Experiments with Vietnamese Coffee

I’d been traveling the week before last- I was in Hyderabad for a conference. I’ll spare you the academic details. It wasn’t such a great conference though there were a few good presentations. The only good thing (..ok, one of the good things other than the stimulating???!! conversations) that came out of the visit was that I had access to the idiot box and I got to watch a nice, feel-good French romantic comedy called “Comme t’y es belle” ( “Hey good looking” in English).

I know I’m cribbing, but I’ve good reason- there was no pick up at the station (at 4:45 am). But that’s a minor offence. I had to carry 2 humungous posters for the scheduled exhibition there that couldn’t be folded and necessitated a coolie at all the stations. I put up the posters and later saw that the exhibition was scrapped (by default, as there were only 3 entries). The venue and my accommodation- the Taramati Baradari Cultural Complex- was picturesque enough but not somewhere you’d like to be cooped up for 3 days. It was far away from everything- no auto or taxis around, you can only call for a cab and that costs a bomb. So I was stuck there with no place to go.

Got to see the Golconda Fort Sound and Light Show, that like other such shows, starts impressively but fizzles out later- how many times can you light up the same structures for dramatic effect? It reminds me of the repeated face close-ups accompanied with thunderclaps in the saas bahu soaps. I’m pretty sure they could come up with interesting ways to showcase these monuments- laser shows perhaps. Amitabh Bachchan’s voice does sound extremely impressive and majestic in such surroundings though. (I thought he endorsed UP tourism).

While I was cooling my heels in Hyderabad, my boss was in Vietnam for a workshop with the authorities there regarding the design of rural pre-schools. The workshop was a success- at least one of us had a good time. I’d asked him to bring a Vietnamese coffee filter (I’d googled about Vietnamese specialties) which he thankfully remembered. We got down to it yesterday and though the coffee tastes good it takes forever to drip through the filter. You see, Vietnamese coffee preparation consists of pouring some condensed milk in a cup and then pouring hot water through the filter containing ground (not instant) coffee. The water is supposed to drip and not stream through- that’s a good 10 minutes per cup……. I don’t think our office boy will ever prepare Vietnamese coffee again.

I’ll leave with a recommendation- go listen to the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. It’s not the usual Rahmanesque sound but it’ll grow on you- it’s sheer genius. And the Jai Ho track is phenomenal.