Month: October 2008

Worlds best Masala Dosa and Vada Sambar – CTR and Janata

My wife and I are proper foodies. We just love food – any food (anything vegetarian that is). The facilities/admin manager at my workplace knows that -since I am probably the only guy who goes and thanks him for the good free food we get 🙂 Anyways, he has been telling me of a couple of really old food joints in one of the core kannadiga-heartlands of Bangalore – Malleswaram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleshwara ). It is where True Bangalore lives. Beautiful, breezy, clean, no pollution. Nice. Anyways, getting back to food, He had mentioned two joints, each famous for different things.

The first was CTR – Central Tiffin Room, aka CTR. Apparently the name board alone has changed to Sree Sagar. Why do I say – apparently? Because the new name board is written fully in Kannada as well. So I would not have realized it either ways. My dear manager friend had given me spot-on directions, to reach the place, and even where to park (opposite side of the road – near the ground periphery – the cops ticket you if you park on the hotel road). But he had not mentioned how big/small it was. If you are going there for the first time, I am pretty sure, you will miss the hotel in the first go (like we did). But ask anyone, they will point you to the hole-in-the-wall entrance.


                                         You will defenitely miss it, if you do not know how to read Kannada.


                                            The worlds best butter masala dosa (benne masala dose).

Once the dosa had been gulped down, it was time to go to the second joint that my manager friend had recommended – Hotel Janata – famous for its Vada Sambar. You need to walk down to eigth cross for this (CTR is in 7th Cross). It is but a 10 minute walk. It is difficult to miss this hotel though. English name board and prominently displayed too.

                                                                              Hotel Janata

                                                             The worlds best vada sambar.

All in all, what started off as a ‘what-the-he**, let us just try these places today’ morning, became a wonderful morning spent on delectable kannadiga good.

*BURP*. I mean *AMEN*, I mean *Thathaasthu* :=)

More Friedman thoughts …

I cannot get enough of Friedman these days. I think it is probably because he seems to be echoing my thoughts exactly. Get a glimpse of his todays NYTimes OP-ED. 

Well, you say, “I don’t own any stocks. Let those greedy monsters on Wall Street suffer.” You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street’s new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

We’re all connected. As others have pointed out, you cant save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in a rowboat with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world really is flat. We’re all connected. Decoupling is pure fantasy.

 

Ok I agree, there was a little bit of marketing for his own book (Friedman wrote “The World is Flat”). But I think what he says above is apt for the current time. I still cannot believe that Congress rejected the bailout plan, when I think, that is probably the only way, the US economy could have floated (albeit on lifejackets, but to put to float atleast).

ROFL on his thought about the government. 

I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system – one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.

Source : NYTimes OP-ED – [link]