Do you want flies with that ....

Fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you're going to die if you don't. That way you stay ahead. The secret to healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.
~ The Book

My Job makes me travel quite a bit ... which is fine ... I don’t mind waking up at 04:30 in the morning to catch some Red Eye flight to some God Forsaken city every week ... What pisses me off is when I have to travel out of Mumbai for more than a week ... Its not that I miss the wonderful bouquet of smells that lets me know every time I cross the Mahim Creek , or the insanely suicidal autowallahs, ... its the Food … (Yeah this is another Food post) …

For almost a month now , I have been stuck in a desolate little town in the middle of New Jersey... Which is OK , except its frikkin -15degrees outside !!! and as if that’s not enough, there’s the bloody wind chill...In a typical American way, a fellow guest at my hotel once summarized the weather with the words " Its cold enough to freeze your balls off into a pile of dust" ... As much as I believe he was exaggerating, the possibility of my privates turning into a Powdery state is something I would quite like to avoid...Hence I stay indoors as much as possible...

But that’s not the sum total of my griefs here ... the US east coast happens to have some of the worst food on this planet ... And I know bad food ... I have eaten stuff which would make a pig rolling in his own filth throw up ... I have survived on a staple diet of Maggie and Samosas for months at end .... But never ever in my life has it gone as bad as this ...

After the first 2 days of eating at the restaurant at my Hotel , I decided to order in ... Didn’t want to go out because of the whole stuff turning into Powder scare ... So I Got a bunch of flyers from the front desk , most of which turned out to be for Chinese food ... I like Chinese food .. the only problem is ordering it ...I know China is making great efforts to teach English to its Citizens ... Its a shame these efforts do not extend to the Chinese Diaspora in the US ... Coz these Buggers cant speak a word ... It takes me for ever just to tell the squinted eye freak at the other end that I need some Chicken Fried Rice ... and they wonder why all call centre Jobs go to India and not to China ... a word of Advice to my fellow East Asian friends ... Its "Fries" not "Flies"... No body like those with their food...

Anyways, after a few meals of Chinese takeaway, which as you know is full of nutritious wonders of MSG, I tried some other options... Big Mistake... You See there is a deep rooted cultural belief of the American people that if you do not eat a bucket of lard a day ,Osama Bin Laden is gonna come back and destroy all the McDonalds and Starbucks in America !!!
As a result a single serving of food here has enough fat to fuel a small Bon fire and keep it burning for a week. Now I have nothing against Fat people , its just that I don’t want to be one of them ... Its a personal choice like your religion or nowadays even your sexuality ... I know fat people also have a lot of fun ... and all that extra cushion probably comes in quite handy when you fall on your ass which I am sure doesn’t happen a lot because you have a low centre of gravity ...But Id still rather not have all that Goo in my arteries or any where else on my body... To cut a long story short , I cannot order Italian , Mexican , American BBQ etc etc ...

You might be wondering why I don’t just order Indian ... After all this is New Jersey , and there are more Patels here than there are Smiths and Johns and Peters put together ...and the short answer to that is that they only serve Vegetarian food…

Hunger drove me so mad that last week I even went down to a store to buy some stuff I could cook myself ... after walking around the store for 45 mins, all I could manage was 12 eggs , 2 loafs of bread , a case of Beer, a bottle of Single malt and a bottle of brandy ... Enough stocks to last me the remaining few days I believe ...