Supper one night
Last night, the bunch of us – Adrian, Clara, John and a few of his colleagues – went down to Little India for a dim sum supper which, when you think about it, is like going to a fish monger and asking for a rack of lamb. People are going to think you are mad.
The place was along Desker (hur hur) Road and, to get to it, we had to drive heroically through throngs of people whose sole purpose in life it was to get run over. Actually, John was doing the driving. I was doing the trying-to-be-inconspicuous-in-the-back thing. I also politely requested that he lock the doors.
Digression: As my sister has informed me, the rules of traffic in Little India involve a hierarchy of sorts. In all instances, the cow comes first. If you hit a cow in Little India, the only thing that will save you from the angry mob is if you actually turned into a cow yourself. If, for some reason, you fail to sprout an udder, chances are that you will find yourself skinny dipping in an exotic Indian dish called soup tulang (if you don’t know what that is, you can find out here at this excellent food blog).
Naturally, after the cow comes the bicycle. Often with men in dhotis perched on them, these are regularly seen swerving into oncoming traffic in what can only be described as a charmingly carefree manner. Quite why they do this is unclear but it is speculated to be related to allowing one’s ding-dings to hang free for too long.
Last in line, and particularly hard to avoid hitting, is the human being. In this part of the country, walking in a straight line is unheard of and pushing your pal jocularly into the path of a speeding automobile is seen as a suitable way of reinforcing your friendship. If he survives, he can then further strengthen this budding relationship by trying to convert you into a speed bump. As is often depicted in Bollywood movies, they build strong bonds here. End of digression.
So anyway, we did finally find the place and tucked into some, well, mediocre dim sum. Normally, when you are sitting in a dingy back alley with your table right beside a big blue box labelled “HIGHLY FLAMMABLE”, you’d expect the quality of food to be at least as high as the chances of you dying a fiery death. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite worth the risk.
At least the conversation was interesting. Seems that our beloved SAF has replaced the old MILES system with something called TES. I’ve forgotten what it means but apparently it works quite well except that you have an antenna sticking out of your helmet which has the effect of turning any valiant NS man into nothing more than a gun-toting teletubby.
Actually, other than that, and some discussion on this wonderful Even Stepvhen clip (“First off, it’s not my logic, Steve, it’s God’s logic as written in the Bible, every word of which is true. And we know that every word is true because the Bible says that the Bible is true.”), I can’t remember what the hell else we talked about.
Still, I returned home in a rather buoyant mood and proceeded to not fall asleep. I think I’ll do that now.
The place was along Desker (hur hur) Road and, to get to it, we had to drive heroically through throngs of people whose sole purpose in life it was to get run over. Actually, John was doing the driving. I was doing the trying-to-be-inconspicuous-in-the-back thing. I also politely requested that he lock the doors.
Digression: As my sister has informed me, the rules of traffic in Little India involve a hierarchy of sorts. In all instances, the cow comes first. If you hit a cow in Little India, the only thing that will save you from the angry mob is if you actually turned into a cow yourself. If, for some reason, you fail to sprout an udder, chances are that you will find yourself skinny dipping in an exotic Indian dish called soup tulang (if you don’t know what that is, you can find out here at this excellent food blog).
Naturally, after the cow comes the bicycle. Often with men in dhotis perched on them, these are regularly seen swerving into oncoming traffic in what can only be described as a charmingly carefree manner. Quite why they do this is unclear but it is speculated to be related to allowing one’s ding-dings to hang free for too long.
Last in line, and particularly hard to avoid hitting, is the human being. In this part of the country, walking in a straight line is unheard of and pushing your pal jocularly into the path of a speeding automobile is seen as a suitable way of reinforcing your friendship. If he survives, he can then further strengthen this budding relationship by trying to convert you into a speed bump. As is often depicted in Bollywood movies, they build strong bonds here. End of digression.
So anyway, we did finally find the place and tucked into some, well, mediocre dim sum. Normally, when you are sitting in a dingy back alley with your table right beside a big blue box labelled “HIGHLY FLAMMABLE”, you’d expect the quality of food to be at least as high as the chances of you dying a fiery death. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite worth the risk.
At least the conversation was interesting. Seems that our beloved SAF has replaced the old MILES system with something called TES. I’ve forgotten what it means but apparently it works quite well except that you have an antenna sticking out of your helmet which has the effect of turning any valiant NS man into nothing more than a gun-toting teletubby.
Actually, other than that, and some discussion on this wonderful Even Stepvhen clip (“First off, it’s not my logic, Steve, it’s God’s logic as written in the Bible, every word of which is true. And we know that every word is true because the Bible says that the Bible is true.”), I can’t remember what the hell else we talked about.
Still, I returned home in a rather buoyant mood and proceeded to not fall asleep. I think I’ll do that now.
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