September 6, 2013 | Awake & Dreaming

I was in Revenue Tower (near St. Theresa’s College) for the very first time today. I was there to meet a person who works in HR & Recruitment for a job consultancy and was there for about an hour or so. I decided to have lunch at their food court, which I had come to know has the one of the largest options of various food vendors in Cochin. I hadn’t even know about this place for a long time and thought I should check it out. Here are some photos.

I have to say that they could really do a lot with it. It was deserted the whole time I was there and one other customer came to sit at a table just as I was leaving. There was a 15 minute wait for the food to arrive. I do like their colour chairs and in one section they had some nice colourful designed floor tiles. But much like the entire building, the place is shabby and dull. Plenty of food stalls though. A shame this is not properly maintained or advertised to attract a big crowd.

I had decided to try out the vendor for NFC (Newyork Fried Chicken) which is a Indian owned restaurant (unsure if they are a single stand alone outlet or if they have a few outlets as they don’t seem to have a website). They serve food similar to KFC and Chick King. But they should keep someone who knows the language. Also he wasn’t sure what they had – he had to check and find out if my order was available. Plus they had no fries – which is odd as they have fries with most of the combo meals – due to some reason. And they had no Pepsi even though they had adverts for Pepsi all over their menu and especially in their combos. Very shabbily run stall!

I ordered the Garlic chicken burger with a piece of crispy fried chicken (as they didn’t have fries) and I drank water. It came to a total of Rs.155. Below is a photo of the slightly mashed up burger, but it was hot and quite tasty. The chicken – not so much; it lack a basic ingredient known as salt!

In one of the most bizarre & stupidest stories I have heard in a while an exorcist in Sri Lanka was killed while performing a cleansing of a house that had “evil spirits”. Apparently this man, Maxi Castro, was called to perform this ritual just outside the capital city Columbo and according to the police, he sacrificed a cat and was then buried in a shallow grave after instructing onlookers to dig him out once he gave a signal of pushing a sword he was carrying through the ground. After 3 hours there was no sign or signal from Castro and no sword coming out of the ground.

This is when the onlookers decided to pull him out anyway, but he was unconscious. The 32-year-old man, identified by police as Maxi Castro, a local exorcist, was taken to hospital early Thursday morning but he had already died, the official said. The man had been requested to drive out demons feared residing in the home of a school teacher at the village of Pelanwatte. “I saw him perform a ritual like this at a temple six months ago and invited him to check my property,” the teacher, Wasantha Bandara, told local radio station Shree FM. “He said I had bad luck because someone had sprinkled human ash at my house, but he could drive out evil spirits through this ritual.”

Police spokesman Buddhika Siriwardena confirmed the incident and said an investigation was underway. Many in Sri Lanka, where 70 percent of the population are Buddhists, have faith in black magic, sorcery and exorcism, and place great importance on astrology. Important state functions are held according to the auspicious times chosen by astrologers.