Indian Fast Food

I categorize Indian fast food into either dhabas or street food. Dhabas are usually road side eateries with a fast food feel. They serve meals, but don't have the ambiance to match fine dining. Street food consists of vendors selling items from a cart or out of a booth. Some of the best food can be found at places that don't even have a sign out front. Anything else is a restaurant, and not really fast food, in my opinion.

American Fast Food Abroad

One of the things I found interesting about traveling last year are the differences in American fast food chains when they are opened in other countries. Consider this bit of dialog from the 90's movie Pulp Fiction:

Jules: You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?
Brett: No.
Jules: Tell 'em, Vincent.
Vincent: A Royale with cheese.
Jules: A Royale with cheese! You know why they call it that?
Brett: Because of the metric system?
Jules: Check out the big brain on Brett!

King of TT

I never really played table tennis until I moved to India. There, it seems to be a very popular activity. Since I was such a horrible player, I became known as टी टी का माहाराजा or "Ti Ti ka Maharaja - grand king of table tennis". At the DreamWorks Animation office in Glendale, there are several tables and just about any time of the day you can find people playing.

We recently held a tournament, and someone captured a video of the final match. I am posting it here. I don't know what happened to game two, but hopefully YouTube user ceark will post it in the near future. Enjoy!

Dragon Day at DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks Animation recently released How To Train Your Dragon, which I think is their (our?) best work to date. Yes, I work at DreamWorks, but as a computer nerd I had nothing to do with the creativity which led to the magic of this film. Anyway, we celebrated the opening of this film on campus and I wanted to share some photos. I took some pictures too, but some coworkers took much better photos. Links to the complete sets of their photos are available at the bottom, and here are some photos from the day taken by others.

Contra on Your iPhone

This is extremely geeky, but phone to do a time or two. Using Safari on your iPhone, browse to www.konamicodesites.com and then enter the "code" by swiping Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right. If performed correctly, two buttons appear on the screen. Press B then A and the site will return a character from Contra.

Bangalore Nostalgia

Memories of Bangalore, originally uploaded by s_w_ellis.

IT World sent me an email with links to the article "19 Weird but Real Gadgets and Gizmos". The Bug Zapper is one widget on the list. In Bangalore they were commonplace and I purchased one for just under $4 USD. Plus, mine plugged into the wall outlet to recharge the batteries in the handle.

Anyway, seeing this item surfaced great memories of Bangalore. Hello to you all in Ozone and at ITPL!