Postcards From J

I love discovering. A quaint store, an underrated food joint, local markets, a tree-lined lane (increasingly, a rarity in Bombay), second-hand books, quirky merchandise, a cool bargain, picture postcards (finding a nice one in Mumbai is an achievement) and just about anything. It's my curiosity that eggs me on to do these things. A local market in Goa While nothing beats an actual shopping trip and stumbling upon the unusual, of late I've been checking out a lot of e-commerce portals. A LOT. And it's interesting, too, to see how the Indian online shopping scene has exploded.  Flipkart made it fashionable, I guess. And then you had everyone from SnapDeal, Fashion&You, 99Labels and a host of others selling everything and anything. I used to wait eagerly for their newsletters to see what deal(s) I could score, especially watches from fancy brands. I wasn't completely on board though. For most of the time, I was happy being a win...

The last weekend was super exciting. For one, I signed up for the first ever Bohri Mohalla Food Walk on Saturday, 1st December 2012 organised by prolific food blogger Kalyan Karmakar, a.k.a. @finelychopped on Twitter. Kalyan's blog is a veritable resource of food, glorious food. So, go look it up till I put together my thoughts on the walk itself. The other reason for my joy was a package that arrived from moo.com  - a cool printing service that prints business cards, minicards, postcards and more. I ordered a set of 60 postcards from them which had 60 photographs from my travels printed on them. Cool, na? Here are some pictures of the package and its contents: This is what the package looked like inside the bubble-wrap envelope. "Moo Postcards - helping keep mail alive" - Love the tagline! Slide off the outer cover and there's a plain white box with slits to add your business card. Moo gives you this option in case you're re-selling the car...

It has been a very busy few weeks at work thanks to a mega sporting event in London that concluded on Sunday (in the wee hours of Monday for us actually!). And I was feeling awful about missing all the monsoon sales that so many retail stores were offering. So, I took an off on the first occasion that I could and spent a good six (!) hours at the spanking new Phoenix Market City in Kurla. Yes, Kurla - that drab and totally unsexy suburb in central Mumbai. More about that later.  I wanted to pick a few things for myself and also make the most of the discounts by picking up future gifts at a steal * . And after those six hours, I returned home happy and sad. Happy because I found some great bargains and sad because the wallet was considerably lighter.  Le sigh.  My tweet captures it all: Charles & Keith, Body Shop, Accessorize, AND, Pantaloons and Debenhams are all a little richer today because of me. # RetailTherapy — vodkaholic (@vodkaholic) August 13,...

My no-shopping vow has taken a terrible beating the past few months, especially because of the ease and convenience of online shopping. Sample this: a watch, books, a pendant, more books, shoes, silver earrings, a bath towel (don't look surprised; it was from the Wimbledon tennis range), some more books and now... just look at these beauties that I picked up at the Aldo sale:   Even after discount, they cost me quite a bit. But, but, but... look at them. Sexy, no? Now I have to find the perfect outfit to wear them with. Sigh. Don't remind me of my credit card statement now. Please?

Last evening, I visited the spanking new Infiniti 2 at Malad West. Yet another gigantic mall which houses international brands, a food court, the fancy Manchester United Cafe & Bar among other things... It's still not completely operational, so it was empty on a Friday evening. After a bad traffic-filled ride to the mall, I caught up with girlfriends waiting for me and ended up burning my tongue sipping on a hot cappuccino from Gloria Jean's. Now these women had already finished all their shopping. Between the four of them, they had bought SEVEN pairs of shoes. Now, I couldn't be left behind, no? So, on our way out, I insisted on popping in to the Charles & Keith store on the ground floor. It also helped that they were having a flat 50% off on footwear. While I tried a few styles, I realised most of the stuff I liked were sold out in my size or *slightly* big for me. Damn you, feet-in-between-sizes-39-and-40! Anyway, I did pick one pair: a faux snake (or is it croc)...

"I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot."                                                                                   ~ Marilyn Monroe I'm lagging behind by a day on our August Blogging Challenge. And I just couldn't think of anything to write about... when I remembered this one post I've always wanted to do. About shoes. More specifically, *my* shoes. Let it be known that I was never a footwear fanatic. I don't remember any sole favourites as I was growing up simply because I never had much choice. My feet were always too large for kids my age, and too broad to fit dainty girly stuff. Also, having to wear black leather, and later brown canvas shoes as part of my school uniforms five days a week ensured I didn't really miss out on much. My indiffere...

Breakfast - here we come! We were scheduled to leave from the hotel at 8:30 am. A note received yesterday said we should be ready by 8. Waking up early in the morning on a holiday can be such a task. Managed to drag ourselves to the AM Cafe on the ground floor of our hotel to have breakfast. Well, it should be renamed "breakFEAST". Bread, eggs (any way you want: scrambled, double fried, sunny-side-up, boiled), muffins, sausages, beef pastrami (YUMMY!), chicken-somethings, croissants, waffles, French toast, juice/tea/coffee, fruits... and even vegetarian Indian fare like aloo gobi ;) A round flattish bread called 'naan bread' was amazing to have after filling it up with pastrami and ham. We even tried to sneak out a few muffins so we could eat later (considering we barely had time to have a leisurely breakfast). A nasty-looking stewardess saw us and said we couldn't do that - yes, it was embarrassing but then, with a breakfast fit for royalty and with prices for go...