Eating Nacho Chips with a Spoon

Hi there,

Just wanted to give you an update from India since Karen is gone to America. I thought I would explain some of the social events that happen around here. Ignore the first picture for now, we will get back to that in a minute. The second photo just shows a group of folks
that are called the Gurgaon Connection. On Wednesday mornings they meet at the local Crowne Plaza Hotel for coffee and pastries. I don't get to go too often because I am out of town

but for the last two weeks I have been able to attend. It was here that we met our friends Gene and Kim Copeland. Gene was brave enough to come to these meetings, too, even though he and I and Bill are the only men who show up for this. The rest are wives of men who are in India working full-time jobs or are here with their own business and they have enough flexibility in their schedules to occasionally come to this.

That's Bill on the left of photo 3. His wife is an attorney who is here helping develop their clientele in India. The last photo is Kim, and Gene with me at the coffee. I hadn't taken my camera out with me for awhile so I brought it today and took a couple of photos of the group.

It's one of the meetings around here that is mainly for people from other places for whom India isn't home and to share feelings and thoughts about living here. Gene is a training pilot under contract with Air India on their CRJ commuter jets. Kim came to India once and then went back to Texas. Gene has been here for 2 and 1/2 years and now he got Kim back and I believe she is going to stay this time. She is really good friends with my Karen. After our social gathering this morning Gene and Kim were kind enough to give me a ride home so I suggested that we go out to eat lunch on the way. Gene suggested this new restaurant out by our place that we thought was a new Mexican food place because the name was Picante's. It also has a picture of a huge chili pepper on it's sign. In America this would definitely be a Mexican restaurant. So, while Gene and Kim were up front I went on back and looked for a table. As soon as we walked in, which was more outside than in, but with a covered area with ceiling fans, we sat down and got the menu. Now, here we were captive at this place and pretty much committed to eating here and now the menu doesn't have one, single Mexican item on it. It's an Indian food place with a chili pepper picture and Picante as a name because they put pepper pretty much in everything they cook. Oh, and if you look at that menu from the restaurant in the picture up above, you will see an interesting picture of a woman smoking from a "hookah" and apparently they have Picante flavored hookah if you want at this place. Now tell me the closest restaurant to where you live that offers Picante flavored hookah right on the menu!! See, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I just had to take a picture of it and send along for the blog page this week. We ordered some "chili potatoes" and some chicken with "low spice". Actually, while we had fear, the food was pretty good and we came out okay on our risky deal.

Now for the closer on today's stories, I have to tell you why I am now eating Nacho chips with a spoon. When I was in California with my son and was going to be flying immediately back to Delhi, I asked him to take me somewhere where I could buy some huge bags of nacho chips. He knew exactly where to take me to get some "Mission tortilla strips". They are great chips and I purchased two huge bags to put in the special suitcase I had borrrowed from Brad and Jess just to bring food that I like back to India. I had canned foods and flushable baby wipes and batteries and all sorts of things in there, along with my books from my refresher flight course. Well, I found out that the TSA, our new government Security forces were not at all happy with the two huge bags of tortilla chips since this is possibly a way to smuggle drugs. So, they left a nice note in the suitcase that explained that due to new rules they had to go through the tortilla chip bags. The clear plastic windows on the sides of the bags were both pierced (I hope they were wearing clean gloves) and of course, it wouldn't do to just put your finger in the bag, no, you have to check all around in case someone is smuggling something in those chips, so, when I arrived in Delhi, the cans of food were quite bent and the chips looked more like powder than chips. I am not to be deterred and, so, while in America I would have thrown them away, I have determined not to let TSA beat me at my own game, so now I have to eat my chips with a spoon because there is really no other convenient way to eat chips that are ground pretty much to powder. Amazingly, the taste is still great and in the dry climate here in Delhi they are staying relatively fresh for having been a month and a half since I bought them. See what you can do when you put your mind to it. The main reason I had bought them was to enjoy with Karen's homemade "Poor Man's Caviar" dip recipe that we got from Jennifer in Pittsburgh. It is an awesome recipe and we picked out the largest pieces as carriers for the dip. It worked and now the rest of the chips are way too small to do anything with but dip with a spoon and enjoy the taste, if not the texture. Remember my father said one of the ways to survive in a foreign country was to remain "adaptable?" Well, here's a good example of adapability.

Tomorrow I have to fly for the first time in about 5 days. Just to make it interesting, the aviation authorities in India have decided since the Air India crash that they should occasionally ride along with everyone and make sure that they are using safe procedures. Fortunately for me, my pilot buddy Gene has been on a couple of checks with this very inspector so he told me what to expect and the kinds of questions that he will ask. Very helpful and it should be an easy day if the visibility cooperates. The airport we are flying into is a Visual airport only so we will be required to have 5 kilometers of visibility (about 3 and 1/2 miles). This will be reported by the tower guy at the destination airport, who is the local flight instructor at the flight school walking around with a low powered walkie-talkie to be the "controller" at our destination. The runway is only 4000 feet long and it will be hot so we will keep the fuel way down since the airport is only 25 minutes from Delhi. It's just a drop off of passengers and head right back to Delhi, so should be an easy day.

Karen called and the wedding proceeded according to schedule in Las Vegas so she is enjoying a few family days and then heading back to our place near Pittsburgh to finish cleaning up some of the messes we left behind and to put some stuff in storage.

I hope you all are doing well and enjoying your summer.

Dan