ease our sorrows last Wednesday night after we realized the inevitable, and that was to drink. And eat.
Luckily for us, the reopening of the club Enigma came on a night when we needed to forget about the day’s news. The reopening had been much talked about since I arrived [...]

Before I switch to full-on U.S. election monitoring mode (my nerves are already a wreck, compounded by the fact that I’m currently reading Dude, Where’s My Country), I thought I’d reflect on the past two months in India.
Gosh…it’s already been two months. And in that time, I’ve come to appreciate and/or accept some of the [...]

Mumbai has great shopping: clothing, jewelry, furniture, fabrics, books, you name it. And, of course, there are great bargains to be found if you know where to look. The one thing I really admire about the culture here, at least with respect to women’s clothing, is that you’ll never see two women wearing the same [...]

Day 2
Could there be anything better than starting your day with a fresh, hot butter dosa? We went back to KBR’s outdoor terrace for breakfast around 9:30 on Saturday morning and it was already about 90 degrees outside. The dosas were a welcome treat, as were the glasses of fresh watermelon juice. No…not a bad [...]

Good news. You don’t have to go all the way down to Goa to find swimmable waters and clean beaches. Maharashtra’s Konkan Coast has some surprisingly nice beaches, too.
Faced with a long weekend, Anthony and I were desperate to get out of town for a little R&R. Not that I wouldn’t have minded chilling out [...]