Chennai Engrish

Youngmen Tailorss... (Why the extra 's', no one knows)



Oh my...



HELL YES. DONUTS AND HOTDOGS!


I do not trust "mexican cuisine" in chennai especially with a name like giorgio.



If you haven't yet seen the site www.engrish.com then I suggest you take a look at it.

Here are some funny pics from around the Besant Nagar neighborhood of Chennai.

Indian Methodology Part 1: Alcohol

There is an enormous social stigma against alcohol here! In front of every bar there is a placard that says

"Liquor destroys family, life, society" or something like that. I'll get a picture soon and post it. I haven't been taking my camera to bars since I'm solely focused on getting a damn beer.

Anyway, beer is sold at American prices, can only be purchased in "Wine Shops" where they don't sell wine, just beer and liquor. At bars, which can only be operated inside hotels, the beer selection is something like this:
a) Crappy Indian Beer
b) Crappy Indian Beer with more alcohol.

Well, guess which one I drink?...

In any case, I was talking with several Indians about this, and the biggest problem is that Indians (especially southerners) don't distinguish between one drink and alcoholism. Funny enough, tobacco and marijuana are not really problems here. Indians will claim to you that no one smokes marijuana (or as they say, "marriage you wanna" or "mary edge wanna") but that's a total load. I smell easily 10 times a day on the street. I think part of it is that the short term effects of a pack of cigarettes a day are not seen much. But the short term effects of getting drunk evoke ideas of husbands beating wives, fighting, belligerence and all manner of socially unacceptable behaviors. However, one beer a day with dinner, or one glass of wine a day with dinner (much in the style of western europe) doesn't lead to alcoholism or fighting (accept those persons who are assholes anyway). Indians just don't see it that way.

The idea that I PRODUCE MY OWN BEER is completely fascinating to Indians here. I was asked if I'd give a short lecture on how to make it. Actually, now that I'm here with my yeast I think I can make Apple Cider. Apples are really cheap, something like 10 Rs. per Kilo. All I need now are the following items
1) A peeler
2) A corer
3) A way to release CO2
4) Sanitizer (bleach will do is I can get boiling water)
5) Boiling water

I think I'm on the way to making booze here. Forget this bar nonsense. I can just use screw top bottles (plastic) and make still cider. If I make it weak strength (like 7% as opposed to the 14.5 I made a while back) I'll be swimming in delights of alcohol in about 6 weeks.

This brought up some interesting questions with my Indian pals. "In America is it ok to come to work with beer on the breath?" I said, not exactly, but drinking time is 5 o'clock. I was asked, "How can you get from work to bar so fast?" "Easy" I said it's downstairs and across the street from your workplace. By 5:05 you can have a cold beer in front of you. God Bless America, or rather, The many many gods of the hindu pantheon bless america!

In any case, my drinking habits are quite unacceptable to those here in northeast TN. But back home in northeast TN, they are ok. I tried also explaining what moonshine is, and how in Philadelphia every bar that's even worth going to has a minimum of 30 beers to choose from. Even the crappiest bar I went to there has 12 beers available.

I also tried to explain what hops are and how disappointing not having them in my beer is. Ah, well, I'll have to figure out someone who has blackmarket connections, and pay the baksheeh to get my IPA in India. Seriously. IPA should be available everywhere in the whole damn country. It was developed for this country! AH!

Well, cider and "alcoholism" here I come. Apparently, to Indian standards, my mind has already been adversely affected...

I need to go down to Pondicherry. It's a former French colony, basically known for selling cheap booze with no tax, and having awesome beaches, and good french food...

I'll keep you all updated on the search for India Pale Ale in India.

Rainy Season

Well my first weekend got completely rained out. I still haven't had a dosa and I still don't have a good map of Chennai. I don't have a phone and I can't find a good place to change money. Rather, it's difficult to get to one of my banks to do so. The commission is a huge fee.

That being said, I finally reached the bay of bengal and touched the waters. It was rainy and getting dark out so I only touched it. I'm still so disoriented here, because there are no street signs. Furthermore there are so many side street that are really alleys and I don't think they're actually listed on a map. So I can't even pick out where I live on a map yet...

All things being held equal, since yesterday was so rainy and crappy I came to the office to catch the college football scores and what not. I thought that I could watch the replay of my yellowjackets stomping Duke, but alas, another blow to my adjustment.
I can't watch espn360 here because they don't' broadcast outside the USA. Anyway, it was still raining when lunchtime rolled around so I ate here at the canteen again. The canteen makes my stomach churn just a little. It's in no safer cleaner than a street vendor and it's three meals of curry a day. I am lucky to have gotten over my aversion to curry. In fact I quite like it for a day or two. Six straight days and I'm not liking it so much now.

I met up with another postdoc at lunch. He's been around India and did his undergraduate education here in Chennai, as well as his PhD in France. So he knows this area and enjoys drinking (at least a little). So we went to a bar, and I got the Vorion 6000 (the stong beer). It makes me a little sad that strong beer here is not that strong and has no hops. Maybe I should work on growing a hop trellis while here. It's a little too hot, but I have a long growing season. In any case, this other postdoc is an adventurer. He's originally from New Delhi and says he's like to show me his home, so I think eventually I'll get to see Delhi. Apparently it's quite a bit more liberal than here, but this doesn't shock me.

A quick rundown of yesterday's activities: Rain, breakfast, more rain, lunch, more rain. Yeshu takes me around what I think is Indira Nagar neighborhood of chennai. I see the beach eat some decent food, have a decent beer, we stop in to a youth hostel to watch a Karnatik dance performance performed by some school children. It is now getting to be the cultural music season. These performances are happening all the time.

So yesterday wasn't a complete wash.

Getting Run Over for the First Time

Remember that I said one of the first things to know about Indians is that they don’t respect your personal space? Well I hadn’t had to deal with it so much. But Saturday night I went out walking trying to see the tomb of Saint Thomas. Somehow I got lead astray and didn’t make it to the tomb itself. I ended up in a neighborhood called Santhome. It had been raining on and off all day Saturday so I decided I’d turn back toward my own neighborhood as I was on foot. I was on Greenways Road which is an intensely busy road from about two blocks away from me until it ends (I have a video of this, but am having trouble uploading it to this blog, will work on that).

Crossing the street therefore is a tricky undertaking. In fact I’d be willing to wager I could make money just teaching it to foreigners here. The secret is basically go, and BELIEVE that no one will hit you. Well, I got lazy. I got run over by some jackass street vendor who was trying to make a lefthand turn into the rightside lane out of busy traffic. I was already walking and then I was abruptly stopped by running into the back of this guy’s cart. He flashed me a dirty look, but realized that I’m over a foot taller than he and so he just road on.

At that point it started raining hard and I was about half a mile from the apartment. I went and bought a snack from a sweets shop (not a sweat shop, they don’t show those to foreigners) and then found some street vendor making chicken biryani. When they realized I knew some Tamil they opened way up and were so happy to see me. At first, like usual they thought I was just some tourist staying at the nearby hotel and didn’t know anything. What I know it that this guy’s biryani isn’t that good. But I only paid 60 Rs for a chicken leg and chicken biryani, so I’m not feeling like I got ripped off. All told I spent 66Rs on food. When’s the last time I had dinner that I paid for in full for $1.30? I’d venture to say not recently.

After that I went home and just stayed in. Crappy Saturday night.

A quick lesson on tidyness

I think this really speaks to the India I've seen so far. Here is a "trashcan."





If you can't read it, it says surrounding clean and tidy.

Also, while I write this, one of the cleaning staff boys is watching me type this. It's a terribly amusing scene. He can read some English, but no Tamil as he is a native Telugu speaker. I spent zero time learning any Telugu, so we're having a hard time communicating. I guess I'll go learn how to read and write Telugu this coming week. I also apparently need to learn Bengali because of all the Bengalis in the department...

Enjoy the trash!

First Friday Evening Outing in Chennai

At the institute currently there is a visiting grad student from Brandeis. I had little trouble convincing him that we should go check out Chennai's central district on friday evening. It was surely an experience, as is everything to me right now. I had three objectives in last night's activitis.

1) GET BEER
2) Get a dosa
3) Get a good map of Chennai

1) SUCCESS! 2) failed 3) failed.

I'm terribly sad to say that the only available beer in chennai is kingfisher. This will be a rough rough year.
So here's how last night went:

I bought a quarterly railway pass for 295 Rs. In case you're playing along at home that's just over $6. So I can ride the train in the southern half of the city for the next three months. We found a station called chepauk where we decided we'd launch on our adventure. First though we were at Indira Nagar (where the institute is) then we went to Greenways Road (where I "live") to grab a few things. I sort of see why the train pass is only 295 Rs... Currently my favorite thing in India is riding the train and standing on the edge with the doors open. You can see everything. Like I'd mentioned before, the slums basically exist where there are big buildings, and all the railway stations count as big buildings. The stench hovering from just below is horrible. There is a river full of black polluted water with its banks consisting of a land fill that looked as if it exploded and landed all over poor people. The huts are usually made of brick with sheet metal and dried palm leaves as roofs. It was an amazing site to see as the sun went down. Until you can sense it pictures just won't do. The thing that really gets to me is that the people seem content. I saw a boy with a balloon and he was happy. Just further along a hut had been mostly knocked over and the residents were sitting outside and doing some activity which resembled playing cards while others were washing clothes. I can't imagine how terrible it would be for ME to live in those slums, but I haven't grown up around it. In a way I was glad to see them. It made this whole place seem real and authentic. There is starvation, misery, poverty, happiness, laughter, garbage, and beautiful clothing on worn out people. Most of humanity was captured for me in those fleeting moments of hovering directly above the world's most wretched.

After the train experience (which I truly did enjoy, and my traveling buddy did not so much) we jumped off right next to the Madras cricket club. I got giddy like a little kid. I know for sure when IPL (Indian Premier League) starts back up again I'm going to go watch my favorite team (The Chennai SuperKings) kick ass and take names. We found a major road and the traffic was crazy. I've been to Beirut, Damascus, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and NONE OF THEM have traffic anything like this. Danger Danger! Probably the riskiest thing here is walking along the roads. I'm no longer worried about malaria! I almost got taken out by a rogue scooter going to wrong way down a narrow alley. While we were walking along the main road, I saw said alley and decided it would be a good idea to walk down through there. If it weren't for the fact that we look SO DAMN FOREIGN it wouldn't have been a problem. I was quite excited to be there. Fresh food smells everywhere, fine clothing stores, cell phone stores, etc. Busy busy busy! It was a bit overwhelming for my friend and me so we got back onto the main road looking for the Taj Hotel on Mount Road. We saw a sign saying

BAR
"Beer Drop

ALL A MEN NEEDS"

At that moment I was pissed off that I forgot my camera. Stupid me! In any case we thought that deserved a stop in. We somehow ended up in a different bar around the corner called the Submarine Bar. I wondered if they were trying to make a reference to a "dive bar" but clearly they weren't. I'm learning very quickly that my American sense of humor is not understood here, not even a little bit. We went down there and found a strange type of bar. No women anywhere. Not a single one. Not a bar maid, not a bar wench, not a customer at all. Also, it's a dance club. But not a gay one. Homosexuality by the way is not even heard of here. It is extremely hush hush and that basically come from the old school conservative Tamil values of southern India.
So, we're at a bar, no women, and a DJ. We order two King Fishers (super strong) for 150Rs each. They were 650 ml. I think it's an 8% beer (so they say, but it didn't feel like 8%). Not a terrible price. Then we ordered some pagodas just to take the edge of hunger off. We were the only non Indians in there so the bar staff was quite hostile towards us. However, once I said a couple of key phrases in Tamil, we got super stupendous service! I also learned another nifty trick...
No one here speaks any arabic, none, nadda, nothing. They all have preconceived notions of Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, but know NOTHING ABOUT LEBANESE. So I just tell them I'm from Beirut. They have no idea, and they don't act quite so hostile to me then. Anyway, our bill came to 349Rs. We left 400Rs. They thought that was awesome. $4 each for some big "strong" beers and pretty good fried food and a couple of laughs at the foreigners trying to speak Tamil...

We left and eventually found our way to the Taj Hotel by asking about 30 different people with conflicting info. I discovered if I asked in this way "Eenga irrukuh Taj hoteel" with a funny accent, I got better responses. That literally is "where is taj hotel." We went there as it's supposed to be an expat bar. WRONG! When we got there there were two aussies finishing their beverages and then leaving. Then the wave of Indians started coming. All Indians, no women again, another DJ. Actually this time there were about 6 women or so all on the arms of their very protective looking boyfriends. The most interesting thing we saw was our pair of waitrons. One from Nepal, one from Tibet. That was all that was interesting about them...

So We left about $6 lighter. Much more expensive beers. Then we took an autorickshaw down to the Park Hotel. This is supposed to be THE expat bar in Chennai. This was getting CLOSE to an acceptable place except the terrible DJ, the WAY overpriced shit beer, and the bartender who tried to steal my credit card. I ordered a couple beers, closed the tab and I got back the receipts without the card. I said "where's the card?" The bartender said "oops" and reached to his back pocket hand me my card... What the hell was that. I should punched him in the junk for that maneuver. We decided to step outside onto the patio to get away from the loud crappy music. While drinking our overpriced Kingfishers we decided to practice our bobble head motions and watch the people there. I finally saw a few things I'd been waiting to see in India.
a) a person taller than me (just by a hair, but still counts)
b) good looking women (not stupendous, not up to par with anywhere in the states, but nice enough looking)
c) a bar open past midnight. Technically everything in Chennai closes at 12, but we staed until 12:30 just to see how long the party would go. Also we thought we might have a shot at getting invited to the after parties. WRONG! The male:female ratio was still about 2:1 even at the happening place. Also, there were not so many expats hanging out there. It was a completely packed bar, and probably only 20 expats showed up the whole time we were there. Anyway, as the trains stop running at 9:50 PM we had to take another autorickshaw. For now we have to deal with paying double. Eventually I'll be able to work that down to 1.25 actual cost by learning some Tamil. The auto drivers hate foreigners. Rather, they love foreigners, because we have money...

So that was my first friday experience. I think I'm going to Pondicherry on the weekends from now on...

Fist Food Adventure

I found my first exotic foods at a fruit cart vendor here in Raja Annamalai Puram where the apartment is. I stopped at an ATM, desparate for some cash and immediately went to buy something. I bought these things, which are supposedly called “custard apples.” I tried one this morning. Very delicious! It tastes like and apple with a custard texture. I guess that's why the name. The interesting thing is that I tried to eat a second one which wasn't very ripe. I accidentally bit into into the peel. It tasted like black pepper. I kid you not, black pepper. This weekend should be interesting. If I have any internet access I'll post more.