Mysore

The Dynasty Restaurant's Roof dining section in the Palace Plaza Hotel at Sri Harsha Rd, Mysore has an awesome view of the sunset near the clock tower! Really good food too and great service. The roof only opens at 7pm though.

Logging onto the net with yet another computer terminal and I find that the person who had used it to upload photos to flickr most recently was Claude Renault! I take whatever precious online time to gape in awe at his wonderful images and his eye for beautiful moments.

The Maharaja's Palace in Mysore was definitely worth a looksee but perhaps from outside only. I am growing weary of portrait after portraits of rich and powerful people and the furniture and paraphernalia they accumulated. In all frankness they look just like the man on the street but surrounded with pomp and grandeur. I guess thats why pomp, grandeur and etiquette is so important, its the only real differenciating factor.

The Jayachamarajendra Gallery has its art works lighted with fluroescent lighting, which is a pain, especially when the glare from the carefully placed tubes obsures the faces of the paintings they tried to illuminate.

The word on the street is definitely on the gas price hike. The government chose to handle rising oil prices by finally conceding to a rise in petrol prices by 10%, to alleviate the losses incurred so far by Indian oil companies who have all the while been forced to sell petrol at a loss, and the agitation is arising from why they didn't opt to instead lower the tax levied on said oil companies which would lead to the same outcome, sans the burden on the consumer.

It was an amusing incident today at lunch when two auto-rickshaw drivers tried painstaking to explain to me that the world is undergoing rising oil prices. They said it as if they had only heard about it the day before.