Bangalore Lunch - Mavalli Tiffin Rooms

My friend Hardika took me to Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR) for lunch today, and the food rocked. This is one of those place like Union Oyster House in Boston that is just built into the fabric of its city. (This review is dated but pretty accurate, and better on the food names and context than my memory http://www.rediff.com/travel/1999/aug/12mtr.htm)

What was memorable for me was the system for service, and the quality of the food. You show up and pay. Then you go to the waiting room. When a table is available - and this happens in shifts - you are seated. When you are seated there is already a metal plate, and waiters begin filling it, they come around and dish food out of large jugs. (Did I mention a menu? No. You get what they serve.). When you are done eating you leave. No waiting for a check or offers of coffee. Very simple and efficient. In what I understand is just part of Indian cuisine, there is no concept of starters vs mains or dessert. Different styles are served together, so you can have sweet Cardamon rice porridge with your blistering hot curry. It works well. The food was really good. If a restaurant in DC served it on china plates with a glass of wine they would get four stars from Washingtonian. Hardika paid, but I think we were in the single digit zone in dollar terms. In the unlikely event I decided to become a vegetarian, this is the food I would want to eat. It was delicious, diverse and after numerous helpings I was totally full. As you can see in the first photo, there is construction underway in front of MTR. There is construction everywhere in Bangalore. I would like to be a cement merchant here.

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Visit to Bull Temple, Bangalore

I am in Bangalore for the weekend and I asked various people for suggestions on places in the city to visit. One of them was the Bull Temple, a very old Hindu temple honoring one of the many Hindu deities. Seeing the stone bull itself was very spiritual. After making a small donation I was invited to run my hand over a ceremonial flame, then had my forehead marked with something I think was ground rose petals. Other visitors rubbed their hands over the bull, then ran their hands over their forehead. There was also a pitcher of water beside the bull you could drink from or sprinkle on your head, but I skipped that. The bull is at the center of a big complex, with a smaller temple, some smaller places of worship and a nice forest grove. Today was the beginning of a festival honoring the bull god, so there were a lot of people. One interesting sight was was the real live bull and it's keeper wondering around seeking contributions. If you look at the photo, the bull has a birth defect giving it a partial fifth leg. I suspect this is a valuable animal.

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A Great Wine (and food) Evening : Williams-Selyem Zin and Elderton Shiraz #wine

Sunday evening we visited our friends Eric and Leigh. The food was great, but in my view the star of the dinner was the wine. 2005 Williams-Selyem Feeney Zinfandel was delicious, a little age tempering the fruit into more spice. I would give it 4/5 on my scale. The 2000 Elderton Command Shiraz was in another league. There was still a solid platform of delicious Shiraz fruit, with fantastic layers of perfume and a little oak riding on top. Definitely a benchmark wine. 5/5 on my scale, really a drinking experience.

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Eva's #ABS Bouldering Comp - 2nd Place Female Youth C

Eva moved up an age level in her bouldering competitions this year from Youth D to Youth C. She was very worried that being on the young end of a new group would make her non competitive. Today at least this concern was unfounded. She climbed stronger than ever, and had her personal best point total. She made several very difficult climbs that I know she could not have made at the end of last season. She has been doing a lot of strength training with her climbing team, and her increased power was really evident on several climbs today. The comp today was at the Philadelphia Rock Gym (#PRG) in Oaks, Pennsylvania. We prefer the other PRG gym, but I thought the routes today were very good. There were a lot of routes in Eva's skill zone, and they played to different strengths. I thought the judging was good, and the scoring at the end of the meet was quick.

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Basement Renovation Commences (The Big Dig)

We have done several rounds of renovation on our urban townhouse, but none of them resulted in a proper casual family room. We also have had a minor but persistent water problem in our basement forever. The basement has been an obvious target to add some comfortable space to the house, but between the water, mildew and (barely) six foot ceiling we have always hesitated to do anything with it. With the three kids getting older, bigger and wanting more play space we decided to take the plunge and finish the basement. In addition to the family room, we hope to get some drier and cleaner storage space (though less of it) and a downstairs laundry area, freeing up the upstairs laundry to be a linen closet. After normal (for Old Town) permitting delays, work on the project started this week. The photo below shows the 'before' view of the basement and a couple of views of progress as of the end of the week. The before photo, is not REALLY before - it is after several weeks of Cath's hard work moving stuff out of the basement into off site storage. This week saw several days of demolition getting the old cabinets out, then digging. And jack hammering. The jack hammering was clearly audible in the attic, three floors up from the basement. The digging is expected to go on for EIGHT WEEKS, so we can go from a six foot ceiling to a standard eight foot ceiling. Our explorer cat Noelle has already investigated the new dirt piles and decided they make a fine place to sit.

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HERE'S WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY... And Here's The Best Way To Fix It

Good Analysis

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-fix-the-economy-2011-10

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Old Beer is (sometimes) Good Beer

A long time ago (at least a couple years before my 13 year old son was born) I briefly tried my hand at home brewing. I made several batches of passable ale, trying to imitate lower alcohol, lower carbonation English Bitter. I enjoyed the process, but decided that like bread making and wine making, the craft breweries made much better beer and ale than I could achieve. I am also a purist, and was frustrated using malt syrup (or whatever it is called) rather than starting with the grain itself. However brewing starting with grain is a whole additional level of complexity. After a few batches, my brewing equipment was retired to the basement, along with a case of beer to drink 'later'. We are about to embark on a basement renovation, and needed to clean out the basement, so LATER has finally arrived. I expected to just pour out the beer, figuring it had become undrinkable, if not downright toxic. However, being curious I tried a few sips. Then a few more to be sure I was not fooling myself. The ale was not horrible. I would not have bought a second glass in a bar, but I would not have sent the first one back. It have a faint molasses flavor, not much fizz (as intended) and very mild hops. Overall it is refreshing and easy to drink, although kind of bland. I decided to clean up a six pack, and keep it around to drink. My daughters were nice enough to label the bottles, and the ale looks quite good in a proper glass!

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First Day of School - 2011

Will, Lyra, Eva Ready for Their First Day of the New School Year

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For you Broadway lovers, Will doing Book of Mormon

I was talking to some friends about Will's love of Broadway, so he recorded this demo in a restaurant mens' room to show them. You need to turn the sound up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVXqYDJxvUA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Lyra's View on Rural Burial Practices

(Driving in rural Maine)

Lyra: Daddy, why do they have cemeteries out in the middle of nowhere?

Me: Because when people here die, they need somewhere to be buried. Lyra: Why don't they just bury them in their garden?

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2011 Washington, DC Fireworks from the Netherlands Carillon

I took these tonight from the base of the Netherlands Carillon on the grounds of the Iwo Jima Memorial. This is on the Virginia side of the Potomac looking almost straight down the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capital. Shot on a Canon 7D with a Canon 70mm-200mm 2.8 lens, at about 190mm. ISO 200, aperture between 14 and 22 and shutter mostly 5sec or 6sec. The finale was so bright I backed the shutter off to 2.5sec. (These were lightly processed in Photogene on my iPad.)

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