What's for dinner?

Many of you have asked about the food here, so I'll attempt to shed some light on the subject.  As I have mentioned before, we get lunch every day in the office.  The manager asked us when we arrived what kind of food we'd like, and we said to bring us Indian food, so he's been obliging us.  He's been doing a great job of keeping it interesting, going so far as to bring a different chicken curry every day for about a week that was from a different region of India.  This has been really helpful, as it's somewhat bewildering to figure out what everything is sometimes. For example, here's the menu for a restaurant that is right across the street.  If I didn't sit here and google everything prior to going, I'd have no idea what the hell it was.  We've not been to that place yet, because it's mostly a lot of snacks, or things you'd find as street food, plus it's strictly vegetarian, or "veg" as they'd say here.  We'll try it eventually.

Speaking of work food, we got these last week:

Those are called Vada Pav.  They're essentially fried balls of mashed potato, but there's more to it. There's turmeric and spices mashed in with the potato.  The bread seemed unnecessary at first, but it was all nice and warm, and was really tasty.  The idea is to sprinkle some of the red powder over it, then add one or more of those chili peppers, which had been salted.  Those peppers were initially not too hot, but 15 minutes later we'd all finished a bottle of water, and were sniffling and wiping our eyes.

Speaking of spices, I'm often asked if the food is spicy.  For the most part, nothing has been ridiculously hot.  That being said, there are a lot of spices in the food (it's science!).  One of my favorite Indian foods is Biryani, which is a rice dish that can either be veg or non-veg (that's seriously what they say). There are two main ways to make it, but the most common in restaurants is "dum ki biryani" which is common to central India.  It's made by marinating the meat (if included) in spices, cooking the rice in more spices, then cooking the chicken a bit, adding the cooked rice on top of it, then a layer of caramelized onions and herbs, then another layer of rice and onions, and finally adding saffron flavored milk over the whole thing.  It's then sealed up and cooked through.  When you first open up a good Biryani it smells like perfume from all those spices and flavors.  I hope I'm able to make that when I get home.

We get a lot of curries here, which most of you probably know is just chunks of meat/vegetables in a sauce, or what they refer to as the gravy.  These dishes are a staple here, and it's been a bit of an adjustment for me, as I'm not used to such a soupy kind of dish as a main course.  They normally serve them with a bread of some sort, normally naan, paratha, or roti to mop up the tasty sauce.  The breads are a whole other category that we've only just began to experience.  The favorites of these that I've had so far are (links to recipes for each):

Chicken Tikka Makhani (also known as butter chicken)
Kolhapuri chicken
Palak chicken
Matar paneer

Yes, you're right, that's a lot of chicken.  We're getting sort of sick of it, quite honestly.  I'm thinking I'll be eating a lot of steak when I get home.  We do also visit places that have foods we're used to at home, but we often find that something gets lost in translation.  A dish that sounds good because it is something you'd get at home comes out with something just not right about it.  I do have a tradition that I was able to maintain this year.  Everyone has a food that if they could eat it every day with no consequences, they would.  For me that food is donuts.  Because eating donuts all the time is obviously counter to longevity, I only allow myself to eat donuts one day per year, on my birthday.  Last Friday was my birthday, and thankfully there's a Krispy Kreme in the neighborhood just south of mine.

I could eat all of those.  Watch me.  

We got those on our way to the office, and proceeded to get a nice sugar high.  It was nice to be able to have something that felt like home, and they were exactly right, probably due to being an established chain despite being all the way over here.

Something that's been an adjustment here that was totally unexpected is the milk they sell here.  Evidently this is common in Europe as well, but none of it is refrigerated.  It's what they call "ultra high temperature" pasteurized, and combined with an aseptic (sterile) container, it's shelf stable at room temperature for up to 6 months until it's opened.  You also find something called "toned" milk, which I don't like at all.  It all tastes sort of funky compared to what I'm used to.  Even weirder, they sell a lot of it in these sealed plastic bags, and I have no idea what you do with them once you open them to keep them from spilling all over the place.  To tie in with what I said in my last post, about the bikes, there are guys that ride around with these canisters attached to their bikes, and they deliver these bags of milk to people/businesses that purchase them.  This is done even in the torrential downpours of the monsoon, or when it's 110 degrees outside:

Get your weird milk here!

That's it for now...it's time to go eat!

Rainy days

The monsoon rains are finally upon us.  They started a couple days ago, which was a little later than anticipated, due to a tropical storm out in the Arabian Sea.  It's been raining non-stop now for about 16 hours as I write this.  It should end some time in September.  As much as I'm sure I am going to tire of all the rain, it hasn't been bad so far.  The first round of showers cleared up the air, and we had what I can say is probably the first "nice" day we've had since I have arrived, weather-wise.  I was able to see mountains in the distance that I hadn't seen yet, and the sky was nice and blue like I'm used to seeing at home.  It didn't last though, as the steady rains weren't far behind a couple days later.  All this came just in time for India.  It was reported in the paper that the reservoirs serving Mumbai had 60 days of water left.  That's pretty alarming to think of 20 million people that close to having no water at all.  The livelihoods and economy here are directly tied to the rains, which is unlike anything I've experienced previously.  The stock market here recently fell quite significantly on the heels of a forecast for a weak monsoon this year.  Less rain means less crops, and less spending in the economy.  Unfortunately, it's the farmers who feel it the most, as a reduction in crop yields can ruin many of those with smaller farms.  My annoyance with the humidity after the sun comes out after the rain seems insignificant by comparison.

Things have changed subtly since the rains started.  It obviously makes much of the activity we're used to seeing take place outdoors diminish somewhat.  Take these fellows, for instance:

I've been trying to catch a picture of those guys seated on the crates for some time now, and finally got this one.  Every day they were sitting out there getting a shave from some man that offers the service. No enclosure, chairs, or running water needed.  Just a guy, a bucket of water, and some crates to sit on. He had at least 2 or 3 guys out there every day I looked.  I imagine he's done for now though.

I also expected to see some differences in the plant and animal life here, but being in the city it doesn't really seem to obvious.  I did see this guy come out after a shower though:

The rains haven't changed our activities much.  Before the rain it was too hot outside to do anything but scurry to/from where you needed to go, unless it was early in the morning, so it's not like we're missing anything now.  We did go see a movie this weekend though.  The theaters here differ from home in that there are tiers of seating.  Here you see a couple of my co-workers enjoying their top-tier "gold" seats, with the big cushy recliners:

Transportation, as I've mentioned previously, is still an enormous pain in the ass.  I was asked prior to leaving if I'd be bringing my bicycle over with me, considering how much I ride when I'm home.  The traffic quickly makes such an activity extremely hazardous.  It's bad enough people are driving on a different side of the road, but when you add in the suggestive nature of the traffic control devices, pedestrians, meager attempts at traffic lanes, and the occasional cow, I'm sure I'd last a matter of minutes out there.  The locals, however, make pretty good use of their bikes.  I'd say that about 99% of them ride this mass produced steel bike here.  If I had to guess there's probably close to a million of them in the city.  They use them for transportation, of course, but they're also often used to move cargo around.  I've seen sheets of plywood being moved with them (balanced mid-point on the offside pedal, while the guy walks beside the bike), old air conditioning units, and big canisters of milk being carted about.

Check out that sweet front suspension!

It's not uncommon to see several people riding one bike at once.  The ladies almost always ride side saddle (on the motorcycles here as well), and I've yet to see anyone come close to falling off, save the two morons that were riding one yesterday, against traffic, while they both talked on their cell phones.

As an added bonus, I fell ill this week, and wound up missing a day of work after spending the previous night awake, coughing and sneezing.  I neglected to bring any cold medicine with me, so I was left to negotiate that process for the first time here.  Unlike home, you can't just go into the grocery store and head over to the medicines to pick from the 1000 different ones available. They simply don't sell any at all.  For such things you have to visit the "chemist."  There seem to be plenty of them around, and you can always spot them  by the lighted green cross sign they have out front somewhere.  The first attempt was done on the fly, walking back from lunch, when I noticed a chemist shop.  The language barrier left the poor guy behind the counter trying to make sense of the pantomimes I was doing to describe the symptoms I was experiencing.  From there he presented me with what he thought I was looking for, ranging from a nasal spray, an allergy pill, and an antibiotic.

After some research and advice from a co-worker, I learned that a lot of drugs here are just given out at the customer request, no prescription required.  I was advised that the best approach is to first have a picture of the medicine you'd buy back home to show them, and if that doesn't work, then a list of the main active ingredients.  Using this approach later in the day, I went into another chemist armed with a list of the ingredients from the cold meds I'd usually take, and wound up with something that seems to work. I think in the future I'll go into one with a list of some of the craziest shit I can think of, just to see how far they'll let someone go.  Benzodiazepine? Why not??  Hydrocodone? Sure!!

All of this leads to the feeling I have here a lot.  Simple interactions you'd take for granted at home wind up being hopelessly confusing.  I'll often enter into some transaction with a person that doesn't speak English, and while I can get through it eventually it becomes painfully obvious that there's some nuance to it that I'm totally missing which leaves the person I'm interacting with feeling every bit as confused or frustrated as I am.  For example, sometimes I go into the grocery store nearby, put my items down on the counter to check out, get everything bagged up, hand over the method of payment...and then...something.  There's some sort of expectation that is there that I'm not sure about, and we both wind up just looking at each other, before I shrug my shoulders and move on. Couple this with the confusing methodology applied to almost every simple action that takes place here, and I'm sure there's plenty of "what the hell is that guy's problem" being said in Hindi as I walk away.

Sorry again for the delay in posting. I've fallen into a bit more of a routine over here, especially during the week.  I try to wait until I've got a few new things to show you or talk about, rather than bore you with the banality of my every day life.

I'd love to hear from more of you. Drop me a message on Facebook, or send me a text message from time to time.  I miss home all the time, and I'd love to hear what things you've all been up to, even if it seems boring or uninteresting to you.

Now if only I'd thought to bring some rain boots....