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Airport Fun

On wednesday, I lugged my mountaineering backpack filled with clothes, shoes and assorted, boring stuff because I was planning to go to the airport straight from work. Of course, I had totally overlooked the fact that someone dressed in formals sporting a 3 1/2 feet tall mountaineering backpack looks like a complete retard in 49 states. In Utah, anyone who’s not a Mormon is a retard, so that statement becomes redundant.

As luck would have it, the DHS had raised the threat level to Orange. Which of course, meant that I just had to be pulled by the totally not-racist TSA (they don’t do racial profiling at all, they just are jerks to everybody) to go through a machine that would see if I had explosives in my undies. And while I am really tempted to discuss further on that topic, I want to keep this blog open to all age groups, so we shall ignore that statement for now.

While on the plane, I was reading a book called Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics by Max Planck. A surfer-dude from San Diego plonks next to me and the first thing he tells me is, “Dude, I do not mean stereotype, but why are all you Indians so good at Math and Physics?” Quite obviously, he has not seen Bollywood or Kollywood movies. The laws of mathematics and physics do not apply there.

Anyway, I landed in Virginia in one piece, my undies and all, and was picked up (man, I’m very punny today) by Lana in a dress.

Thanksgiving

Starting early morning the next day, Lana cooked a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with several vegetarian dishes for yours truly and an even more astounding array of pies - three pumpkin pies, an apple pie and a mixed berry pie. Not to mention other assorted goodies that basically meant that I had to climb at least four mountains in two days and save thirty different pretty lasses (all of whom happen to look like Lana, of course) from 40 different evil villains to make up for the calories gained.

Lana made up for it because she stood and cooked for nine hours, and I absolutely adored her Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle, minus the Gingerbread (which had eggs). Mucho yummo.

Anyway, the Indians gave thanks to one another and the others gave thanks to us while we drank beer and chilled out and ate pie. It was wonderful.

That done, we conked out for the day.

Black Friday with Mr. James CC Bond

Early next morning, I was quite unceremoniously dragged out of my bed at 5 AM to go do some Black Friday shopping. For those of you non-American readers, this is when the women of this country decide that waiting in a line real early the day after Thanksgiving that will get you awesome discounts is somehow normal and acceptable behaviour. They say that they are dragging you along to fend off cunning, old women from grabbing the same piece of clothing that they are after, but the truth is that they just want brag points: “Hah! I dragged my guy out of bed this early, bow before my awesome powers!”

Of course, to be fair, there was a woman who was totally mean and tried cutting our line (and her son/grandson tried — I am not making this up — hitting Delana’s ass). Obviously, a staredown later, she cowered in fear and I guffawed my totally wicked Dr. Evil laugh.

We rounded off the evening at the Olive Garden with Lana’s friend Ericka and had a wonderful time.

Once Delana was done proving her superior powers to her friends, we went to watch the new James Bond movie - Casino Royale. Now, I know that it is true to the books and that it is the first James Bond movie where he isn’t that awesome and all that, but honestly - it sucked. James Bond has character, elegance and grace. This one? Not so much. Apart from the romantic chick-flicky style and James Bond being totally puppy eyed and in love, this guy did not have an iota of charm. And Matrix-meets-Jackie-Chan style chase and struggles do not make it any more classy.

What are they going to do next? Make him look at you with wide, open eyes and blink like an innocent-eyed eight year girl and give him a pomeranian puppy? They could do that, too. I mean, if you are trying to make a chick-flick, at least go the whole way.

This poor, innocent pomeranian puppy needs James Bond to save it and take it to its kennel - is Bond up to the job?

And if you are wondering about the title of this section, CC stands for Cuddly Cute — because that’s all he was, to the women. Outside of that, it was absolute crap.

Pie Saturday with crappy Indian food

And on Saturday, we basically lazed around watching Stargate and Dr. Who (did I tell you that we were both geeks?). The good thing is that most of Lana’s friends and room-mates are also geeks, which made it awesome. Nothing beats discussing the physics behind Battlestar Galactica’s reentry into the atmosphere while watching O’Neill kick some Goa’uld’s ass while talking about how much cooler the Tardis and the USS Enterprise are and eating some delicious pie.

Oh, sorry. Geek mode.

Saturday evening, we headed out to this Indian restaurant called Nawab in Virginia Beach. Okay, now I am going to write another blog entry telling you in detail just how much Nawab sucks, but that is for later.

Right now, let me just tell you that nowhere in this world have I tasted such crappy Indian food - trust me, I have eaten crappy Indian food in places you’d not have guessed had Indian restaurants. But this beat the hell out of all those places.

For one, I was wondering why I was the only Indian in the whole restaurant. Secondly, it also turns out that this place was voted one of the best restaurants in Virginia Beach. Quite obviously, this place has been blacklisted by all the Indians who like Indian food, not Americanized whipped cream topped microwaved frozen junk with Indian names.

Take these cases, for instance. Lana loves Pakoras. So, we ordered Pakoras. What do we get? We get Bhaji. We asked for drinks and Lassi. And the guy does not show up with them for 20 minutes. We asked him where the hell it was. He asked us if we wanted it with the food. Sure, because we all drink Coke, Pepsi, Lassi and water after the food. And I ordered Raita, which never showed up. And of course, we love Kulfi. We ordered Kulfi — and what do we get? We get frozen milk. I kid you not — frozen milk, labelled as Kulfi.

So, just a piece of advice — if you are ever in Virginia Beach, stay the hell away from Nawab Indian restaurant. It sucks.

The Fountain Sunday

On Sunday, we went to watch Darren Aronofsky’s wonderful new movie, The Fountain.

I will just say this - it was one of the most wonderful and beautiful movies I have ever seen. Movies rarely move me, this was one that did. As always, Darren Aronofsky’s genius shone through. Half the movie, I was thinking just how wonderful a wallpaper a particular scene would make.

After the lousy Casino Royale misadventure, this one was fantastic.

And guys — take your lass with you. Nothing beats having her next to you, because you know she is going to be misty eyed, and you can use that as an opportunity to put your arms around her and go, “There, there. It’s just a movie.” Of course, if you need help with what follows next, you need help. Actually, considering that you are reading my blog and taking advice from a geek on women, you probably do need help. And considering that I just wrote this out on my blog, I probably need help too (more along the lines of need saving from the clutches of my lass, but I digress).

Later that night, we decide to start a tradition by putting up a Christmas tree. Have you ever tried putting up a tree in a house with several animals and people running around? The cat wants to climb the tree and the dog wants to chase the cat. Actually, I think the dog really really wants to pee on the tree skirt around the tree, but we never found out. Hey, don’t ask me. It’s a dog, how would I know what it wants or why it wants what it wants.

Now that I think of it, it is funny — the Fountain had trees in it all over the place, and we put up a Christmas Tree after watching it. I think it was the lass’s wicked plan.

And oh, we also got drunk drinking some cheap but delicious Peach Champagne that was wonderful.

Lousy Monday

On Monday, I woke up at 4 AM and went to the airport a little after 5 AM. Other than the fact that I absolutely consider it inhuman to be woken up before 10 AM in the morning (and that’s on a good day), it was also sucky that I was leaving and that there was a crap-tonne of fog. I had imagined the airport to be empty, but I guess there were a lot of people who considered flying out on Monday morning. Asshats. Can’t they all leave a few hours earlier and make my life a little less miserable? Jerks, like I said. Fortunately, the wonderful folks at TSA did not consider me worthwhile to be probed, so they left me all alone. Jerks. At least they could have made me feel important, but no. They had to leave me the hell alone. I was having a lousy morning. Couldn’t you tell?

And then, the flight gets delayed. After everyone had boarded, they told us that because of the fog, we were going to be delayed anywhere between 5 and 55 minutes. Guess which one it was? I think Russel Peters had it right. I think Indians are the result of God’s sense of humour. If God can mess with ONE Indian, he will do that just to piss him off. So, on top of feeling lousy and having the urge to kill the guy in front of me who had smelly shoes, I am hungry and in a delayed flight behind a desi with smelly shoes. Wonderful.

Anyway, I landed in Cincinnati and went straight to work with my backpack looking like a Mormon (i.e. a retard). Went back home, conked out at 7 PM and woke up this morning at 8:30 AM and have been having a not-so-bad Tuesday.

And now that I look back, I think I had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Except for Casino Royale and Nawab. Asshats. Just like Uzbekistan.

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Of the places that we visited, the first one was a wonderful French restaurant called Jeanro, located in downtown Cincinnati. They have some wonderful food, and their poached pear desserts are simply fabulous. Apparently, so are their pork chops, dipped in apple sauce. For the vegetarians, there is a fantastic vegetable platter that’s made with sauteed vegetables thinly layered with cheese. Their steamed green-beans sides are awesome, too.

The only sad/funny thing during this whole exercise was an old couple sitting right by us making out. While we were eating. You have no idea how disturbing that is. On the bright side, the waitress was awesome and she joined us in making fun of them — obviously, she gets enough in tips to not worry about some impolite old couple (what made it worse was the fact that the woman was French and was talking about her husband while making out with this random old dude). Delana found it funny because she could look away, I found it icky because I could not.

No, I assure you that we were not on a train.

The next fun place that we went out to eat at was an Italian restaurant called Prima Vista. The best part about Prima Vista is the view — the place provides you with a wonderful aerial view of Cincinnati, the Ohio River and the stadiums in downtown.

They have some good food, but what I loved the most about the place (other than the view) was this fun drink called Bellini, made out of Peach Schnapps and champagne. It was quite nice, and the only thing better than the drink was the view.

Apparently, something is very funny.
(someone called this picture Beauty & the Beast)

She elbowed me!

The idea of this picture is to make me look like a stud, but the truth is that I’m between the devil and the deep sea — my girlfriend and my best friend on either side. One is in the military and is totally awesome, and the other wins martial arts tournaments.

The other fun place that we ate out at was Morton’s Steakhouse, which has some of the best steak in the country. However, even if you are a vegetarian, they have some nice veggie stuff — their salads and steamed vegetable platter are quite delicious. Unfortunately, they did not have any good wine — we both usually prefer a good Riesling (or a good Chardonnay), but we found them to be too dry for either of our tastes at Morton’s. But their steak is apparently extremely delicious and very tasty (if you are into that kind of thing).

Now, the best part about Morton’s is their dessert. Lana loved their Crème Brûlée, while I thought that their raspberries and cream were the best I’ve ever had. Their creams have actual vanilla beans, which makes it particularly tasty and very smooth. Great salads, great steak and even better desserts.

And finally, on to the medieval times. The Ohio Renaissance Festival has been going on, and a bunch of us decided to go ahead and live it up. Rebecca and Delana dressed up for the occasion in some fancy clothes, which made them look awesome.

Karthik and Delana at the Renaissance Festival.

We went with a couple of kids that we’ve been trying to help through Habitat for Humanity and AJ and Shriram joined us at the festival. The festival was loads of fun; they had an entire village-like setting straight out of the medieval times. They also had a castle and lots of artists and artisans with their stuff.

There were weapons-makers with a lot of really cool weapons — axes, lances, swords of every kind you can imagine, shields, bows and arrows, chain mail, armour, helms and helmets, lances, truncheons and weapons whose names I cannot be bothered to remember now. And there were artists, jewellers, sculptors and all kinds of other artists and craftsmen.

Delana got some Mehndi done on her hand, which was extremely pretty. She also got herself a nice-looking tiara, that was really cool (and made her look totally gorgeous).

Mehndi on Delana’s hand.

I got to have some wonderful mead that was most definitely the best drink I’ve ever had in my life. And of course, Delana went ahead and got herself a Turkey leg and we had some tasty Apple dumplings (I know, mouth watering, isn’t it? You see, we have a deal — she has all the meat and I’ve all the vegetables, and we’re both happy! :)).

We also saw a really interesting jousting tournament, complete with folks dressed up as knights in armour. They rode horses and quite literally tried to throw off each other using lances — honestly, it was awesome to look at but scary to think of being subjected to.

Knight in armour on horse, with a lance for the jousting tournament.

Two knights at it for the jousting tournament.

We then stumbled upon some wonderful paintings by an artist called Lawrence A. Williams. We purchased some of his matted prints, one each of Arthur and Guinevere, one of a beautiful Mermaid and another of an armoured knight slaying a dragon. His work was so good that we ended up going online and ordering his rendering of Morgan Le Fey.

Arthur B&W by L.A. Williams.

Guinevere B&W by L.A. Williams.

Morgan Le Fey B&W by L.A. Williams.

The Calling by L.A. Williams.

The Black Knight L.A. Williams.

And finally, I got myself a couple of nice banners — one of a Griffin set on a red background with a green tail and another of a Welsh Dragon set on a maroon background.

They look quite delightful, and are presently adorning my living room and bedroom respectively.

Griffin Banner.

Dragon Banner.

At the end of it all, it was quite wonderful — and although I was quite sad to see the lass leave, we had a wonderful time! Now, on to my boring, drab life.

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