Drinking happened last night. A friend from Madras is visiting Melbourne on work and it was his first night out on the town so we couldn’t disappoint… we had to go out and paint the town red. Red was exactly what one of the bars we went to felt like – its called Polly and as the review says, its all red velvet and dim lighting and gilt mirrors and spittoons for ashtrays. We then moved on to Bimbos and with a name like that why their logo is a baby and why they had a baby doll strung up over the bar dressed in S & M attire and sporting a penis was a mystery that provoked much discussion.

S & I realised that we’ve actually been to Bimbos ages ago with a friend and Bimbos has this really cool circular dome covered room and we were just sitting there and some other people came in and sat there and then some other people came in and sat there and we all just sat around in one big semi-circle and some of them started rolling and shared the joints with us and it was just all a very “random and share the love” night!

The toilet stalls in Bimbos had these Indian picture sheets that we used to buy if we had to stick pictures of fruits, vegetables, animals, etc. in our school scrapbooks. And these were those weird ass picture sheets that tell you what a good boy should do (wake up early, brush “up” teeth “salute” his parents, pray, etc. etc.) and another one was pictures of school boys from different cultures or religions. So there were pictures of Sikh boy, Hindu boy, Muslim boy, Christian boy, Bengali boy and there was even Mallu boy. So funny it was. And there were like tons of these things plastered in every stall (I checked). So bizarre the whole thing was.

Anyway, was quite wasted by the end of it all last night and I think I will kill someone if I don’t get to sleep well tonight because I slept horribly on Sunday night too.

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Aforementioned friend from Madras also brought CDs (as part of Mint’s CD Tree venture) from Rat & Lavi so been listening to that all morning. Thanks girls – my CDs you will get to listen to in approximately two weeks when friend returns to Madras.

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This one’s for you Jay. Was going through online TV guide the other day and came across an animated show playing in the middle of the night called Stripperella starring Pamela Anderson. You’ve probably heard of it already and for those who haven’t, show heroine is Erotica and she is and I quote “Stripper by night. Crimefighter by later night. Erotica is the sexiest stripper ever to touch a pole. With a heart of gold, a passion for animal rights, and a weakness for fashion, Erotica is always helping the other dancers at The Tender Loins with their problems. When her belly ring vibrates, Erotica snaps into action as Stripperella, the superhero/secret agent.”

Tender Loins just cracked me up.

Stripperella also battles such villains as The Bridesmaid, who as her name suggests is dying to get married and goes around kidnapping grooms.

Jay, surely Boyfriendman and Miss Thing will be a bigger hit than stripper crime fighters so please get started and your blogger buddies will be behind you all the way ;)

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Logged out of hotmail today and got redirected to MSN India and there was a link on the homepage to Aamir Khan’s new blog for his upcoming movie Mangal Pandey. Of course the word blog caught my attention and I went and checked it out and there are lame pictures of him pretending to blog on his laptop. And what is with that new hairstyle of his? He looks like a wet dog. Also, he was replying to comments on the previous post and said something along the lines of, ‘So I’ve picked some “blogs” at random to reply to’. These guys are so not with blogging terminology. And these pissy MSN thingies are more than blogs… they are SPACES. Anyway, I haven’t watched a Hindi movie in years but this Mangal Pandey thing looks quite interesting and I hope they have limited it to merely one song-and-dance sequence.

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Finally finished Shantaram on Sunday. Apparently he lives down the road from me or something. Ages ago we went to a Goan restaurant nearby and the owner is a very friendly and funny man and he’s best friends with the author, Gregory David Roberts and showed me a preview of the book and I came across it the other day in my Spend $75 at Borders experience and went ahead and bought it. Basic synopsis of the story is that he escaped from prison in Melbourne and somehow made it to India and spent almost ten years living like a local and working for the mafia and everything. He was finally captured in 1990 and served out his prison term and wrote this book based on his experiences in India.

I wish I could talk about India with half as much eloquence as he does. What an amazing story and what an interesting insight through the white man’s eyes into our peculiar Indian ways. Its all about the heart man, in India. We think with our minds and are sometimes motivated by money and power and what not but ultimately us Indians are so ruled by our hearts is what he says and what I totally agree with. So anyway, please go read it fellow bookworms if you haven’t already.