lunched at lagnaa with kun yesterday, his second-to-last day in singapore after six months here at INSEAD. i'd met kun when sven came to visit in march, and we'd gone to the night safari together. i am extremely sorry i hadn't been more active in keeping in touch with kun - three whole months have gone by since sven's visit - my mother, who in her youth brought home troops of foreign students from her hostel to be fostered by my grandmother, would not approve. but i think the well-chosen restaurant we might be accounted something to lessen my self-reproach.

sidenote: this is us at the entrance of the night safari.

(that palm in the background looks rather sinister. photo from sven.)

a camera would have been just what we needed to show off our lunch of:

eggplant masala

chilli chicken (rather like gulu rou, but spicy, kun says)

palak paneer (warm and smooth and heavy on onions)

cinnnamon chicken (deboned chicken rebuilt around a cinnamon stick)

not to mention the naans and lassis and coffee.

not having any camera on hand, kun says we will just have to use enticing words in our see-what-you-missed emails to sven.

kun's moving to shanghai to work with "a consulting thing" (he simplifies kindly.) and says that i'm welcome to his guestroom anytime i'm in shanghai. i reflect that it's been a very long time since i've known anyone with a guest room, the majority of people i know living in dank basements with only the occasional threadbare sleeping bags for guests, and resolve to go to shanghai to see this novelty. what with having promised to go to france or sweden to see sven before 2009, my travel plans for the summer of 2008 seem already decided. (although what if i reneged on the promise to go to europe, on the geographical basis that swedish weather will be unbearable to my equatorial mindset, but shanghai is at least in a tolerable latitude? down jackets, girl, down jackets, she reproves herself.)

at some point the conversation also came to the dangers of working in the alaskan crab fishery. that sounded absolutely hilarious. tiger-hunting maybe, but crab fishing dangeorus? what, i smirked, because they might pinch you? (the actual answer was eminently sensible of course.)

by the way, lagnaa really is a lovely place. i've been there six times this year already, each time with a different person or persons, and it hasn't failed to impress. perhaps julian would want to go when he gets back?