Crowning Glory

On Sunday, Raghu and I decided to go out for dinner since it has been a while since we did that. It was kind of my turn to foot the bill and so Raghu generously opted for dining at Residency Towers.

I agreed and asked him to book the table. Just before I was about to start, I got a confirmation message from him that said that the table was booked, but that they don't have any seats on the outside.

Since I was under the impression that we were going to the buffet restaurant called Main Street, I was quite perplexed reading that message. So I called him to clarify and that's when I found out that the great one had booked a table in the Crown Restaurant in Residency Towers.

For those of you who haven't gone there, please be advised that it is probably one of those fancy dining spots in the city. Really up-market setup, mostly up-market crowd and hence very EXPENSIVE.

Raghu's defence was that since it was my treat he was not bothered about the expenses and simply opted for this. And of course, he blamed me for not being clear about the venue.

Anyways, we decided to go ahead with the plan. After quite a lot of "Take Diversion" boards on the route from his house to the restaurant, we reached the venue on time. The maître d' showed us to our table and when we went through the menu card, we were reminded yet again about how up-market this place was!

We had a very light dinner and yet, the bill amount was a whopping Rs.1700. For 3 people! Though we had agreed to go dutch, this was still quite high. I realised that the amount was high enough to warrant an exclusion from the credit card statement (since that is very much in the purview of my accountant a.k.a my father) and so, I opted to pay cash.

While the ambiance at the restaurant is excellent, I was not too happy with the food and service. Don't get me wrong, the food was good. Just that, it wasn't worth the price tag it came with. And the service - again no complaints that they didn't treat us badly or anything like that. Just that the policy seemed to encourage a very laid-back atmosphere, but it was bordering the realm of "kitchen closed"!

Anyways, the crowning glory for Sunday evening was a query from my mother on Monday morning. She asked "What made you guys go there? Did you get engaged or did he win a Rs.2 Crore business deal?". THE END!!!

Hectic weekend

This weekend - Oct 27-28 - has been quite a hectic one for me.

On Saturday, I had to go to a resort near Mahabalipuram for an official project party. I had a lot of fun there, especially playing cricket.

In the evening, I went out to dinner with Raghu, Madhu and Nilu. Was meeting Nilu after almost 4-6 weeks I think.

We had a pretty good dinner at Wang's Kitchen in Adyar. Nilu and Raghu conspired to make this my birthday treat in advance. While booking the table (and occupying it first, buy virtue of arriving a few minutes earlier than us), Nilu had apparently told the staff there that he would be joined by a birthday boy and asked them to do something special.

So I was surprised when a place of salad was brought to the table. There was a carved capsicum in the middle and inside it was a small candle. I humored these guys by blowing out the candle. One of waiters had even come to enquire about who the birthday person was and after being pointed in my direction, he even shook hands with me!!!

Anyways, dinner was good, though we couldn't finish most of it. They did screw up our order of fried ice-cream. I used my negotiation skill and had one of the extra items on our order canceled out.

We had ice-cream at Arun's Unlimited in R.A.Puram. It was nearly 11 when I returned.

On Sunday, there was a small hiranya shraardham at home for my father's mother. In the afternoon, I went to Raghu's place and dragged him along to buy a watch for me. You see, my mother is gifting me a watch for my birthday and sanctioned an amount of 3k towards this.

So, I went with Raghu to Landmark at City Center. Got a Casio Edifice watch costing me 3.5K post discount.

Then, there was a dinner tonight, hosted by my colleague Rajkumar. Ganesh, Raji and Vidya had come too. The dinner was at Creame Center. The place is really good. Great ambiance. Good crowd too. However, I wont give them good marks for their Mexican dishes. It failed on all parameters - taste, quantity and price. But it was a fun evening.

After such eating binges, it comes as no surprise as to how I've managed to put on 6 kilos over the last one year and how I've increased my trouser size by 1 (pre-eating).

Rain and traffic and a compensatory working day

This week's been quite hectic. Mainly coz of traffic.

Its the annual feature I guess. It rains. Roads get damaged. HUGE craters appear all of a sudden, making you wonder if any meteorite landed there. Naturally, with the next spell, all these craters and their smaller cousins - the potholes - get filled up and hamper traffic flow.

So a normal journey from office, that used to take an hour and 30 minutes, now takes a minimum of 45 minutes more.

The funny things is that, the choke point varies every day. One day it was Chrompet. Another day it was the Airport. Next time it was the Kathipara Junction. The area between the Airport and Kathipara was clogged once. Halda junction took the honors another day. Not to be left out, the stretch between Madhya Kailash and Anna University showed its power by stopping traffic on the surface road and also on the flyover.

Its quite bad to travel by bus in this mess. Thankfully, I now leave by the 6.30 services and so I dont have to share my seat with anyone. Otherwise, I will go mad during 'jam' times.

Only yesterday evening, I had the usual 1.5hr journey. I am guessing that was because the rain has stopped for a couple of days and also because it was a Saturday and so no routine peak-hour traffic.

Yes, my office was working yesterday to compensate for the public holiday we were given for the Tamil Nadu Municipal Elections. But again, the crowd was less in the office, coz some projects still had to come that day and few others made a strategic move to come in last Saturday itself. That was a good strategic move because, since its not an official working day, the bus services are limited and that means less time in the office. I however didnt opt for that option, though in all honesty, that strategy didnt strike me till 2 days back. By which time, I guess it was late.

So basically I have just this one day to recharge myself. The sun also seems to be out. So hopefully I can do some mall visit and also finish up the pending treat to Superthumby and Neeluking.