A great weekend and a restaurant review!

Hi guys,
I do know it has been a while since I posted anything nice, cheery and fun in here. What to do? Life's kinda been that way :( Oh well. No more brooding. This past weekend was a good and fun one! What did we do?
Friday night K called from work and said he was going to bring back dinner from one of our most favorite joints in Besant Nagar. Its not the kinda place you sit down and eat. Its a seedy, shady joint that serves yummylicious food. So naturally I was only too happy to oblige because it meant no cooking and it also meant eating great food in the luxury of your own house. Saturday was another good day - well for the most part we just stayed home. Woke up late, did a lazy breakfast and cooked lunch, cleaned etc. And then met Krish & Sethu for dinner at Chap Chay(one of the main reasons for the post). Well what can I say? It's a pleasure to review the restaurant.
Chap Chay is a new restaurant at Raintree, St. Mary's Road. The cuisine is Pan Asian - notice I didn't say Chinese. That is because its got flavors from China, Japan, Thailand etc. And I must say we all came out very impressed. The decor was nice, simple. Thank God there was no Buddha, at least I didn't see one! The place reminded me of a restaurant in St. Louis that I used to frequent - Stir Crazy (Remember I wrote about it here?). Basically, you choose your own veggies/meat, they have about 16 different types of sauces, choice of noodles or rice and the food gets cooked right in front of you. It was such a lovely sight to see the different colored fresh vegetables - broccoli, carrot, snow peas, red/yellow/green peppers, corn, lotus stem, water chestnuts.. I could go on & on. Some of the sauces were black pepper, chilli garlic(what I picked), Thai Basil(all hot ones) and some not so spicy ones such as Kung Pao, Hunan etc. My recommendation would be to take small portions of veggies and mix up one or two sauces and keep trying various combinations because it is unlimited. The mistake we did was to fill our bowls with all sorts of veggies and took just one sauce and by the time I finished my bowl I was completely stuffed and had no room for more. So be smart and have fun experimenting. Also, don't bother with starters of any sort - they just fill you up. We tried Dimsums(give it a miss) & Honey Glazed Vegetables(which was very nice). For dessert, the 4 of us dug into one plate of yummy fried ice cream!! The flavor was darn delicious. Service was very good. Priced at 650INR per person for the main course alone. Will we go back? Of course we will. But will be smarter next time around :-) We enjoyed and relaxed with drinks, good food & laughter. Overall an ideal way to spend Saturday night. Do give Chap Chay a try, I assure you won't be disappointed.
Sunday was another super busy day. We were spending the day with K's colleagues at Shilpa's house. Her folks had gone out of town and had invited a few of us over for drinks and lunch. She was a lovely hostess - her cook had made yummy egg pakodas, paneer pakodas, grilled chicken, masala peanuts, we had taken along some chips, juice, chocolate milk shake.. Sigh. As you can see, I was feasting! The afternoon was great fun. Mathangi & Michael are expecting a baby in May and were obviously the centre of attention - We discussed baby names, their maternity classes, heard all their work stories and kept laughing till our stomachs hurt! A great afternoon indeed. Post lunch, I was heading to see Ammai and my parents. Played carrom, cards and badminton with Vishal, Ammai and my mom. Very relaxing :-) I got home around 7:30 in the evening and was going to clean up and prep for Monday morning when Mathangi called to say she and Michael were going to Velacity for dinner and if we wanted to join them. K and I said ok and we got picked up, went to Tadka Talk in Velacity. To Michael's biggest disappointment, the place was vegetarian. Haha. Mathangi and I enjoyed the paneer tikka and mushroom soup. But we couldn't bear to see Mike's sad face. So we told him we will go to another place just for the main course. At 9:30 pm in the restaurant we were discussing where to go. Haha. That's how funny it was. Finally, we didn't have too much choice but to head over to Snow's Park in Velachery(an old haunt of mine and K's). Decent food, saaaddd ambience but fast service! Lol. So we went there, had garlic naans, dal tadka and of course Micheal ordered some Chicken Tikka and was happy :) By the time we reached home it was around 11:30! Needless to say, K and I crashed. Longgg day. But awesome weekend after a longgg time. Sooo worth every minute of it. K and I are heading to Pune this Thursday, so more updates on this space next week. Keep up with it, I promise some lovely pictures from Pune city :) Tata! 

*Disturbia*

There have been a few "incidents" in the last one month that has left me wondering where our country is really headed. They are simple things but left such an impact on me nevertheless.
Scene 1 - At Chennai airport
It is 11:30 pm. K and I had just returned from our trip to Delhi(was great fun,btw!). I was standing in line to get my cab and K was standing away in a corner. There was this dude(hereby referred to as "moron")  all dressed up formally in a business suit. He goes near K and SPITS right next to him. Now those of you who my husband can guess what follows :) He blew his top! And rightly so. Here's how the conversation went
K - (furiously) - Excuse me, what do you think you are doing?? Aren't you ashamed?
Moron - (Nonchalantly) - Well everybody else is doing it! Why are you asking only me?
K - (Raising his voice) - Well you seem educated! Don't you have any sense not to spit in public? Plus you are spitting right near me! And I of course have a problem with that!

Well basically moron didn't want to admit it but honestly it was so embarrassing for him because by now everybody was staring at him. Yes my husband can be VERY loud! I panicked because I had no idea what had happened. But when K explained I wished he could have actually slapped that idiot. Honestly man, get a grip on yourself, wherever you are!

Scene 2 - Sathyam Cinemas
K and I watched Vishwaroopam this weekend. The theatre is full(Saturday evening). Most of the families had come with KIDS. Mind you, it is an Adults movie, lots of violence and gore. I don't understand how parents can actually think of bringing those tiny tots to such a movie and how theatres don't even object.
But anyway, there were kids in front of us and at the back row as well. The kid in front wouldn't sit quiet for a minute. He was probably around 3 or 4, obviously he wants to explore. The mother tried her best to get him to sit quietly but no such luck. Finally, she grabbed him and took him outside. Good girl. Now there are about 4 kids sitting at the back. And they kept pushing my seat. I was trying to be patient. But they just wouldn't listen. I'm turning and giving looks at the mother(she is too engrossed with the movie to notice my glares). Good thing is I had watched the film earlier. It was K who was watching it for the first time. And then it reached a point where the kids started screaming. High pitched squeals! K lost it. He got up and turned to the mother and said "Excuse me, can you please keep your kids under control"? The lady just called to her kids and simply said "please come sit here quietly". YEAH RIGHT. They are kids for God's sake, woman! They went on screaming and K got up again and this time in a very menacing tone said " Listen, if you don't get those kids to shut up, I'm going to get the management to throw you guys out"! That probably did it. Coz you will not believe, that lady finally got her act together and ensured her kids shut up for the rest of film. Not one word came out! Phew. My point is I'm not blaming the kids. But if you can't control them, take them outside the movie hall or get them to behave. As simple as that. And please definitely don't take them for such noisy and violent movies. Even my 10 year cousin wasn't allowed to watch it at home. Not appropriate for him. Simple no?

Scene 3 - LB Road(A very busy road in Chennai)
K and I are returning home. At the junction, there is a cop vehicle coming in exactly the wrong direction. Due to which traffic is held up for a few seconds. Cars simply give way. My hubby was the only one who stopped the gypsy and showed his finger to the cop. Ok not finger but he made it obvious to the cop(s) sitting in the Innova that it was simply unacceptable and shocking that a cop(who is supposed to tell others to follow rules) is happily breaking one and holding up traffic because he was too lazy  to make a U turn. Shocking no? The cops were a little shocked but of course in true Chennai police style, glared back threateningly. I was a little scared because I had heard stories of how they take away your car keys and slap you. But then I was proud of my  hubby for standing up to those goons. I wish I could have taken a picture of that van and posted it on the Chennai City Traffic Police page and made a mockery of them. But like I said, it was a busy road and I had no such luck. Sigh. Pissed me off so so so much.
God save this country. Ok I'm done ranting. On that note, February was super super busy. My bestie, M got married. Yay! Congrats! Another friend, Shan, got engaged. Yahoo! And then K and I took off to Delhi for his cousin's wedding which was also great fun. Bread pakodas, masala chai, samosa, kachori all at 6 degree weather. Blissful combination, no? :-)