Seasons greetings...

It is that season where people make spending seem dispensable, by throwing unnecessary money on greeting cards and roses. They drop every single fruitful activity they could otherwise do in the time they think of a present or the type of the flower.

I have never understood the fascination that women crowd possess for flowers/bouquets. Maybe one has to be in 'love high' to even slightly understand the logic behind. Or perhaps, somebody like me, who buys plastic bonsai from IKEA to decorate the center table in the living room, can never understand.

If a guy, let's say is in love head over heels with a girl, he would certainly buy her a present for Valentine's Day. My sources also say that it would be considered a federal offense in the girlfriend court, if the guy doesn't! That's not the point anyways. The point is wouldn't the girl know that a gift is coming her way? And if the girl has set the expectation right, the guy probably is dreaming about the present too.

I wonder what's the fun in knowing they would receive something for sure on a particular day and still associate a 'surprise' element to it. Once again, 'love high' I guess.

Next lamest idea (probably the most ancient technique as old as 6000 years) is buying Greeting cards. And these days there are those "record your voice/music and send your 'love' through paper" cards. How creepy is that?! Wouldn't it just be easier to make a phone call and say I love you?! Atleast we can save the planet by cutting lesser trees.

I believe this is still so true.

Valentine's Day, like most other occassions, is definitely passé.

My other eye...

I give ample importance in life to friendship, travel & photography (necessarily in that order). Friendship has always been integral to me. The passion for photography in the recent times has increased proportionately with my penchant for traveling. As a measure of expressing all the three to a greater extent (than done otherwise), I take a step forward and start another blog. But wait, it’s not just me.

Looking back, I remember the excitement during the first few days of my acquaintance with one of my favorite bloggers. The excitement slowly turned into unadulterated joy, when I found we have myriad of common interests. And of all the interests, the biggest one is our love for traveling. From then on till date, we have spent a lot of time together to call ourselves very good friends.

She writes extremely well and the other day, in one casual moment, she asked ‘We travel a lot. We both write. We might as well start a travel blog together. What say?’ Bang! we started “Footloose on the Freeway”, almost instinctively the same evening.

Going forward, I’m planning to blog my travel experiences there. Encourage you to visit the blog.

[P.S: Arunsundarthinks would still be an active blog, throwing the same-nothings for lets say, a few more decades till the author gets either amnesia or euthanasia]

Motor Pun'ire!

Indian restaurants in the US are strange in more ways than one. Though most of them do a good job in serving the food right, some simply don't. They rather specialize in screwing up things like professionals.

Outside India, most Indians know enough not to compare home food (or even food from restaurants in India) to food in US desi restaurants. Restaurants capitalize on this very idea. They effortlessly let the quality of food slide, but try in despair to infiltrate into other areas.

Maybe the hospitality matters.

Most restaurants make sure the guests half-way through their meal need to be asked 'how is everything'. I wonder what might happen if one says 'the food sucks!! '. Most waiters are uber-confident about the reply that they don't even wait to hear from the guest.

There have been times when I have asked for water and got looks as if I was asking for a good share in the thousand shares of Google the waiter owns.

To get a better feel of the (in)hospitality, one should enter a restaurant at 9.45pm, when the closing time is 10pm. The waiter might expect the guest to decide till the dessert, before even one is shown a menu card.

It eventually becomes a discovery that quality of food and hospitality are perhaps not the only reasons one goes to restaurants. Like most others, I have this habit of not eating the same variety of food in the same restaurant for the second time.

The other day, as I was browsing through the menu at this Indian restaurant, I found something called “Motor Pun'ire”. I almost thought it was a new dish, before I realized the intended name is actually “Mutter Paneer”. Whowould imagine mis-spelling to this extent?! Looking through the other items such as “Alu Motor”, “Chicken Mosolla” the laughter was more satiating than the food in the first place.

One infers the name of the food hardly matters either.

Despite all these, I for one consider going to an Indian restaurant a regular activity - as I believe "eating Indian food is the best thing to happen, especially when one does not have to cook them". I happily let go on a few other things.