Kobus & Teresa In India

Sunday, May 15, 2011

I LOVE NAAN AND KULFI!

I hate being sick and think I have done well until late this week. I woke up early Saturday morning with a burning chest, since then I have had a sore throat and missing voice. I feel a lot better today, being Sunday but my voice is still a little shy.

There is not much to report on again for this past week gone by. The strange thing for Teresa is that since we arrived in India she has met a lot of the people she works with in the company. Funny that she had to travel half way around the world to meet people she always works a lot with in the USA. She found out on Thursday evening that one of the gentlemen she works with regularly is in India for a couple of weeks and we met up with him on Friday afternoon for lunch. A really nice guy and hopefully we can spend some more time with him next weekend.

On Saturday we did not want to spend to much time at the house and after a nice lunch at Via Milano decided to just drive around for the afternoon. Ahmed drove us around in Secunderabad, the Twin City of Hyderabad. We went shopping in a store called "Coupons" and I finally got a new wallet, my previous one was falling apart. After spending a couple of hours driving around, shopping and having some Iced Coffee at some coffee shop we wanted to go somewhere for dinner. The problem was that there was something we really wanted to watch on BBC that evening at 8pm and all the good restaurants only open at 7 to 7:30pm. We ended up having chicken sandwiches at Beyond Coffee and decided to go out for dinner on Sunday. I have been craving the food of Angeethi for a while. They make North Indian food and have some of the best Naan in town.

A friend of my sister is also in town from Nashville, TN and we met up with her and another person that works with her. We took them out for lunch, gave them a quick tour around the lake and took them shopping at one of the tourist shops. After dropping them off at the hotel we enjoyed some coffee with them before coming home. We did not stay home long and left again for our dinner date that I have been looking forward to for the whole week. Angeethi is one off the top restaurants we have been to and is a favorite for many expats we know off. The food is always good and I love the Kulfi they make, Kulfi is a frozen milk desert.

A bunch of Auto Rickshaws at one of the office block.

Who needs these lights anyway, they just add weight to the car.

The Banjara Hillbillies.

Via Milano, our favorite Italian restaurant.

Via Milano

Some pictures taken during our drive in Secunderabad.

Mickey was in town, well his Indian cousin was.

Some pictures taken during our drive in Secunderabad.

Angeethi

Some pickled Onions and Mango, the green stuff is mint chutney.

A short video clip taken inside Via Milano.

Banjara Hillbillies

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Breakaway Weekend

What is the World Speed Record for a week to go by, I am sure we just broke the current record.

There is a couple of American Expats that loves music and decided to start a Blue Grass band, they call themselves the "Banjara Hillbillies". Banjara Hills is a neighborhood in Hyderabad with lots of shops and restaurants. The Banjara Hillbillies are very informal and they play/practice every Thursday evening at Beyond Coffee, they also recently started playing/practicing on Sunday afternoons at the same venue. It makes for a fun evening/afternoon where everybody sits around in the corner and enjoys the music. I believe they actually have a couple of gigs coming up in the next couple of months. Way to go Banjara Hillbillies!

I have been referring to Beyond Coffee a lot and just to give everybody out there a refresher, it is local coffee shop that a couple of guys decided to open up. They officially opened up on June 18, 2010 so will be celebrating their first birthday soon. Beyond Coffee has achieved a lot in their first year and won the award for Best Coffee Bar in Hyderabad this year. The food is great and reasonably priced and we have been going there regularly the last couple of weeks for lunch.

We took a time out weekend and checked into a hotel. It was a local hotel but getting away from home and the normal routine was still great. We just treated ourselves to a relaxing weekend where we got spoiled by excellent hotel staff and food that included a Spa treatment on Saturday. We sat in the lounge area every evening and just listened to somebody playing the piano. On Saturday evening the pianist came to sit by us for a while and we had a nice long interesting talk with him. He is really talented and we wish him good luck with his future plans and career.

This was Friday Lunch before we left for the hotel weekend. It is a very nice little Italian place and I will write something about it next week. This was delicious by the way, thinly sliced chicken served on top of spinach and carrots.

This is made entirely of chocolate, it is on display at the restaurant in the hotel we stayed at.

Lounge/Lobby area at the hotel in the evening.

Swimming pool area at the hotel, I had a nice long swim and the water was just perfect!

Swimming Pool area at hotel.

Just some of the many water areas around the hotel, makes for great atmosphere

Sunday, May 1, 2011

It is getting HOT!

Since before we arrived in Hyderabad, India people warned us that May is the hottest month of the year. I must admit that since we arrived here in October 2010 we have not had any bad weather, whether hot, cold or rain. It has been really hot during the last week or so but nothing that we can say got the better of us. The ceiling fans and air conditioners in the apartment probably helps a lot in this regard and we have been switching on the air conditioners more regularly than we used to. We only used to sleep with the air conditioner on but these days we have at least one running most of the day.

Unfortunately power failures are also on the increase, well it certainly feels like it. The power back up generators do a good job but when there are too many power failures during a short period off time they sometimes battle to keep up. Thanks to a couple of UPS units we bought it keeps things running smoothly for that couple of seconds between when the power fails and when the generator kicks in.

Teresa had a bad week, she got Bronchitis and it had her feeling bad for the whole off last week. Ahmed and I took her to the Dr. on Tuesday and he prescribed some medication but we took her back to see him again on Friday when she still was not feeling any better. She started feeling much better on Saturday and on Sunday she was just about running on all cylinders again.

We had a good chuckle at the procedures the pharmacies follow over here. Ahmed, took us on a long drive Tuesday afternoon to a large pharmacy to ensure that Teresa got all the medication she needed, he was really concerned about her. We finally arrived at the pharmacy, as I entered the pharmacy I walked into madness, people standing everywhere asking and waiting for medication. One of the men, looked like somebody in charge saw me and called me over immediately, took my prescription and gave it to someone else. Two minutes later he was back with everything, they wrote down the prices on a piece of paper and I paid what seemed like a very little amount for everything I just bought. The only part that is concerning is that they give you your prescription back and they don't use any system to record who received what medication and you can basically take the prescription to the next pharmacy and use it again. We are not really complaining, we have never been helped this fast in any pharmacy before and paying this little for all the medication.

Again we had to say good bye to a friend on Saturday that finished her time in Hyderabad, India and was her time to move on. She works for another company and we met her at one of the restaurants we frequently go to. We did not meet her to long ago but it was fun spending time with her in the short time since we met, but we will meet up soon again after our return to the USA.