The bad guys ???

Watched the movie "The Pacifier" with a bunch of friends last night. This was a family DISNEY movie that you watch with kids and grandparents. The movie does have bad guys like in any movie today. For a change I saw that North Korea (and north koreans) were the bad guys in this movie. This movie came out less than six months ago!. I found that interesting. A major movie house in the United States is line with the Government's foreign policy and they are joining the same band wagon as the general heavily biased media.

I remember seeing summer blockbuster after another, which had the typical muslim/arab looking middle eastern guy being the villain. Enough movies to stereotype any dude with an arab nose branded as a potential terrorist by the average moviegoer (True Lies and all hits within +/- six months of True Lies). Does this help the USA recruit more innocent people in the war against the middle east ? Is this all a general brainwashing strategy ? One cannot but wonder when we start seeing the Koreans being the bad guys in movies now that US is at crossroads with North Korea on nuclear issues. We did have a bond movie with a korean villan two years ago. Then things died down and the Middle eastern moslems were back as villans. Now the Koreans are making a comeback ?

Bollywood (Bombay's movie industry) makes 3 times as many movies a year as Hollywood and has a bigger audience. The average indian is as prime a candidate for brainwashing as the average american moviegoer, but it is a crying shame that Bollywood doesnt adopt this strategy to put the bad guys(?) in their place.

Learn from Hollywood !!

Long lost friends !

I am a regular reader of "bbthots" - the "cousin brother-in-law's" blog site. He had links to other bloggers. So I started clicking on them one by one. Lo and Behold, I clicked on "Mukundan" and an old friends face pops up. I cannot tell you how happy I was to see that this guy, who I havent met in almost 10 years was doing fine. Happens to be a star blogger too, maintaining the india bloggers site !

Then it so happens that one of my wife's classmates passes by my blog and sees pictures and gets in touch with her after 6 years!

I have gone back to check all the standard zodiac columns expecting them to tell me "you will meet old friends".. but nope. Not one column, or the horoscope that gets downloaded in my pager, predicts that. But it sure has been a week to meet old friends !

Go Blogs !

BARR- Bhavikas

I was introdced to Bhavikas as soon as I landed in California by my college buddy. He told me then that it was the best "take out" place in the bay area. I got hooked then and I am still hooked now. You have all heard "home away from home", Bhavikas has been a "mom away from mom" for me. So this review will be biased ! But that is what makes this reviewing fun. Throw in my bias !

This is a little take out (and eat in if you are in the mood) place on the north-east corner of El Camino Real and Henderson. The place doesnt look top notch as a sit and eat restaurant, but the food is great.

Considering the fact that it is located alongside 4 other indian stores, a strip bar and a 7/11, parking is not always easy to find. But once you eat the hot puffy roti's at Bhavikas, I am sure they will motivate you to find parking.


Wait time : 5 minutes
Food wait time from order : 5 minutes
Check time : 1 minutes (here we are talking about the line for paying - no credit cards accepted. it is literally cash or check)
Average price per person : $4.5
Rating "Grandma, where are you ?".
Service : excellent

Items sampled : Practially everything in the menu (over the last 7 years)

But today it was aalo palak, paratha, rotis, lemon rice and dahi (home made yogurt)

Unlike my five tier rating, my daughter has only a two tier rating.
It is either

• "yummy"
• "yukkie"

Today she practially sampled everything as "yummy".
She might be biased too.. she has been raised on Bhavikas roti's from a very young age (most of my wifes pregnancy). It is the first place she recognized in terms of directions! If we were anywhere in that neighborhood she would point to the correct direction and say "Bhavikas" when she was only 20 months old!

A lot of my friends think I go to Bhavikas often because it is cheap. That is so not true. I reallllly love their food. The affordability is an added bonus.

Some Tips :

You get really puffy hot rotis if you go there between 7:30-9:00 and on weekends between 12:00-1:30 in the afternoon.

You can sample a spoon of tea before you decide to buy it ! My wife always does that. 75% of the time the tea is out of the world. Sometimes it is too strong for me.

The rice varieties are recent introductions to their menu. The lemon rice is the best.