Meeting up with celebritwit Shashi Tharoor @shashitharoor

Yeah, I'm a twitterer, a tweeter.  I'm a twit.  I tweet.¹ My friends who don't (yet) tweet or don't understand the whole thing can just deal with it.

I signed up for twitter a while back, checked in from time to time, and didn't find it compelling.  As a result I didn't use twitter for a long time, but then it seemed to reach some sort of critical mass and became interesting to me.  (There are many parallels with Google Wave; Wave most definitely isn't interesting right now.)

Anyway, on twitter I can categorize the people I interact with as a group of Bangaloreans, a group of Sinophiles, some cyclists and a group of infosec-related folks.  These are the ones I "hang" with.

Now take twitter to India.  In India, there is this amazing cult of celebrity.  Moreso than even the US, people here dig their superstars.  Unlike the US, Indians focus their attention.  At any one time, there is really only a handful of true superstars who command the vast majority of the attention. 

Enter Shashi Tharoor.  Look him up in wikipedia if you need to. 

He recently made news for tweeting a joke about riding "cattle class" on an airplane.  When translated into India's dozens of official languages, this side-comment in English took the form of a serious insult to some folks who didn't get the translation just right.  Remember this is a country where the cow is revered and worshiped (by Hindus anyway).

Anyway, Shashi Tharoor is one of India's first famous tweeters.  The fact that he's also in a serious governmental position (minister for external affairs, sort of like the US Secretary of State or the British Foreign Secretary) makes his tweeting quite interesting.  He talks about all the other heads of state he meets, the places he's seen, and sometimes comments on local Indian politics as well.

He agreed recently to a "tweetup" -- essentially a meeting of twitter users. 



I was really pleasantly surprised to find the event

• well-behaved
• well-organized
• comfortable
• pleasant

It was so motivating to spend about 90 minutes with this "superstar" of Indian politics. It was like a book reading or a Q/A session -- well done.


So "chapeau" to my buddy @dhempe (known to most as Hrish Thota) for the idea and the organization.


1) Side note rant: These words "twitter", "tweet", "tweetup", etc. are so painful for me to type.  It's almost as bad as "u", "ur", and the bane of Indian IT workers "gud" & "wud". I hate SMS slang,
refuse to use it and think that anyone who does use it is a complete
bloody moron.  Really, dear readers, if you use the word "gud" or "wud", the educated "rest of the world" sees you as a complete idiot. Tweet-words, however, somehow have become "normal".

Beer in Bangalore revisited 2009

Some time ago, I blogged about the beer situation in Bangalore, which was at that time pitiful.

It's changed quite a bit.  In 2005, your typical Restaurant menu looked like this:

• Kingfisher 650ml 100rs.

If they listed Fosters on the menu, it was out of stock, guaranteed.

In 2007, you had

• Kingfisher 650ml 150 rupees
  
• Fosters 650ml 160 rupees
• Haywards Black 650ml 180 rupees

In the year of 2009, you now find:

• Kingfisher 330ml 150 rupees
• Fosters 330ml 200 rupees
• Budweiser 650ml 250 rupees
• Heineken 330ml 275 rupees

And if you go to a fancy 5-star kind of place, you'll see:

• Chimay 330ml 350 rupees

So, the selection has gotten a bit broader, but the prices have gone through the roof.  Bottles have gotten smaller too. 

The good news is that if you go to a high-end liquor store here, you'll find more: Chimay, Achel, St. Feuillien, Orval, even Arabier by the Dolle Brouwers!  It's isn't quite the Wildeman, but it's not too bad.  All these are about 210 rupees per bottle. Ridiculously expensive by local standards, but not bad comparing them to the insane prices in pubs in Europe nowadays. (I paid 6.90 euros (about 500 rupees) for a beer last month in Amsterdam.)

Bottom line, I'm not complaining as much as I used to.  ;-)  At least when I'm feeling rich I can get a good beer.  Before it didn't matter how much money you had, you couldn't buy a good beer in India.

Now I relax knowing that there is an Orval waiting in my fridge at home.  It waits for Friday.

Photos courtesy of spo0nman on flickr. and Phil Chambers on Flickr

Farm fresh Amaranth and other veggies in Bangalore

One of our neighbors owns a small farm about 45km away from here, and they go there on the weekends to keep tabs on it and do some harvesting.

Recently, they have begun sharing their harvest with us, and we are completely delighted with the results.

This weekend, we picked up the following:

1 pumpkin
1kg spinach
.5kg amaranth
eggs
1kg tomatoes
1kg okra
1kg guava (pink and red?)
a bottle of preserved star fruit
a bottle of passionfruit extract

Regarding the amaranth, we asked how to prepare it and they said to fry it in lots of oil until it's crisp. We've had fried spinach in Chinese restaurants here in Bangalore before and it can be very tasty, but we're not into frying things at home. I think it's a bad habit to get into. There is plenty of fried food outside, so why do it at home?

I searched and did not find many recipes for amaranth, but the one that interested us was this Sichuan one. Of course, our kids can't eat spicy Sichuan food, but this was just greens and garlic, so they dug it. We did too. The amaranth cooked down like spinach but retained more firmness, and more flavor. It reminded me a bit of ramps, but I sure hope it doesn't have the same effect as ramps.

Update: No extra "wind" as a result of the amaranth. Good news! If you're ever in West Virginia, however, beware the ramps.

Marathon completed

It's been a couple weeks since I did it, but I thought I'd brag a little bit here.  I finished a marathon.

It was my goal to just finish one before I die.  So about 6 months ago I paid the entry fee for the Amsterdam Marathon.  I had at that moment not been running at all, just cycling once or twice a week.

6 months of pretty serious training, and I did it.  I overtrained in the last 3 weeks (very stupidly) and my knees locked up with IT Band issues.  But, still I finished the entire 42.195km (26 miles). So, for that I'm proud of myself. 



image from Flickr..

Now I have to sign up for another marathon so I can finish one in what I feel is a "respectable" time.