Photos

May 11 2013

Woods Manor’s New Pizzeria

Time to discover an all new pizza place in good ole Cochin. Woods Manor is a long established hotel in the city on MG Road. They used to have a cafe called the Sidewalk Cafe. Well that is no longer there and the took apart the place and rebuilt it as a semi-open cafe called Pizzeria. Yes it’s just called Pizzeria and it’s a good little pizza place with some sandwiches, burgers and stuff as well. After attending an engagement today, I left early as there was a huge crowd in this small house and arranged for my cousin and I to have a couple of beers and then we went to have pizza.

I’m guessing they have a chef who has had some proper training in making pizzas because they are really serious about the pizzas here and they are really good. Really like the image on the front. Their furniture isn’t as good and they should replace them. It’s also a little too hot and no washroom in the near vicinity (you have to go to the main part of the building and then go past their normal restaurant to the washroom).

The pizzas are delicious. My cousin Sujith had a Chilli Prawn pizza – prawn as he was on a sea food roll for the week.

I had the Cajun Spiced Chicken pizza. Both were delicious and the thin crust were crunchy and everything was really good. We had Sprints (kinda like a very bad local imitation of Sprite) to wash them down.

Great pizzas – however they took almost 25 minutes to acknowledge us for the bill. No waiter or manager was around for a while even though there were one other table occupied at this late afternoon hour (we went in at 4:15 pm). If they improve some aspects of their service, this will be one great place for some slices.

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/digg_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/reddit_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/stumbleupon_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/delicious_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blinklist_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blogmarks_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/furl_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/newsvine_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/technorati_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/magnolia_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/google_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/myspace_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/facebook_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/yahoobuzz_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/mixx_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/twitter_48.png

http://awakeanddreaming.org/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/meneame_48.png

By Roshan • Cochin, Food, Kerala, Photos • 3

May 6 2013

Nonic English Pint Glasses – Set of 2

On March 7th I placed an order on Zansaar.com for a set of 2 Nonic English Pint glasses (583 ml capacity) from British manufactures Ravenhead. I was quite looking forward to these authentic English pint beer glasses. Now I opted for the cash on delivery option and waited for a week. With no information coming after that, I called their customer care up. Initially their delivery dates are within 5-7 days of making the order but this one now shows 48-55 days instead!

Apparently, instead of only showing things that they have for sale, for items like this, they take in the orders and place bulk request from Ravenhead and wait for it to be shipped to India. Once it reaches their godown in Bangalore, the online retailer then proceeds to sort the various packages out and send it to the customers. This took 61 days for me. Terrible!

Anyway finally today I got a package. But wait, this is the photo of my package. I actually got a much bigger package from the courier guys at 4pm. I signed and paid for it and then went to my room to open it up – wrong package! In the cartoon I found a white alarm clock, a nylon masher & a large curry dish. What the fuck! I called Zansaar to have them check.

A few minutes the courier delivery guy called me on my cell – it was a mix up on his end. The big package had no stickers on it, although mine did, and he mixed it up with mine. The big package was for a lady named Reshma Menon in Kaloor and you can see how he mistook Roshan Menon for Reshma Menon! Anyways, no harm done, he came back to my place and gave me my box and took the other one away.

So then I opened my box and unpacked my little purchase. Here is the 2 piece set in a little paper holder. Nice aren’t they? These are the ones I see quite a lot on beer videos and beer reviews on Youtube and love the way they look. Now if I only had some really good craft beer to drink – Irish red, stouts or porters – but I guess a Pepsi will have to do for now. Will get some beer later in the week. Cheers!

Here are the two videos I shot of the unboxing

By Roshan • Drinking, Personal, Photos, Video Clip • 0

May 5 2013

Delicious & Finger Licking Good Bird

Rather delicious, finger licking good and yeah a little small but I love quail meat. This pic is from last week.

By Roshan • Food, Photos • 1

Apr 24 2013

A Look At SFC Plus

I’d like to show you the newest place (new as in atleast for me) that I like to go to for a quick bite to eat and some cold drink. SFC Plus is an Abu Dhabi based, Indian Malayalee owned, fast food restaurant which currently has two franchises in Cochin. The one that I go to, or have been going to for the past month or so, is the one in Alliance Residency on Marine Drive, which is quieter, much much quieter shopping mall next to the hustle & bustle that is the Bay Pride Mall. And while Bay Pride has the food court with Indian, Chinese and Marry Brown’s similar fast food menu, I think I prefer SFC Plus.

One main reason I like SFC Plus is that it’s quieter and less crowded. The 4 times I have been there there’s just a few people in there and it’s quiet and peaceful. There is also a lot more seating available with wisely placed tables, booth seats and in the middles these smaller square table with cushion stools. There’s plenty of space and 3 doors leading into the outlet as well. Now the menu is similar to Marry Brown’s – southern fried chicken, chicken strips, some veggie burgers, chicken burgers, prawn & chicken subs, salads, fried rice, wraps and good pizzas. And they do have 2-3 rather cute & petite lady servers from North East India! Bonus

I’ve had the chicken sub twice (the third pic) and their prawn sub (the 4th pic) and both are very good. Their fries are hot & awesome tasting. Their burger was ok, nothing to rave about. And once I had a pizza from there, a barbecue chicken with jalapenos, capsicum, onion & tomato pizza which was hot, good and served on a hot plate. So since the food is good as well I really enjoy this place. They mostly have Coke to drink but I also had a Sprite there once. Nice place to chill out in the evenings.

By Roshan • Cochin, Food, Photos • 0

Apr 8 2013

Facebook vs Twitter

Do you feel like you “get” social media, or do you just use it because that’s where all your friends and family are?

I think every is on Facebook/Twitter and other such sites (I’m gonna use these two as the main talking points since they are the most popular) for a few similar reasons. Beyond the main reason – in that it’s where everyone is and it’s an easy way to keep in touch and communicated some ideas, thoughts, announcements, videos & photographs. Facebook has shown it to be easy to make a lot of new friends and reconnect with old ones that you had previously lost touch with. And ofcourse lose a few and make a few more enemies along the way! That’s a given.

But I think it’s also a way to reach out to like minded individuals, form communities, share important messages and conducts meetings. I’m not just there to share jokes and videos. There are people on it who just want to say hi to all their friends, wish them good morning/good afternoon/good evening/good night and happy weekend and share pics of babies, animals & flowers and goodies. I hate it when guys over here have their new picture taken, post them and then tag all the girls in their friends list. What the fuck is that all about? Ofcourse they should be able to do that if that’s what they want but have some substance in your posts atleast once in a while. I’d post food, animals & the occasional cute baby in a funny costume pic as well but there is a lot of other stuff that I write about and post pics/videos about.

And ofcourse since I am an atheist it’s even more annoying when some people continuously posts the ‘i am nothing without god’, ‘throw yourself at the feet of god’ type posts all day and nothing not one one valuable thing to contribute. How un-uplifting is that? god is great and we are shit! Bunch of morons. I can understand the few posts here and there but come on grow a pair of balls and get on with your one and only life. And my last rant is those Facebookers who only posts images of things that they like but don’t say anything at all. I mean no words, no comments just image after image after image.

Atleast Twitter is different. No one remains on Twitter unless they have some stuff to say. And it’s always interesting. Some people may start an account at first but soon lose interest when they can’t come up with stuff to say or share.

By Roshan • Net Stuff, Photos, Ramblings • 1

Apr 7 2013

I’ve Seen Better Days & Times

Things aren’t going so great work wise. I’m depressed and feeling really bad about it. But you gotta enjoy the weekend right? Especially since we only get 1 day a week off and not the actual 2 day weekend that a lot of others enjoy. Wasn’t sure as to what to do for the evening so I decided to wing it. Mom was away for the weekend and dad was going to the club.

By 6pm I knew that I wanted some pizza for dinner and wanted to see if I could get a couple of beers to wash it down. Unfortunately the sea of humanity (or just men) in front of the BevCo nearest to me dissuaded me – by the time I would reach the counter it would be past 8pm at least! I wasn’t in the mood to go to a bar so I just came home. On the way I bought some 7up.

By 7:45pm the pizza delivery guy reached my apartment. Looks great right? It’s a Chicken Italia from Pizza Hut – chicken chunks, sausages (chicken and not pork), cheese, onions, sweet corn, olives & jalapenos. It was yummy.

The only thing that I was upset about was that I didn’t get the beer that I was looking for. Instead I drank cold 7up. Well since its also very good and my second favourite soft drink (after Sprite) I did enjoy it. It’s so hot in Kerala right now and I keep drinking a lot of 7up. However after I was done with my dinner my dad came back home and he had bought beer from the club. Kingfisher Gold and yeah I had some of it as well. Cheers my Saturday night was complete.

By Roshan • Food, Photos • 1

Mar 10 2013

Awesome Lunch With My Cousin

I hadn’t spent my time with cousin Sujith since the new year, except for a brief late dinner of pizza at Dominos last month. We needed a much longer session with good food and drinks so we could discuss more movies, Scifi and atheism/religion. We decided to have it today. We met just after 12:30 pm this afternoon at Golden Dragon in Ravipuram, which is our favourite place to hang out. We had a beer each and 2 vodkas. Beers were not cold enough. And they only had plain Romanov and none of the flavoured ones.

We went all out on the food tying out 6 different dishes but no rice or noodles or anything like that. we mostly stuck to starters kind of items but having 6 of them was awesome. We did 2 each of chicken, prawn and pork dishes including spring rolls.

The honey glazed crispy pork (pictured above) was delicious and delightful. Chicken Spring rolls and prawn spring rolls were awesome, as I expected them to be as were the Dragon chicken and Schezwan fried prawns, which are both usual items that we order. And the dragon crispy fried pork (pictured below) was awesome too.

All in all a great outing. We were there till almost 4pm at which point we went to get some ice cream sundaes to finish off our day.

By Roshan • Drinking, Food, Photos • 2

Mar 1 2013

Friday Sandwich Photo 13

From Cafe Coffee Day here is the sometimes awesome and sometimes not so great Chicken 65 sandwich. It’s hit and miss – when it’s good it’s great and at times it seems rather bland. This pic is of a really good one.

By Roshan • Food, Photos • 2

Feb 13 2013

Pizza With A Cousin

I hadn’t had pizza since late December and I was hungry for some. Yesterday it so happened that I forgot to pack a lunch for work and ended up eating just a few biscuits in the afternoon. So I was hungry come 5pm and decided to meet up with my cousin Sujith for some pizza at the Dominos outlet in Palarivattom.

Well, I couldn’t pick up my lunch and actually Sujith & I had planned to meet up for pizza well in advance – we planned it the past Sunday and agreed to make it on Tuesday. Me not having had lunch was just a coincidence! But yes that did leave me famished by 5pm and so I quickly left the office and made my way to Palarivattom junction where Sujith would be waiting for me.

So we met at a half hour past 5 and went into the outlet and perused through the menu. We ordered a Zesty chicken and a chicken pizza with golden corn something. And two 600 mls cokes. It was a hot day, the weather turning a bi mean these past few days and we were happy to sip our cokes but not happy that there were a few flies in the place. A couple of them were bothering us!

So our boxes arrived and we tucked into our medium pies. we also shared a slice each of the other’s pizza and I must say that I preferred his better to mine. Anyway, we were happy to munch on our slices and chatted for a while.

This is his pizza!

And this was my pizza!

By Roshan • Family, Food, Photos • 3

Jan 27 2013

Some Good Old Tube H2O

Sometimes on a really hot evening all you need is some cold H2O to quench your thirst. And it’s great for you. I just wish that coffeeshops & cafes didn’t charge you ridiculous amounts like Rs.20 for a plastic tube of 600 ml capacity! They should be giving it free.

By Roshan • Photos • 0

Jan 12 2013

Fish n’Chips – Much Better Version

Ok, a few weeks ago (in November) I had posted a pic of a fish n chips plate I had from Abad’s Cafe Canopy. I had labelled it as a miniature version of fish n chips and was disappointed in both the size of the dish and the taste. A few days back I tried it again in the evening after a tiring day and I must say that this time – they did a much better job. The fish pieces were bigger, juicer and more succulent. Just amazingly delicious. Can’t say the same for the chips or French fries as they weren’t that good but overall I loved it so much.

By Roshan • Cochin, Food, Photos • 0

Dec 29 2012

Update On The “Holidays”

Hey people, what’s happening? How have your holidays been? Mine has been like this so far – due to some issues I had some problem with cash till the 18th of December after which things have been back to normal. We worked on the last Sunday – 7 days in a row, Monday to Saturday day shifts and on Sunday I did a 7pm to 3:30 am shift just so we could join the night shift for their Christmas celebrations. Then worked on Monday for just 4 hours and spent Christmas eve and Christmas all alone at home. Had some good food – grilled chicken with porota for Christmas eve and a pizza, picture a few posts below for the 25th.

During the Christmas celebrations for the night shift at our office, I was asked to speak about Christmas in front of the whole lot. Boy do I have things to say! But all I said was “every festival & holiday is based on stories. Just like for the harvest & monsoon seasons, the winter solstice has been celebrated for 1000s of years – even before Christmas was created.” But let’s not forget what this time like every other festival or holiday season is all supposed to be about – family & friends. Spend time with your family and your friends, appreciate them, do things as a family and enjoy your time. That’s the only thing that matters. Thank you!”

Oh I got two gifts from my two Secret Santas. I had one from the morning shift and one from the night shift and similarly I bought two gifts for my two Secret Santas. I got a Gatsby deodrant and the wall hanging painting done on some different canvas. I like both a lot.

So now that the Pagan holiday stolen by Christians, more specifically the Romans, is done, it’s now for my favourite days of the year. New Year’s eve and New Year’s Day! Just like last week, I am working on this Sunday and I am a little pissed off about that. Working just so I can get a holiday on the 1st of January. But for me, working on the 1st is a no-no and I do not want to work on this day, a pact I have with myself for the past 8 years. I choose the 1st of every new year to spend by myself and do an analysis of the past year, what I did right and what I did wrong and what I want to change for the new year ahead of me. So it’s important for me to take the day for myself. This is the case for everyone at the office so, most are working tomorrow a Sunday in order to get Tuesday off.

By Roshan • Personal, Photos • 0

Dec 25 2012

Pepperoni Pizza From Pizza Hut

By Roshan • Food, Photos • 0

Dec 22 2012

This Is My Office During The Holidays

I’m not posting pics of the celebrations and fun events until I get permission to post people’s pics. But this what the office looked like. There was some fun stuff from 2 pm onwards. Unfortunately, I’m working tomorrow, yes on a Sunday, from 7pm to 3:30 am but there will be fun celebrations from midnite onwards.

By Roshan • Photos • 0

Dec 11 2012

Grilled Hens, No Coop Needed

Taken almost a month ago at a Arabian restaurant called Burfis near my place that I go to a couple of times a month. They are known for their Shawarmas but I find that their grilled chicken in the Al Faham style is just excellent. They are made just right and I enjoy them with some porottas.

By Roshan • Cochin, Food, Kerala, Photos • 2

Dec 5 2012

Coffee For The Coffee Lover

This was from a few weeks back – a mocha cafe from Fort Cafe. I need to go back there and try it again, I remember it as being awesome!

By Roshan • Coffee, Photos • 2

Nov 26 2012

My New Beer Glass

I bought a new beer glass – a purchase I made on eBay on the spur of the moment – which is the the 350ml Hopside Down Double Wall Beer Glass Cup from ebay. Ain’t it cool! I’ll upload a couple of videos on it as well.