The album trip!

Well!! As some of you might know, I work for a company which manages artists. One of our artists, Swarathma released their self titled album called 'Swarathma'. Hence we had an album launch tour which started off in Bangalore with a bang!!! then went on to Pune, Mumbai and Delhi.

Swarathma are a great bunch of guys to hang out with!!! I was with them continously for the last one week. We started off with Bangalore where the launch was held at Opus. The place was over crowded!! It was soo packed that if you needed to go out, it would take atleast 10 minutes. So the launch started. Now Swarathma had won this Radio City Live contest through which they got this album deal with Virgin. Hence everything had to look very corporate. Although all credit to EMI/Virgin for allowing the artist to create all designs and artwork related to the album and the launch. Anyways so the launch started off with an RJ from Radio City luanching the album. It was a typical launch where the a chief guest had to open a gift wrapped album (which was quote boring) but had to be done. If I were to do the launch I'd probably have dropped from the ceiling or something!! That's something interesting just like the band. So ya! the performance then started. It was an absolutely fantastic performance.

Now during the performance besides management, I also had a small job of shooting the show with this ancient camera that Jishnu (the bassist) had. Now in between I had to go out for something. Can't really remember what it was. While walking out, I managed to sprain my ankle, which hurts real bad cause of the cold!! 

Now I was handicapped! So instead of me managing the band, I was managing them. I couldn't lift luggage, and oh ya! Not to mention that they had app. 200 kgs of luggage. If someone were to see that luggage, they'd thing were exporting instuments to another country! 

So that was my day. And yeah as usual I forgot 1 important thing. We sold out CDs. We actually sold 200 cds. I've been with this company for a year now. Never have I seen so many CDs getting sold in one show. So this was it!! My day ended with a band as well!

The next day morning I woke up. And my foot was fuckin killing me. It hurt like crazy. Was staying at Jishnu's place, and he had gone to work. He actually came back and took me to the doctor. The doc gave me some pain killers considering I had a 16 hour journey from Bangalore to Pune that day. Post this we went for lunch. Some Mallu lunch!! It was awesome... We had some rice, great beef and fish curry. My mouth's actually watering now while I write this post at 1 am now. So ya, this was a typical Mallu restaurant with great food. The water here is pink in colour and is hot!! Ya.. they don't serve you chilled water like most places do. Apparently any self respecitng Mallu restaurant would you this water which has some herbs in it as well. Supposed to be very clean!! After having a good meal, we headed back to Jishnu's place where I had to pack and then leave for Pune.

My Pune story continues on the next page...

christmas dinner!

IMG_0673, originally uploaded by Jovan Martins.

This was dinner at my place in goa during christmas.... just look at that layout!

mondys

I had a show setup at Taj Colaba today early which thankfully got over on time... and I was really hungry since I'd hardly slept for 2 hours the previous night.

So I decided to go for breakfast... and it's very rare that I have breakfast at 8 in the morning.

Now I had an option of going to Mondy's i.e. Cafe Mondegar or some other 'udipi restaurant' to have dosa.
'Udipi restaurants are there everywhere in Bombay, so I enetered Mondy's and ordered the 'Mondy's special" which included, jam and toast, ham, sausages, scrambled egg, mango juice and coffee...
It was delicious and then to add to it they had this slow mexican music playing early morning.... it felt like you were in one of these english cafe's kind of thing....

So before the order came.. I wanted to take pictures of the what the cafe looks like for those who might not know it... but then everyone started staring as if I wanted to bomb one of those places.

I've been to Mondy's earlier.. but never actually noticed as to how those pics on the walls are placed... According to me your supposed to look from right to left... and then all of them made sense... but I was also really sleepy, so I don't really know if I'm right.

I think everyone who comes here should make a trip to Mondys, it's a really classic cool place.

gallopin gooseberries

We were in Chennai for Kavita's wedding, who by the way is my cousin sister for those who don't know...
Now the wedding was in Nagarcoil which is Tamil Nadu. I was coming here after some 16 years...
The food here in south India is really good. But I must say that not everyone wouldn't like it.. It's like an acquired taste!
Everyday for breakfast there would be some south Indian food. My favorite breakfast there was puttu. It's like a powderish thing, I don't know what it's made of though since I don't know how to cook.

So, we had a fantastic holiday.. It was boiling hot... but then that was part of the fun since eveyone had your support.

We then went to Chennai for the other reception. The day before the reception we went for lunch to this place called Gallopin Gooseberries....
They have the most amazing burgers. I wish we got those kind of burgers in Bombay. There is this place called Bembo's which has some really good stuff. But let's keep that for another story.
Check out this pic I took at Gooseberries..