The Book Quest

The entire day today was spent on what I call the "Quest for the Holy Book".
My sister had asked us to send across a book on Shirdi Sai Baba called Satcharita and we thought that would be fairly easy to track down. So went to Landmark at Spencer Plaza in the morning around 11:45 only to be told that they do not stock it.
We then went to this shop called "Giri Brothers" in Mylapore, which is supposedly well-known for all articles connected with prayers - they stock all the Pooja CDs, books, items such as the Agarbati (the incense stick), unfortunately they only had the book in Tamil.
From there, to R A Puram to Sundaram, which is the temple for Satya Sai Baba, but they informed us that they would be opening their book stall only when Bhajans took place (usually on Thursdays and Sundays).
We then went to the Ramakrishna Mutt in Mylapore and I decided to check the Universal Temple that they have built there. The architecture is great and we entered the temple and sat down to meditate the way the others in the temple were. Its calm and peaceful and you can feel your worries being washed away in that atmosphere.
Unfortunately they too do not stock the book and we heard about the book fair that was being held at Poonamalee High Road, about an hour's drive from there, so went ahead to that place. It was packed like the entire Chennai crowd was there, I never knew there were such avid booklovers in Chennai.
Unfortunately most of the books were in Tamil and the English ones were not worth a glance, moreover, the crowd was beginning to psyche us out, so we decided to call it a day and got back home at around 9 PM. By then, mum, dad and myself were all too bushed to be able to move even an inch, so we called up a few people and thankfully a family friend had the book, so we finally got that.
Seriously, I never thought a book could ever bring such agony and frustration in a single day!!!

Mocha Sunday

The weekends are a time when the party animals break out of their dodgy exteriors on exiting the offices on friday evenings and the quieter ones think of blessed solitude in which to pursue their hobbies, the workaholics lug huge cases of work home and the lazy ones, including me, consider it the best time to catch up on well-deserved sleep.
This sunday was an exception, decided to meet up with a few friends of mine to indicate that I was alive and hoping to find them in a similar state of being, I called up Arjun and Harry and we fixed to meet at Spencer's, a mall in Chennai.
I also had to pick up a book for a cousin of mine and since my gran was going to stay at the said cousin's place at Delhi, I was asked to pick up a few delectable snacks from a well known food chain - "Sri Krishna Sweets" in Chennai.
I went into Landmarks, a bookstore chain, and picked up Matthew Reilly's Seven Ancient Wonders. I already have a copy of this and knew my cousin would enjoy it, and Harry picked up a few more books for himself, seeing as to how I was refusing to spend too much money then.
But I did bully him into letting me read the books first and then giving them across to him.
We then met Arjun and I was startled to find him half his size almost, he was recovering from a viral fever that had laid him low for almost a month and we decided he needed feeding up a bit. So regardless of his protests about having finished lunch, we entered Subway and forced a salad down his throat, I do believe in the power of green leafy vegetables when someone else is having them.
There used to be a bowling point in Spencer's about two years back, but I was disappointed to learn that they had closed it down. Since I had this urge to go bowling, we went to a place called "Snow Bowling" at Nungambakkam. My advice - dont ever go to that place. The wait was about two hours (the excuse given was that it was a sunday, but when I asked why only two out of four lanes were being used, we were told that they were not all right), the balls when gripped felt like they had been greased totally and the lanes themselves are not worth mention.
We decided to then meet another fren at Mocha and went there. I was by then tired and so was Arjun so we propped ourselves up on the cushions there and ordered for some gud tea. The place is designed in a completely different manner than other coffee hangouts and is way cleaner than the Mumbai joint.
We went to the upper room which is furnished to look like a scene out of Arabian noghts, atleast the seats and the red and black curtains added to the allure of the place. The people nearby enjoyed their hookahs, a habit which I am sure I dont want to pick up and we finally met Ramki, who joined us for about twenty minutes, since that poor guy had to work even on Sundays!

Ratings for Mocha are as follows:
Decor: ♥♥♥♥♥
Service : ♥♥♥♥
Food: ♥♥♥♥
Music/Ambience : ♥♥♥
Price : ♥♥
Overall rating of Mocha's : ♥♥♥

Their Chocolate Temptations (Junior and Senior are available, be warned the Junior alone requires two people to finish)are worth a definite rave!!
We finally left the place and I reached home to hand over all the stuff I had bought to gran, we had been carrying those bags around for sometime now, and they felt like body parts that I had sprouted during the day, but losing them definitely did not feel like any amputation of limbs.
The end of a long sunday and the beginning of a week that promises to be a busy one, with my endless procastination of work, the deadlines seem closer this side of the weekend!!!

Death by Chocolate - a disappointment

I am a chocolate addict, any shape or form of chocolate, I will gorge myself on thst.
Ever since shifting to Chennai, I had heard a lot about a dessert called "Death by chocolate" available at Tangerine, a restaurant in the Alwarpet area of Chennai.
Having got raving reviews of this, I decided to bully a fren of mine into taking me to Tangerine for lunch.
I ordered the vegetable lasagne while he ordered the paneer tikka sizzler.
Both of them were way below par and after getting through a quarter of my lasagne, I decided to instead go in for the dessert which had led me to the place.
When it came, all I could do was to stare at it in disappointment.
All that I saw was some custard immersed in chocolate sauce....needless to say, it was a waste of time and effort going there.
We usually rate a restaurant based on decor, service, food, music/ambience and price
We rated Tangerine as follows:
Decor : ♥♥
Service: ♥♥
Food : ♥
Music/Ambience: ♥
Price : ♥
Overall rating: ♥
I returned to my office, picked up my stuff and tickets since I am travelling to Calcutta tomorrow and returned home quite disappointed...and I need to catch the 5 AM flight tomorrow