Bye Bye Fi Fi

We just farewelled our 9th visitor to "Ram Krupa" in downtown Juhu.
Preetika (aka FiFi, aka Paprika) was here for a few weeks on family business and was great/bad influence on the house. We saw Pune (Poona) together and the car we're going to buy (stay tuned) with PP, swam at the JW Marriott pools, had a recovery sunday session at Vie on the beach with Ash after Sharon's birthday, celebrated every bottle of wine, drop of beer, piece of chocolate and vaccum packed olive from Australia which was part of the last few weeks. Shaz celebrated her birthday and there'd be no cake without Preetika making sure of it.
Just to let you know, anyone who is challenged by Preetika at the PS2 music trivia game BUZZ, look out she has a lightning trigger finger and the random knowledge to go with it...
Oh and if you're wondering the pics are from, they're from the time when Shaz and Preetika were extras in a bollywood film.. a serious bollywood film...

See you soon FiFi..

How do I leave comments on a blog?

OK it's not scary and we'd love to receive your comments good, bad, funny sarcastic... whatever..

We have comments enabled on the blog, which is found as a link at the end of each post, like this:

If you click this link, you will go to the comment posting page.
The comment posting page looks like this:

In the upper left corner, there is an option to show or hide the original blog post that the comments relate to. The rest of the left-hand column contains any comments that have already been made.

On the right hand side of the page is the space for you to enter your comment. Beneath that are the identity options. (Some of these may not be available, depending on the blog's settings.)

The options are these:

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We have used the option to have comments open in popup windows. In this case, all the primary features will still be present as above, just arranged a little differently:

New Tunes

Shaz and Preetika were at the JW Marriot a few days ago and were introduced to two Aussie lads havin' a go and makin' some live chilled out tunes for the patrons. They're called Tijuana Cartel from the Gold Coast where they had the Thursday slot at Mybar. The blurb below is from their myspace site www.myspace.com/tijuanacartelband

"SPANISH guitars don't exactly go with funky beats the way fish go with chips, but breaks four-piece Tijuana Cartel is showing the world just how good the combo can sound.

In an era where appropriation is worn almost like a badge of honour, this Gold Coast act buck the trend and continue to expand, experiment and draw influence from an ever-widening circle of world and club sounds.

Vocalist and lead guitarist Paul George's flamenco strings slither over some tastefully broken beats on the bands two albums - a self-titled 2003 debut and the 2005 follow-up Frequent Flyers.

The new record brings splashes of Middle Eastern vocals to the mix, alongside some lilting Moby-esque soundscapes and get-up-and-dance beatfests - a club-friendly selection without a dull moment."

If this is the kind of music you'd like in your collection keep clicking and check a similar effort by the same guys under the name George and O'Sullivan.
www.myspace.com/georgeandosullivan
This one sounds like chilled electronic fantasy with overtones of ancient acoustic sounds.

Influenced by: Kruder and Dorfmeister, Buddah Bar, Oka, Rodrigo and Gabreilla, Groove Armada, Anuska Shankar, Melanie George, Massive attack,Plump Dj's, Chemical Brothers, Tiff, Strunts and Farah, Ravi Shankar, Chrystal Method, Chuck D, The Last Poets,N.W.A, Krafty, Tool, The Greys, Bowser, The Post Moderns, The Pixies, Nitin Sawney,Air, Morcheeba, Tparty

Find out about more of George and O'Sullivans music including "Tijuana Cartel" and "Gitano" at www.nicherecords.com

Which Beer?

Driving through a busy Juhu intersection the other night in a rickshaw I leant forward to instruct the driver to go left in my best Hindi and I was blinded by the new Foster's billboard taking command of the night sky. Foster's is available in most of the restaurants and bars around Mumbai and unfortunately in some of the bars we've been to it's the only beer on offer.
As responsible Australian drinkers we avoid Foster's where ever we can and dive into the local brews. Kingfisher has the lead at present as it has the advantage of the Premium (up to 5%) and Strong (up to 8%) variants.
Local price for a carton of 12 tallies from the local bottle shop is around RS750 or $20 Aussie. Actually this is the haggled price, it normally starts a few hundred rupee higher but becomes cheaper once the fresh, new bank notes shown to the shop keep go back in the pocket..
Beer like everything else that is from a "nice" venue starts to get expensive. A stubbie of Kingfisher is RS150 and it's up from there Fosters RS175, Corona RS250, Peroni RS300.
There is a small piece of theatre performed each time a beer is served. The bar staff will present you with your beer of choice, unopened, like a fine wine. You then have the opportunity to test the chill in the bottle with the back of your hand, once you're satisfied the beer is cold enough a wave of the hand, Royal style, is given and the bottle is ceremoniously opened for your enjoyment.
It's hard to say which beer is the best but on a hot, humid, Bombay day the best beer more often than not, is the cool beer that's in your hand.

The Indian Harley-Davidson?

Enfield Thunderbird....
Yeah not the traditional Bullet but it does the job.
A cracking 350cc leaves the rickshaws for dead..
Beardsly stop laughing....
It's a dry time runner because when the monsoons hit the roads turn to ice and the steel manhole covers will surely add to the excitement.
Mum we're OK, just had the main oil line and a cracked wheel mount replaced.
It's not alot of fun in the Mumbai traffic, lots of stop start 1st to 2nd gear and I've had my foot run over once already. We love it though, it's great to have a little freedom and hope to have many escapes from Mumbai on the beast that is the Thunderbird...

Our Neighbours

Check it out folks, this is the map of our "Ward", the voting hub of Ward 63, stretching 1600 x 850m, is home to over 50,000 registered people, and we're not one of them.
With the change in India's wealth the property market has gone crazy. Every ramshackle house or as they're called here, bungalows, are being pushed over with a smash of a feather and a 6 to 10 story building is being built with 3/4 bed apartments sold for about AUD $850,000. Unfortunately there are strict ownership laws as the rental return is over AUD $7000 per month. Crazy but there is wealth in this country!!
The rich are the best at avoiding tax. Cash is KING here!!
The new middle class brought about but the IT and call centre trade are the new tax class for the government. Finally they have tax base to provide from but at the same time the channels of corruption grow deeper with the booming tax benefit.

bits n pieces

We took the bike for a ride the other day a few miles north to Versova in an attempt to find a ferry to cross a river mouth to a more open area of Mumbai on the coast.. Versova is a beach village which faces the Arabian Sea and is home to a major Mumbai fishing community.
After about 30 minutes in traffic and my brain starting to boil in the helmet as we rode through the village, more like a slum really with make shift huts on the coast road. Now those who remember one of our first blogs last year will remember a series of self portraits from a night out, one of which was "stinky fish face". Now the fishing folk reckon it's a good idea to dry the bombil fish on stilts and on the pavement in preparation for the local meal, Bombay Duck. The stench from this process was horrific and it seemed like the smell was just circulating inside the helmet. I now understood why I was the only one with a helmet, it seemed the risk of head injury was much less that actually being ill in your helmet..
The "fish" in the picture is Bombay duck (Marathi: bombil). Despite it's name it's a lizardfish which is native to the waters between Mumbai and Kutch in the Arabian Sea, and a small number are also found in the Bay of Bengal. The fish is often dried and salted before it is consumed.
Fish Bombil fry (Bombay Duck)
Ingredients:
2 to 3 Bombil Fish
2 tbsp rice flour
1 tbsp rava
3 tbsp oil
Seasoning:
1 tsp red chilly powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp oil Salt to taste
Method: Cut the Bombil fish in to 1 inch long pieces. Take fish pieces and apply turmeric powder, red chilly powder and salt, marinate it for 15 to 20 minutes. Take all flour, mix them and roll these pieces into it and shallow fry them. serve hot.

This pic was the end of an ever narrowing road through the Versova village. The road (about 3m wide with open drainage and sewer trenches) slowly turned into a walking path which was the location of local well where a few of the locals were doing their best to cool down with a fresh bucket of well water.
It was at this point we decided to meander our way out of the village being sure to avoid the fishing village and head back to Juhu.
There aren't many ways to escape the heat here. A cold shower is a warm one as the water from the tap is from the tanks on baking the roof. I was standing in the shade of a tree just yesterday hoping for respite from the midday heat but the reflective heat from the pavement made sure I sweat where I stood. The one good thing was that when I got back on the bike my shirt was cooled by the passing air.

The Sun n Sand is now our refuge from the heat. This quaint little hotel has a pool and we are now members. The chlorine stings and it can be crowded at times but our membership means that we can escape the crowds of Mumbai for an hour and enjoy the Aussie tradition of life by the beach. Alright.. not quite the Aussie tradition but the beach is there as seen in the pic, and the water we swim isn't the local sewerage treatment plant... Remember the guy praying on the beach... oh yeah...


I'm sure we've said it before, within a very small radius, less than a kilometer, in this city the landscape of human existence can change from wealth to extreme poverty and back again. We are so fortunate to be able to live in the madness that is Mumbai which challenges our reality, our compassion all the while educating us and serving daily reminders of what life on this earth is. If you believe in reincarnation , this is an amazing place to see it in action.