anil

Hmm things surely have changed - I doubt they served baida in the hooch places in the back alleys of Juhu Tara, Goregoan,Shivaji Park - Some places served sookha mutton; others channa (to cater to their vegetarian drunks, ) I vaguely remember just as I was leaving Mumbai, The Maharastra Govt. had gotten into the business of producing and selling inexpensive country liquor to combat frequent and large amount of liquor-poisioning deaths attributed to bootleg booze. I know initially all those brands were treated with suspicion [but that's another story]

I think two weeks is just fine for Italy. Because you'll never get to know Italy well enough even if you stayed there for months; so might as well take whatever vacation time you have. DL (Delta) flies directly VIE (Venice) - AF/BA through CDG/LHR respectively. If you have bought tickets for MXP (Milan), take a bus from outside the terminal (2) directly to the Centrale Station - There are frequent trains from MXP to VIE aking approx 3 hrs. Watch out for pickpockets in the grand hallway of the station. You are better off taking trains from VIE to Florence and Roma. Actually this time of the year; I'd do Roma,Napoli and then Positano {or any other Amalfi Coast town} and leave Venice and Florence for Later ....

No I am not a doubter, However, it is about the details Dear Watson Vikram While I do not doubt either Prof. SKChai or TOI - Remember, Sir Worrell had stopped playing just about when I was growing up so put this at 40+ years. It is the Tibbs folks appropriation of the product (If one can call that) I have difficulty reconciling. I cannot account for a decade before I first heard of Frankie. There was egg-roll in Kolkatta way back -- essentially it was egg,roti and fillings (veg or non.veg) Egg on the outside, roti or paratha and fillings (not wrapped in paper) Oh Well !!!

I distinctly remember that - I did like it very much - Thank You

Hmmm, Dunno about that The closest a frankie comes to English Carribean is curry-goat-roti .... but then that is 'not from Barbados.....

Sant Celoni (sp?) is a bit way off from Bartelona.... if you are familiar driving in catalunya, then by all means do .... not knowing where you'd be flying/arriving in from it is difficult to say.... re: sunday tapas .... I'd just suggest casual dining closeby to where you'd be staying overnight.

At this hour me too... Wasabi peas and half a glass of Odwalla's Super Protein 2003

It would seem that getting out of Mongolia alive is by definition a happy ending. Steven, where were you ? UES ? This is a really fascinating travellogue.....

Arunaputri: Where in MY are you from ? I've been planning to make a trip to Malaysia and it is just a matter of getting my FFmiles aligned with my vacation time aligned It is a looooongg flight from NYC to KUL

You mean to say there are no French Restaurants in mongolia ? So how can we argue if Mongolians can learn from French techniques On a serious note: Excellent TR (Trip Reports) I note that KE flies from ICN (Seoul) to Ulan Bator; so I could possibly earn miles If I chose to make a trip.

Isn't fish called jol Touri ? hence a vegetable Bengali, Malyali and kashmiri Brahmins are indeed non-vegetarians.

Who wants to know Don't ya dare call the food average !!!

Still is

Mass Ave. ? Where ? circa which yr ? MIT, 95-96. Edited to add that the Falafel truck was right in front of 77 Mass Ave. There were two, and I believe still are- I used to eat there when I moved back to Boston in 98-00, though I sadly can't remember which one was the better one. Course 4 '85 Media Lab was called Architecture Machine Group in my days - Towards the end IMPei's building opened ..... Oh Well !

Mass Ave. ? Where ? circa which yr ?

Nyet ! Nada ! It's still a FUD - Till you hear otherwise. France is part of the Schengan (sp?) Visa, so one could arrive in BRU and take a train without a visa check or arrive in BSL and drive away

Let's see - indian drinks Banglu - a hooch in WBengal Mahauva - a local booze made of ripe mahouva pods Todi - From sap off the date trees Feni - Cashew fruits based booze Tharra - Extracted from discarded fruit peels etc...

Any which way you decide; you'll have a great time. The weather would be great. By mid-Sept. most of the tourists would have been gone, and stratospheric rates would have begun to come down.

Try Aaram opp. Mahim Church. for excellent thalis in a no-nonsense settings.

Foot of Andes Mt. few miles off SCL We stopped on our way back from a day trip to the mountains ( Lots of skiers from the U.S and Canada here as it is winder down-under ) The roadside restaurants/shacks/bars serve to satiate the hunger of travellers, not many creature comforts - basic longish tables - no table cloth etc..... The dish that I had was titled in English as chicken-wings , which it wasn't. There were dozen pieces of meat on the bone (where the bone is about 2-1/2" of which 1"+ of the bone definitely looks BBQed and used for a handle) All the the dozen pieces, the bones were sticking over, just like a tray of candied apples with the stick pointing up.... Even though the bone looks charred, the meat was absolutely tender and melted in one's mouth without the after-taste of the charcoal on whoch it was probably grilled. The sauce in the dozen pieces were soaked in was'nt that great (or to my taste-buds) -- very similar to el-cheapo BBQ sauces served in the streetfairs of NYC during summer The herbs in the sauce were simple oregano and basil... The dozen small pieces of some bird (maybe partridge...) legs were deceptively light. But by the time I had finished ten of those I felt so stuffed (guzzling beer with it did'nt help either..) that it was wise on the part of the locals not to order anything else for the guests like me

When I was in grad school, there were only 5 paid TAships and to get one of those you pretty much had to TA some other class before. Whether or not you got independent study units for it was up to you. You might argue that 3 units is the same as getting paid, but it's not. Even the paid job only paid a token salary that came out to half of minimum wage if you included all the hours the job required. I TAed 5 classes; got paid for 2 and got units for 1. The others I did for the experience and it was worth it because all it cost me was time and time was what I had. The whole internship system is a joke. Requiring people to be enrolled in college means that they're paying money for the privilege of working for no money. Is that fair? Why should someone who wants on the job training be forced into college with all the associated expenses if that's not what they want? I teach part time at a community college now. In my beginning class, I have former students assist me with some of the hands-on instruction, mostly the mechanics of how to use the camera. The school has no money to pay them and I don't make enough to pay them out of my own pocket (except for a dinner). So, there's no pay, no chance of moving into a paid job, and they don't want units because then it will cost them money to help me out. Is it immoral that they help me out? And help the students out? And allow me to accept many more people into the class than I would otherwise be able to take, thus helping the department and college out since our funding is in a large part enrollment based? Each person who does this does it because the costs (time) are outweighed by the benefits (the fun of being part of the department). They're adults and fully capable of deciding how to spend their time without the government getting involved. I also sponsor the student organization even though I don't get paid extra for it. College regulations require faculty presence at on campus student events. I don't get paid for those days and nights either, but if I didn't do it, they wouldn't exist. Am I just an idiot? Or is there more do the job of college instructor than just what happens in class? For me, the benefits of having a (mostly) functional department where students have the opportunity to interact with each other outweighs the few nights a semester I give up. But I guess I better worry now that some lawyer here will figure out where I teach and bring a suit "on behalf of the people" to stop the outrage of using unpaid labor. Sometimes the law is an ass. I once RA'd & TA'd but then my tuition wasamongst the highest in the country (this was before some of the folks here were out-of-their diapers --no offense intended ). I also had UROP folks work with me - an amazing concept Now, I discourage unpaid/credit-bearing interns to my managers because the time-and-effort that I and my engineers put (or had put in the past) was to no mutual good because many took the internship as easy way out of no-midterms-and-finals-plus-a-good-freebe-value proposition. my .02euro

Actually in the early '60s the State of Bombay was split into two - Maharastra and Gujurat.

Last time we were in BCN, my old colleague said the buzzz on '24 was worse than P/E ratio of a DOMCOM so we avoided it. We'll soon be in BCN and I intend to catch up on new and hidden gems. Much of the great treats in BCN are not in top-notch hotel attached restaurants (a trend that is becoming quite universal in many EU and US cities) but in small places that have limited seating and a selective menu.

Could you point out some of the specialities of bangla cuisine that Bengal Tiger serves ? I looked at the menu on the 'web , but did not pay too careful an attention - For an ethnic restaurant in the 'burbs to attract clients from the city or outside its catchment it has to serve some authentic signature dishes -- 90% of the bangladeshi run/chef/managed restaurants in NYC do not dare to even serve a maacher-jhol -- a staple in Bengal (both east & west)

The original Moti-mahal's entrance resembled a kitchy punj-marriage-pandal-lighting Once you got past that, and ordered the butter chicken, mukke-diaya-circa-walle-paayazz to go along..... Yumm....