Managing two square meals a day!

Food has always been a problem over my entire stay at Bangalore. The IIM mess is closed over the vacations, so during my stay in the campus we had to eat South Indian thali all days for lunch which included Sambar, rasam, a wierd mix veg, 3 types of rice and fried puris! It was hard for me to survive on this for a month. No offences meant..anyways, its a personal blog.
Then dinner was not available on campus except if u can live on fried rice. So we had to go food hunting everyday till we narrowed down ourselves onto 3 places. One was Adiga's..it offers a wide variety of dishes both North and South Indian and at affordable prices. Other was a restaurant just opposite IIM, named Potluck which gave discount to its fans on facebook and twitter! Aparently the fans were told a keyword every month which was a password to the discount. Evidently the password was Spiderman for May. I dont know what is the new pass for June. Superman,eh? Well apart form the discount, we used to go there because it was quite nearby and wasnt too bad. Our favorite was the Punjabi Dhaba with the tagline Taste the difference! It was a small place really but awesome food. Finger licking good! The paranthas with raita, the chana masala and the dal makhani..God! m salivating already. Our breaker and snacks was taken care of by our saviour Amul parlour in the campus without which we wouldn't have survived a day in Bangalore. It serves delicious sandwiches and toasts along with all Amul products.

We moved out of campus after May into a small 1 BHK flat shared by 3 of us and now we are on a fresh food hunt. We have found Charcoal but have not fully approved it as of now. Except that there's a small joint called Kerala Heritage which apparently also offers north indian chapatis and vegetables. For dinner Adiga's has become the monopoly. But evenings are that I actually look forward to nowadays because I found a puchka wallah which serves amazing puchkas. For those who don't know puchka, it is the Kolkata equivalent of Bombay's panipuri and Delhi's golgappe. I am glad Bangalore junta likes it the Kolkata way. I hate panipuris and though I havent had gol gappes ever, I know I cant like it better than puchkas :)

Thats it for now...Hoping that we would settle down for some proper eating places at out new residence...

Bangalore Bhrahman!

After infi planning and discussions, we had finally decided our plans for this Saturday. Cubbon Park at 10 am. As usual, by the time all of us gathered it was 11.
At the Cubbon Park, we saw the Aquarium. Saw many varieties of fishes with myriad colours, shapes and sizes. Then we went to the Vishweshwara Industrial Museum. The fun with ccience section and the engine section was interesting.
After grabbing a bite at Subway, we headed for the Ulsoor Lake, did boating again (this was twice in a week) and then sat down on grass and played Mafia. For those who know Mafia, you would know it ought to be fun and for those who don't know, sorry rahega...cant explain d rules to u now :P
After that we returned back to IIM and had an amazing dinner (chana masala and dal makhani) at a nearby Punjabi Dhaba. A fitting end to a tiring day!

Nilgiris...!

Another weekend at Bangalore and we, the lukkha interns, set out for Ooty!

We reached Ooty Saturday morning at 7 after an awful 8 hour bus ride. Without any woolens and draped in only a half sleeve T-shirt and jeans, I was shivering amidst the cool morning air. We booked the cheapest lodge around and dumped ourselves on d bed wid memories of d bus journey almost luring us to sleep. But the prospect of sight-seeing was more enticing! After freshening up and a light breaker we set out for the Rose Garden on foot.

It was a long walk and not helping at all in reducing my exhaustion..But as I entered the garden the smell and sight of a million roses captivated me. Welcoming us in, there were a chariot and a peacock decorated with roses. It was beautiful. The whole garden had roses planted on either sides of the passageway with weird labels to each of them. Some of them were quite ironical, others humorous and while the rest seemed logic-less! We took a few pics here and there before we set out for the Botanical Garden, again on foot.

Once we reached the famous Botanical Gardens there was a long queue, discouraging us from getting inside. We ditched the plan to see the Garden and retreated, only to move towards Dodabetta peak, the highest peak of the Nilgiris.

After a couple of kilometers of walk and futile attempts at hitch-hiking, we realized that there was no transport to Dodabetta from our present location and we had to go back to the town bus stand for conveyance, which was quite far. Thus, we postponed our plans of Dodabetta to the next day and this time, wisely enuff, booked a Sumo for the 7 of us for the next day which would take us to Pykara as well.

Having nothing better to do we set out for the Ooty lake and boat house expecting to finally find a place to sit on the lakeside. Hence, we started out..again on foot for a 3-4 kilometer walk..Having walked for atleast 10 kilometers from the moment we reached Ooty, we found a place near d lake to sit and relax. We played cards..and it was awesome. The fitting end to a not-so-good beginning. The next 3 hours flew by and were total fun. The weather didnt dissappoint us either. After the amazing evening, we returned to our lodge and I slept like a horse.

Sunday morning we set out for Pykara at 9 on the Sumo we had booked for the day. We saw the Golf course in the passing, and later stopped at Kamraj Sagar Lake. It was a nice lake bordered by pine forest and was below road-level meaning that we had to descend quite a steep slope to reach there. We clicked a few pics and returned to the Sumo.

The next stop was the 9th Mile Wenlock Downs. It was basically an undulating hill covered with grass and very good scenery providing excellent scope for more pics :P

Then we went to the Pykara falls and the Boat house where we did boating. Our return journey took a lot of time coz of heavy traffic. We passed our times singing songs: old songs,new songs, love songs,sad songs, happy songs,arbit songs, bad songs, more songs :D

By the time we reached back Ooty, it was past 5 and we had to skip Dodabetta (was it jinxed!?)
We settled for in a CCD outlet and occupied the corner couches. I had Irish coffee and Choc Fantasy with ice-cream and choc sauce. We stayed put at CCD till 9.30 gossiping and watching the DC innings of the IPL final.

On our way to the bus stand we suddenly realised we had to buy the famous Ooty flavoured tea and home made chocolates. In desparation, and due to shortage of time we grabbed watever was nearest at hand and boarded our bus. How was the journey back? Don't even get me started on that!

Overall it was an awwessuuumm trip!!!

P.S:Thanx to Bajo, Fengshui, Mayhool, Manu, Nandu n Subject (in alphabetical order)!!
P.P.S: i ll post links for the pics in the comments soon..

Garuda Mall

Last Sunday we went to Garuda Mall on MG Rd, supposedly the busiest road in B'lore. Met wid my batchies who also happened to be doing an internship in B'lore. After a quick lunch at the food court on the 3rd floor and a few photos (all in d same pose!), we headed to the multiplex on d 4th floor. We spent 200 bucks for the tickets and got inside INOX. The hall was nice. The movie was called Something Just Happened. The name sounded promising and even the cast was decent. But the movie was a disaster and we couldn't stand it any longer than Intermission. It was the first time for me to ditch a movie after having paid for the ticket! But as they say, there's always a first time.

Well after the movie having nothing definite to do, we just wandered in the mall, stopping meanwhile to have dessert. I had blackforest slice. More pics followed! As we planned to leave, it started raining and thus we were forced inside the mall for another hour which led to another trip to the food court. (I had Subway's sandwich this time)

This was the longest I ever stayed in a mall...6 hours..and I had an exam the other day! But inspite of all this, it was fun.

Campus!

So here's sumthing about the campus. It isnt as large as IITB for sure. But is atleast as much green.
All roads are curved and have infi branches and you could reach any place through more ways than one..Everything is interconnected by a network of lanes and bylanes. The hostels (A-L) is one big 'block' having 2 storeys above the gorund floor. My room's in A block on the 1st floor. There's a 24 hour canteen Athica's which has relatively few items on the menu but the food is quite decent. Other than this there are a STD-ISD and Xerox facilities which remain closed during vacations. Then there's a volley court, basketball net, and a hockey ground in the hostel area too. The student's mess is closed during vacations but there are 2 canteens - the staff canteen which offers mostly South Indian food and a private canteen with food being ok. But these close at 7 in the evening leaving no options for dinner except to go out to infi restaurant options outside or have a quiet dinner at Athica's. Other than this, we have a proper CCD outlet here, an Amul store, Chai Unchai (Tata Tea) and Lipton's Tea. Then there's a theatre, an amphitheatre, library, bookstore...
In short, the student lifestyle here is quite happening and fun :)