manjesh in america

this post will probably be full of kannada references. in keeping with the situation. adhikay, kannada kalsbittu ba... (so, learn kannada...)

praveen and i showed up at the airport to pick up manjy. for once, we were early. so we spent the time looking at travellers and wondering if it was manjy. then we spent some time wandering the terminal looking for him. finally he showed up, and went straight to the phone booth. yeah. we were watching him go by and laughing the whole time. i wanted to take a photo, but praveen kept telling me i'd get arrested.
manjesh at the airport
manjy looks the same, but like most of us, men and women..., he's got himself a buddha belly.
so we drove him over to the hotel where he was staying.
manjesh and praveen at homestead inn
that whole hotel seemed to be populated by indians. after checking in, the first we noticed was the king size bed. yes, of course i asked him to pose on it. he seemed strangely reluctant. i want to know what he associates with a kingsize bed. oh, did i mention that it was the only bed. and he had a roommate showing up later. you would have to ask manjy if he was cute...
well, after eating some really good "sweets" that manjy carried all the way from bangalore, we settled down to the serious business of unpacking. manjy ate some too. thanks, raghu and preetham. i heard raghu did all the actual buying and preetham was managing... this hotel had a kitchen, so off we went to buy enough food to see him through the next few days.
in the lobby, we met this nice indian girl. so we asked her where the nearest indian store was. she said "goh straiiigggghhhhttt, take a laeft, you will come to circle. there are some shops there." man, immediate flashback to bangalore. yes, she was kannadiga. no. no pictures of strange indian women here. we managed to let her know that we knew kannada too, by talking to her in kannada.("oudha, neev ella bangalore indha...") then we found out she really didnt know too much about the place. so we went off to explore. picked up some food and a knife from a chinese supermarket. got back and decided to start cooking. praveen was in charge of the whole curry operation. i sat around looking good. like i usually do. manjesh kept on talking about how he knew cooking. turns out american kitchens are not like indian kitchens. puntaaaa.... excuses, excuses. then we figure out he doesnt know how to cook rice either. hahaha. so now praveen tells him. 1 cup rice, 1 and a half cups water. while praveen and i cut up the stuff, and throw it in the pot, we hear noises about showing him how to cook. instead of paying attention, manjy is busy putting his nonstick frying pan together. the one that he got for free when he bought another one. then he showed us how you dont need to put oil in a nonstick pan when cooking eggs. after scraping off the resulting mess, we made some more eggs and settled down to eat dinner.
cooking eggs
praveen will give you the recipe for the curry if you want. it was chickpeas, tomato paste, onions(?), whatever spices manjy brought( the hero brought sambhar powder, rasam powder and chili powder. what is the world coming to when indians dont know their spices... we threw them all in) and coconut milk. i think.
did i mention that a girl who works with him dropped by to say hi. far be it from me to say more. other than say that he went up to her room first. and she told him to come over the next day and learn cooking.
our kitchen dada did send an email about how he was really busy, didnt he...