Friday in Mumbai

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Last night, Brian and Charlotte brought us to a really nice Indian restaurant. (Gajalee, if I remeber the name of the restaurant correctly). There were more waiters than customers so they were all hovering around us like eagles.

The restaurant's specialty might be seafood because when our orders were being taken, the waiters brought out the biggest crabs, pomfrets and prawns I have ever seen. Remember the "Lobster bigger than small girl" ad? Ok...not that big but the prawns were like 10 times bigger than those in Singapore. If my eyes were not fooling me, they were about the size of baby lobsters. They looked so swollen, like they were going to explode. Anyway, we didn't order those. We ordered hot and sour soup (choice of vegetarian or chicken soup), mixed vegetable curry, something called fish duck (it's actually fried fish, don't ask me about the name), and (guess what?)...CHICKEN tikka masala!

After dinner, we went to the supermarket to buy some breakfast. To prevent ourselves from dying either of high cholesterol from all the eggs or boredom from eating toast everyday. Back to the point. Entering the supermarket is a real hassle in India. Especially when we had our laptops with us. Bags are supposed to be left at a baggage counter. Of course, we will never leave our laptops with some security guard we didn't even trust so what we had to do was get the security guard at the baggage counter to write a ticket for us. On the ticket was our name and a description of the laptop bag. Then on showing the ticket to the other security guard at the door, could we go into the supermarket. Coming out is another hassle. After paying, the supermarket bag is sealed. When we are at the exit, we have to show the guard our ticket, our receipt and our shopping bags before we can leave the building.

When we enter a shopping mall, the laptop bags will be checked and given a sticker to say it has passed the security check. In fact, most shops have a security guard to prevent shoplifting or possibly bombing (i'm not sure).