A World in a Grain of Sand: September 2005

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Shivgange Trip

Went for a trek to Shivgange on Saturday, courtesy Mensa India (Bangalore). Supposed to be a picnic, more like a walk in the park, but turned out to be quite an adventure with fighting off ravaging monkeys, climbing impossible inclines, hanging on to handrails and what not. However, considering that it was a Mensa crowd, we had no dearth of interesting topics to fight on ... and that made the journey extremely fun.

Blues, browns & greens!

A green carpet

Stairway to heaven

To steal a phrase - a lot of bull ;-)

Spotlight from above

There are lots of monkeys on Shivgange. Pic of some intrepid Mensans.

Monkey see, monkey do.

On top of the world... er ... Bangalore, at least

If the Titanic could have flown, a picture would have looked like this!

Rock 'n roll

Monday, September 05, 2005

Nice diary

Lufthansa flight from Bangalore to Frankfurt over-booked. Free upgrade to business class for me!

They had given me the normal economy class boarding pass at check-in, and switched the ticket during boarding and told me there is a seat change. I told the guy I had asked for an aisle seat and now they were giving me a window seat. He replied that it was a business class upgrade; do I want to decline it? I grabbed the ticket and fled before he could say anything else. The unrestricted view from the business class window seat was amazing. And free champagne – unfortunately I don’t drink.

French are obsessive about their bread, water and wine

Extremely lucky to have a great bunch of colleagues in Nice, they ensured that I visited a new place every evening, ate at a different restaurant every night and guided me so that I could visit maximum places in and around Nice

Two Lamborghinis and a red Ferrari parked outside the Carlton in Cannes. All with Saudi number plates. Apparently, the oil rich sheiks like to bring their cars along on vacation

Out clubbing almost ever night and back to the hotel not before 3 AM. Up again at 7 AM for work (in theory, at least)

Visited two Salsa clubs in Nice – WOW! Danced Salsa with a French mademoiselle, she said “Merci” or “Mercy” at the end of the dance, not sure which was it

Salsa dancers in Nice club (Barrio’s) were amazing. Especially the ladies. They would do multiple turns in a couple of basics effortlessly

French dance Salsa with closed hold. I learnt it with open hold. System incompatibility!

Dinner in France is longer than an Indian marriage – start at 8 PM, finish at 11 PM. Every day!

The French Riviera coast is simply too beautiful. The train ride from Saint Laurent du Var to Vintimillie is absolutely breathtaking

Paris metro is too good. I took a 3 day pass and would have taken around 50 metro rides in 3 days

Paris is too crowded during summer – average waiting time at Eiffel was half an hour for a ticket. So I walked up till second stage since the queue for that was smaller

Stupid people standing in front of priceless paintings at Muses Louvre & Musee d’Orsay and having their pictures taken while showing a “V” sign!

Bought books for close to 100 Euros – one from every museum in Paris

Liked Musee d’Orsay better than Musee Louvre

Went to Italy to have ice-cream (apparently, they make the best ice-cream). There they call it gelato. It’s glace in French

Pizza in France is amazing. Couldn’t have it from Italy because of lack of time. Only thin crust pizza available. Apparently thick crust & stuffed crust are Pizza Hut innovations

Saw many people play “Petanque” – a French ball game played with steel balls which is kind of similar to the game of marbles played in India.

Rs 150 for half a liter of water!

Ate scorpion fish. Remember reading somewhere that they are poisonous… But survived nevertheless

If you are vegetarian and you see “Fruits de la Mer” on a French menu under Pizza – it means “Fruits of the sea”. A Pizza with clams & oysters & shrimp as topping