Restaurant Review - Mayuri - Herndon/Reston Virginia

Here is a review of Mayur restaurant out in the Herndon/Reston area in Northern Virginia. This is a vegetarian friendly review - so for those that eat meat your experience/mileage may vary.
Location: Mayur is located at the South Lakes Mall complex off Reston Parkway. Ambience is slightly above average.
Went there on a Friday night - the place was about 3/4 th busy. Ordered the cut Mirchi and Paneer Pakora for appetizers along with some drinks. The owner himself comes and takes orders - so you can pretty much tell him what the level of spice needs to be. All the appetizers turned to be above average - both in terms of size and portions. For the main course we had ordered a variety of items - a thali with Bindi Masala, an Uttappam, a plain dosa, a rava masala dosa and a Veg Biryani. The turnaround time was slightly longer (may be because they were slightly busy) - however the service was excellent. I have definitely started seeing the trend of Desi restaurant owners starting to treat desi clientile more decently whereever I go in North America. I guess it probably has to do more with the economics- Desis have no issues spending for food or for kids- and I think business owners are beginning to take notice of that. The food at Mayur was really enjoyable (barring the Biryani - which was really less than the average) with oil levels not that bad.

Overall I give Mayur a Desism rating of 7 out of a possible 10.

Restaurant Review - Andhra Bhima's at Milpitas, CA

I recently had an oppurtunity to visit Andhra Bhima's for the first time when I was in Bay area. Me and couple of my friends went there after a movie at IMC6 (Review of tamil movie "Sillandhru Oru Kodhal" will be posted real soon ). The good news about Bhima's is there is a LOT of space inside. The bad news is parking - not necessarily because that Bhima's is doing great business - but it is surrounded by some vietnamese "hudda" and hence the crowd. Anyways, I ordered the Andhra Spicy Thali - the food arrived fairly quickly. Those were the only good things about Bhima's. Food was pretty pedestrian - my friends ordered something else and that turned out pretty much ordinary. If you are looking to spend your money on decent South Indian vegetarian food in Bay area - then Saravana Bhavan near Mary's and Homstead is the best place to be. Nothing beats it.

I am giving Bhima's a Desism Rating of 5 on 1 to 10 scale.

What is Indian or Bharatiya culture??

Let us see if I can touch a nerve or two here. I am sitting here early AM in front of my muted TV (Sun TV) . There is a program that is going on "Thirai Masala" and it has been really funny to watch this program. In the 3 songs that has gone by ever since I started kinda "watching" - following has happened
- the heroine has been lifted by the hero 7 times
- the heroine's upper garment has been dislodged 5 times
- heroine meaniglessly running around holding her clothes 4 times
-hero and heroine bending together forwards or backwards - 7 times.
- Hero walking as if he is going to "conquer" something - 4 times

I am pretty sure that the stats would be similar for any Indian language (not just Tamil).

What is wrong with us people?? Seriously, I just dont get it. More importantly is this culture.

The culture talk reminds me of another interesting incident that happened last week that got me thinking as well. As some of you may know - the currently popular tamil actor Surya married tamil actress Jothika last week ( Sep 10th I think). My sister insisted that I take a look at the photos. There were 2 photos that I initially laughed at.
The first one was "Kalaingar Karunanidhi" the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu blessing the "Thaali (mangalsutra)" for the couple - This is the guy that has 3 wives. So I wondered out loud that if this guy blesses the couple then Surya should have a jolly good time!. The second photo was "Amma" Jayalalitha - coming and blessing the couple. Hmm- let me see - a person with pretty dubious distinction and sexual preference blessing a couple.

While I ROFLed on this - I realized that bharata janam (be it tamil or any other) have pretty weird standards. While they can publicly accept the fact that Karunanidhi has 3 wives or conviniently ignore the fact that Jayalalitha could be a lesbian (there I said it - I was trying to make this blog - family friendly - who the F*** cares any more) - they care and protest a lot more for matters like a "Kushboo's interview about chastity in TN" ( http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/article/25296.html)

Is this the great Indian culture? or Bharata Culture? For tamils that read this blog - I ask this question - is this "Tamizhar panpaadu"? How can a culture be so insensitive to flagrant violations of the few? Is this because we are "Cultureless"?

More on this soon.

A MP3 player for runners and joggers that works with Yahoo Music Unlimited!

I am on this quest to buy a decent and not too expensive mp3 player that will work with Yahoo's music unlimited service. I have an older version of Apple ipod music that pretty much stops everytime when I cross the 5 mph speed limit (Can't blame the ipod as the product is a hard drive based on). Also, it is unfortunate that ipod shuffle doesnt work with Yahoo Music at all - otherwise that will be my first and only choice.

Based on my research these are the things that I believe one should look for in deciding on a MP3 player

- Make sure that MP3 player is flash drive based player (no moving parts). This would automatically restrict the size of your song collection to less than 2 GB - but being a player with no moving parts you should get more reliable performance.
- As far as possible try to buy a device that Yahoo kinda recommends or someone mentioned in their website that it works.
- Understand the lingo. Almost most of the devices that are there in the market say they support "Play for Sure" technology. All this means is that they support mp3 files that have been bought in stores like Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster etc. It DOES NOT mean that they work with a subscription service like Yahoo Unlimited.
- Read the CNET reviews and the user reviews. CNET reviews are probably more reliable than anything else out there

My buying experience
09/17/06 - I went and bought a Sansa C140 yesterday (as it was selling for cheap in Costco). Big mistake - this is a piece of junk - clumsy, operations are fairly non-intuitive, proprietary USB cable etc. Going to walk this back to the store.

10/12/06 - After returning the Sansa C140 (that was a while ago) - I went and bought Zen Nano plus 1 GB mp3 player. I bought this one for 2 reasons
a) On Sale at circuit city for 44 bucks.
b) Creative website mentioned that this device supports Yahoo Unlimited ( Talk about truth in advertising - more that on just a minute)

After bringing it home and updating with its latest firmware, I tried to configure it so that Yahoo music would pick it up. No luck. In reading through Creative and other blogs - I realized that this sucker was incompatible with Yahoo Music Unlimited as well. When Creative says that this device is compatible with Yahoo Unlimited - all it means is that whatever songs you BUY (as in in BUY) is movable to the player - but NOT the songs that you have selected and paying Money for the ON THE GO functionality of Yahoo. It seems that the best list to follow is the very SMALL list that Yahoo provides ( it is on their site for compatible devices). My next stop is to go buy a Zen V as I dont want any external hard drive -much prefer flash drive). Will keep this blog updated.

Curd Rice and South Indians

Some real random thought from the deep left field here ..

You are a South Indian (most likely a tamil) travelling with your family to places unknown- and 2 days into the trip - you get this withdrawl symptoms of this disease called Curd Rice Deprivation. I have often wondered why the heck I am so hooked onto this "Thachi Mammu" thing. Is this a gene thing?. Almost ready to say that it is - my kid who was born and brought up here in US can't do with curd rice for more than 2 days. We were out and about a few weeks ago - and my kid made me stop in some unknown place near Buffalo to go to a Wegman's. We got the rice from their restaurant/carryout and a plain yoghurt and added some pickle (aka "Oorugai") to it - and my kid felt better instantly.

Any thoughts/musings about the same are welcome.