Orderly Disorder

I was on invitation for a business meeting with our German business associate coinciding with their participation in a trade exhibition in Hamburg. Having dealt with them over the years but I never had the opportunity of meeting most of them.My hostess was their effervescent Export Manager, a smart lady in her early to mid forties, a Peruvian by birth,French by her education and German by her domicile. As I was to learn, she was a live wire who amazed me with the ease, speed and dexterity in switching from one language to another. Spanish ,French,Italian,English and German , she had it all in her bag, attending to business associates like me and visiting prospects at the stand in their respective language of comfort. After close of play, four of us waved a taxi just outside the trade fair gate to get us back to our hotel. My co-inhabitant colleagues were a German who knew little English, A Spaniard who struggled with both his German & English, myself with my plain vanilla Engl...

A true measure of any city is never complete without savouring it's street food. Bangkok's street food is reknown and this lady on the right seemed to be the local street food queen tossing out pancakes like a well oiled production factory on her street cart parked just outside the Hua Lam Phong MRT station. Locals queued up and it did not take long for Kalpesh ( standing behind) and me to leave our Simha beers and join the locals. The recipe seems quite simple, Refined flour, lotsa butter, eggs and a generous helping of Thai Banana's topped in the end with Condensed Milk.Huge Calorie count here but this sure was one worth indulging in.Our veggie Gujju bhai Kalpesh was quite apprehensive before biting in to it and once he started, I did not get any more pancake. Go for this one, the next time you are in Bangkok.I believe Chocolate flavours are also available.