Advertisement
Published: January 13th 2010
Rich & Kisane
Still sober. Rich works with Rob and Kisane is Dan's partnerChristmas came and went in a flash and I thought that perhaps New Years Eve would too... assumption! When will I learn?!? Silly girl! It started off low key - as it does. We met a few people that Rob works with for drinks in one of the "swankier" pubs in the Defence Colony - love that word swanky, sounds like I've had a glass or two already. So by 'drinks' I mean the boys drank beer while us birds had some vinegar/wine/cough mixture crap ... sadly this was Inida's finest. After drinks we headed to one of the many Chinese restaurants in the market. The lads have taken to calling it "Mr Lawrences" although the sign outside says "Aka Saka". They explained that in their 'bachelor' days in Delhi, prior to the ladies joining them they used to frequent this place as lifting a pot or pan to cook a real meal was not a liklihood. Anyhoo, they managed to corner a poor, unsuspecting little waiter man of questionable Indian heritage, who happened to be named Lawrence. Now, in the Inidan culture your "goodname" is your chritian name and this is then generally preceeded by a "Mr". Thus, Rob is
Dan & Rob
Kinda sober... called Mr Rob ... see where I'm going with this? Sadly, us 'chics' are just "madame". Madame?!? Who calls anyone madame these days??????????? Not a fan of the title!
So we're at dinner at Mr Lawrences, very civilised - glad we booked because the 3 other occupied tables would have made the place VERY crowded - ha! Their menu, thankfully, offered Australian as well as Italian wine and not just the Inidan crap called Sula. Unsurprisingly we ordered their cheapest (the Australian by the way - ha) and naturally we were brought the Italian which was twice the price. Fortunately we only had 3/4 drinks in us and were able to recognise their cunningness, although I'm not entirely convined that they were in fact aware of this indiscrepency. Whats more, the corks were brittle and chipped, mmm - always a sign of a good vintage. Eventually they brought us another Indian local wine which wasn't too bad actually. That's the thing with the Indians, as soon as you ask for something, they automatically bring you the top of the range, most expensive item. One has to really, really negotiate (and at times do the 'walk away') in order to
Group shot
Trying to explain how the camera worked was fun ;-) get the mid-range and even bottom-range products ... cunning little curry munchers!
The dinner was yum, who doesn't love a little Chinese - food, that is! After supper and in the spirit of all things Indian we decided to crash the local sports club NYE party! (Well, 'crash' isn't exactly accurate since we did pay a few rups to spend those whole 90 minutes in there.)
Once inside we realised that yet again we were the only 4 white faces in the joint - yip, it's getting old now. From that point on the evening consisted of dancing to the Hindi music pumping from the precariously wired speakers, trying to convey our drinks order to the barman, being photgraphed by every Indian in the place - felt like to bloody paparazzi! I will be gracing MANY mantles across New Delhi!
At the strike of midnight loud and slightly slurry cheers of "Happy New Year and all and all" were heard across the converted hall. Then just as suddenly the lights flicked on and we were pretty much booted out of the joint but not before being invited for a dlink, yes a "dlink" by one of the
Doorman
This is an actual job! Each restaurant has a chap standing out front just itching to open and close that door! super friendly, mostly inebriated South Koeran paparazzi contingent and again, we accepted! "Why the hell not" was our thinking? Not too unsual you may think but let me just clarify the fact that he could not really speak English and I think we all know that Rob and I DO NOT speak any Korean but never-the-less, the language of booze was our only common denominator and we had a good "chat"! After a very speedy beer at his house (starting to feel a little ridiculous now, and not cause my shoes were on his patio) we headed home, happy with the way our 2010 had kicked off!
Happy Happy New Year to everyone! May it be filled with laughs, drinks, strangers and framed phots of me on the mantle!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.381s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 10; qc: 56; dbt: 0.2981s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
penny
non-member comment
HAPPY HAPPY
My darling Megs, You should take up writing, your stories all sound such fun and I so enjoy hearing them. I remember being on a greek island, Corfu, in my early twenties and also being the centre of attention being slim blonde and pale skinned and was definitely a novelty to the locals. Such fun!!!My folks controlled me which was very fortunate.