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Weekend update! (on Monday - what what!)

Friday Dinner with Hesse at the (in)famous Saravanaa Bhavan. Mmmm...South Indian food. Not so mmm.... rangy mob of (mostly) South Indians hanging out dispiritedly by the door, complete with hungry children. And, of course, every time the loudspeaker crackles into life, announcing "RAJIV! PARTY OF FIVE!", 25 people rush the door. Good times, good times.

This isn't my story to tell, but it has been cracking me up all weekend. The last time H was there, he was seated at 9:45 pm. He tried to order a dosai and was told:

"Sir! No dosai, sir!"

"What? No dosai?"

"Sir! Mexicans have gone home, sir! OONLY Mexicans in the kitchen, sir! And Mexicans have gone home."

.........

Thankfully, the Mexicans were still in full effect when we were seated. After feasting on two styles of dosai, we waddled back to the car. H kept asking me if I understood the people we were passing , well .... what about them? How about now? ("No, no, wait - YES! Uh, no.")

Saturday Brunch at brimful's! I parked 5 blocks away and started walking. A guy driving by in his car slowed down and smiled at me. I thought that he looked like a partner that I work with. Yeah, because it WAS the partner I work with. I run into coworkers everywhere, it's uncanny.

Brunch at b's was so nice - relaxing, good convo, great laughs (with ads and saheli and b as company, how could it be otherwise?) I need more of that - pure chillaxin' with sympatico peoples.

So, of course, I ended it by rushing off to the Asian Art Museum to meet yet another Indian friend. (I need to make some non-desi friends! I am accepting applications.) We had a little over an hour to hit the special exhibits. We started off with the Mewar exhibit. Summary: bunch of people running around with magnifying glasses (provided by the museum), all UP on the artwork, talking shit about yoga and how the last time they were in In-ja, how just utterly, utterly sublime it all was. Blech ++

I got straight-up MAD cut-eye from an Indian grandma. Indian grandma: it takes a certain amount of 'tude to rock the sari and woolen cardigan, I'll give you that. It takes even more to circle me like a god damn shark, so close you brushed BOTH of my arms, staring me up and down the whole time (quite the task, since you're pushing 5'1. Maybe.) In other cultures or situations - that series of actions and attitude would have led to a rumble. ('Sharks and Jets! Jets and Sharks!')

Unexpectedly, I greatly enjoyed the Japanese Bamboo Art exhibit. So many of the pieces make you want to pick them up and really look at them from all angles. I wanted magnifying glasses here, the better to see the different plaiting techniques, etc. It's a fairly small exhibit, but well worth it.

Friend and I decamped to Citizen Cake for a spot of lundin ("It's not lunch, but it's not quite dinner, either.) I've been there once before, for brunch. The menu was, um, how you say? I consider myself to have a fairly decent vocabulary, and I did not what half the words were. Egg mimosa? Lundin was kinda "enh" - but the bread pudding was phenom.

Sunday Brunch with Hesse, coworker and coworker's daughter. Did the all-brown crew remember that it was Easter Sunday and that a bunch of places would be closed? No, we most certainly did not. Much wandering of Palo Alto, much plaintive keening about the states of our stomach. (Ran into another coworker along the way.) Finally, found a place that was open. And, miracle of miracles, I think I've found my brunch spot. It's not within walking distance, but it has a gorgeous, sun-dappled patio with a fountain and greenery everywhere. Ah, bliss. (Ran into another coworker on the walk back to the car.)

All the in-between little bits were spent reviewing a 700 page court transcript for the brief I'm writing this week. Somehow, it all got done!