Weekend in Goa..

This is an account of things that happened on my last trip to Goa. Let me warn you that this is a lengthy post. I had planned of taking 5 days off from work from the 28th April to 2nd May but due to some unfortunate circumstances I had to cut short my trip to 4 days. Due to nonavailability of bus tickets we chose to travel by train. Brenton accompanied Sudesh, Subodh and me this time. Journey was fun because Subodh was carrying playing cards. We went to sleep late at night after playing cards, naming each others top 5 on the most desired list and of course bugging Brenton.

The next morning we reached Margao station and from there 3 of us took a train while Sudesh preferred to travel by bus. I reached home and after having bath watched Chronicles of Narnia, at home I tend to spend most of my time watching TV because I don't get to do that in Pune. Then it was time to visit the University and meet some friends. We all went out for lunch. Someone suggested a place called Mi Casa on the Shiridao slope. The food was good, I was eating fish after almost a month so it was bound to taste good. Sudesh and Pritam unknowingly had pork but nobody puked so it was fine. Some of us spent the evening on the Miramar beach making plans for the night. The Plan was to go out for dinner and then go to Baga beach to watch the final of the Cricket World Cup on big screen.

At night Pele, Sid, Pritam, Sudesh and me met at Mapusa for dinner. Brenton ditched us as usual. After dinner at Ruchira we headed towards Baga as per our plan. On the way we stopped to watch a cricket match that was being played on the fields close to the Bodgeshwar temple at Mapusa. Pritam was very interested in the match and didn't want to leave from there but we forcefully took him with us. The World Cup Final was very boring. It was a totally one sided match and from the beginning everyone knew that Australia was going to win. Still we waited till about 1 for some miracle to happen and hoping that Sri Lanka would win but that did not happen. Bored of the match we finally decided to go home.

On the second day plans were to go to Colva beach for lunch. We left at 10 in the morning. I was accompanied by Fritz, Hamish, Jesni and Maria all of whome studied with me in Xavier's. The reason we had come to Colva for lunch was because Fritz had read a good review about Joseph's shack on some blog and in Goa I don't mind traveling if I get to eat good sea food. After a bit of searching and asking people we found that the name was actually Josefa. We were disappointed with the shack since most of the stuff that we wanted to eat was not available, so we just had some fish fingers and moved out of the place. We had lunch at Sun Sea Sand which is a shack on the Colva beach.

Next was the movie day. I went to see Ta Ra Rum Pum with some classmates. The movie was good for time pass. Typical bollywood movie with lots of songs. Adit and me had lunch at City Pride which is a small restaurant cum bar on the road running perpendicular to the Kala Academy. The fish there was really good, I especially liked the tisreo. In the evening I met some friends at Cafe Coffee Day Miramar. My cousins wedding was on the 2nd so there was some function at his place on the 1st, I spent most of the morning at his place. Other than that nothing eventful happened on the 1st. My bus was to leave Goa at 7 Pm but as usual it left at 8pm.

Since this was a long weekend most people who work in Pune and Bangalore were down in Goa. The sad thing is that once people start working such weekends are the only time when you get to meet old friends who work in other states. This time I managed to meet some people after a long time but there were a few who could not make it. Hope to see them the next time....

Kebabs by the road side

"Never eat stuff that you get on road side" I am sure your mother must have told it to you a thousand times. Well even my mom used to tell me this but its human tendency to do things which others tell us not to. I have always wanted to taste kebabs that are available at small stalls on the road. Stall wont be the right word to describe it, usually its a guy sitting on a metal chair in front of a sigree making kebabs. Kebab in case you didn't know is a Middle Easten dish made using Chicken / Lamb / Fish / Beef.

Well I had tasted kebabs earlier but that was in restaurants. So just wanted to find out the difference between the two. The first time I tried Seek kabab and there was not much difference in the taste, plus they were cheap, a plate of kebabs (2 kebabs) costs 10 Rs. A few days later sudesh and me tried chicken kebabs, these were a bit expensive at 30 Rs a plate and that is because chicken is expensive in Pune.

So if anyone in Pune wishes to try kebabs by the roadside my advice to that person would be to go ahead and try it..

Wish list.....

Here are few of the items on my wish list. I am definitely going to buy these when I win a lottery.

The Dell XPS M2010 Mobile Entertainment PC (4500 $)



The Sony PSP (13000 Rs)



The Nikon D80 DSLR (1200 $)



This list would have been longer if I had found the other videos on youtube.

Money Money Money....

This weekend my uncle was in Pune. His name is Uday Palkar and his hobby is collecting old currency. He was here to participate in an exhibition of old currency which was organized by the Numismatic society of Maharashtra at the Chatur Shringi temple premises. Well my job was to accompany him for 2 days during the exhibition because he didn't know anyone else in Pune who could help him during the exhibition.

I confess that initially I was a bit irritated at the idea of not spending the weekend according to my plans, but then this was something that I had to do. So as per plans I reached the exhibition hall at 10 in the morning on Saturday. Initially I was under the impression that my uncle was the only person who would be exhibiting his collection but I was wrong. There were around 20 collectors and dealers of old currency who had their collections on display. They had come from different parts of India and most of them were from Gujarat. As far as my uncle goes he is not a dealer of coins but he just visits exhibitions and tries to see if he can get items which he does not have.

We had hardly finished setting up our table and all the other dealers started crowding around the table to see if uncle had any coins worth buying. Within 15 to 3o minutes most of them had purchased coins from us. I came to know the reason for the rush. It seems that there is lot of demand for Goan currency in the market and since uncle was the only Goan who participated in the exhibition people didn't want to miss an opportunity to get some rare Goan coins. As the day passed by more and more people came inquiring about Goan currency and were disappointed that most of it was sold out early in the day.

The dealer sitting next to our table was very friendly. I asked him which was the most expensive coin he had got for the exhibition and he immediately showed it to me. It was a Queen Victoria coin with a price tag of 10000 Rs. Then he went on to explain why the coin was expensive, he said something about the size of the coin. The coin was slightly smaller in diameter compared to the same coins minted at a different mint, that made the coin rare and expensive. The guy even told me the rate at which he had bought the coin, it was just 650 Rs.

On the second day I got into the act of selling some coins. By mistake I sold a coin worth 10 Rs for 20 Rs [:P]. And with so many people buying coins even I felt like investing some money in old currency so I picked up some coins from uncles collection but he didn't take money from me.

Overall it was a interesting experience. I got to learn a lot about old currency from experienced people. Now I have developed one more hobby that I can spend money on. So if any one of you has some old currency that you don't need feel free to give it to me [:-)].

Over and out..

Hunt for the Black Spider..

The hunt began on Friday night at Gold Adlabs Pune. Sudesh, Neeraj and Myself had plans of going for a movie. The movie that we wanted to go for was Spider-Man 3, but to our disappointment we couldn't get tickets because the show was house full. I wanted to book tickets for the Saturday show but Sudesh vetoed against it [:-(].

Saturday afternoon we decided to try our luck at E-Square but again the show was running house full. Hoping to get tickets we traveled to Inox, but even there we were disappointed. But even after so many setbacks we did not give up hope. I tried calling a few friends (Yves, Gayle, Fritz, Abhimanyu) to get the number of Gold Adlabs. I got one number which Fritz found on the Adlabs site but it was a wrong number. Finally we managed to get the number from a newspaper but after calling we found out that every show on Saturday was house full and not just Saturday even the shows on Sunday were house full. Now this was the height of bad luck.

We were heading back home after booking a bus ticket from the station area when we saw a Spider-Man 3 poster at the Alankar theater which is close to the Pune station। Since Alankar is mostly never crowded we decided to check if any tickets were available। And to our amazement we got tickets. Finally after hunting for so long we had finally managed to get tickets. Even the tickets were very cheap compared to the Multiplex rates. We paid just 40 bucks for balcony seats. Things had just started going our way when Neeraj observed the poster properly. 'Spider-Man 3 Kashmakash' was written in big bold Hindi letters. We were so excited when we had seen the poster earlier that we had forgotten to check whether the movie was English or the Hindi dubbed version. But we had already booked the tickets and had no other work to do so decided to watch the Hindi version.

As far as the movie is considered it was great. The special effects are great. Besides you get to see Spidey in his black suit which looks too cool. Plus there are 3 villians (Green goblin, Sandman and Venom) in the movie. As Abhimanyu pointed out to me things do get a bit Bollywoodish in the second half with all the crying but its bearable. Overall its a good to watch movie.

So what if the seats were not as comfortable as compared to Inox or Adlabs. What happened if there was paan spit on the seat that Sudesh was going to sit on. Even though the fans (Pankha) in the theater were adding some extra sound to the movie soundtrack it was a different experience compared to the usual Multiplex experience. It was something different that we tried in Pune and it was fun.

By the way I am planning to go for the English version of the movie next weekend wit Abhimanyu.

PS: Abhimanyu you should try going for the Hindi dubbed version of the movie [:-)].

Over and out..