Mad Mike Magee’s Musings

JUST A FEW YARDS from this hotel - motto: “Laundry Excellence” - there are two temples of interest.

One is a Shiva-Shakti temple, where the god and the goddess are worshipped as if they were one.

On another parallel is a shrine to Shakti, in this case we believe the South Indian equivalent of Mahakali, Murugan. This latter shrine is of great interest to us and we will attempt to grab a photo of it.

It consists of a mound of fertile Karnataka soil, topped with a Shakti red crown, whilst in the front are nagas (snakes) and other deities disporting themselves in rather an interesting manner.

Indiranagar was, we hear, a quiet little suburb only a few years ago. Now the houses are being taken over by businesses and the trees are being felled. The Shiva-Shakti temple and the Kali shrine have probably been here for time immemorial.

We think it was James Branch Cabell who said in his book Jurgen that you ignored the gods and goddesses at your peril. Especially so in the case of those goddesses who revel in Tuesdays and in Saturdays.

THE KIDS HERE will have to go back to school soon, because although the summer solstice still beckons and the hoopoohs or whatever they are awaken me with their shrieks earlier every morning, the monsoon is beckoning.

A few stray mossies have divebombed me and partaken of my blood so future generations of the pesky insects will no doubt be dancing the Highland Reel and perhaps even performing the very risky Scottish “sword dance”.

The Scottish “sword dance” is when a lassie dances in and out of a couple of claymores laid on the ground and we Scots all pretend that we ever were a nation.

And talking about whisky, now Bengaluru is undry, we took a trip to the nearest supermarket to discover that “Black Label” is still sold in Asia at a very premium price of 3,000 Indian rupees plus.

Now this is branding. As we flew out of Heathrow on a direct fright from Terminal IV to Bengaluru HAL, we noticed that the number of whisky SKUs are beyond belief. Whisky is not wine. Black Label is not brilliant. But the Scots marketing Scotch are something else.

THE FIRST FULL week with a live site here in Bangalore to come. A lot still to do but we’ll start building up the graphics around the stories this week, add in the RSS feeds, and improve the layout of the front page.

We’ve had some nice comments from friends like Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher, and from our old chum Fudo over at Fudzilla.

The early morning shrieking bird is getting earlier as we move towards the summer solstice and I’ve totally lost the laundry wars. In fact, I wish I’d just brought three shirts and accompanying skivvies and socks because although they’d get a pounding over the three weeks I’m here in the subcontinent, it would certainly lighten the baggage load. ♥

AFTER MUCHO work, a live itexaminer.com site sprang to life at 9AM GTM, on the 9th of May - that is to say yesterday.

We’ve had the reporters hacking away since Tuesday, and we’ll bring in the freelancers this coming week.

Building the framework to the site is our next priority - but we’re having fun in old Bengaluru despite the three dry days we’re suffering. Oh, and the hotel beat me in the laundry wars again today… ♥

THEY’VE DECLARED a three day ban on alcohol here in Ole Bangalore, because there’s elections tomorrow and perhaps the authorities fear everyone will get a little overexcited.

Not just bars and pubs, hotel bars too, although guests with hotels with mini-bars might be OK. The drought ends on Sunday. Sheesh! Forewarned should have been forearmed!  The local Midday newspaper reported 300 people have been thrown in clink for buying or selling illicit hooch. ♦

IF YOU’VE seen the previous entry about my laundry and the hotel, you’ll know that I’m losing. I lost again today. Put shirt, knicks socks in Radisson bag, hid it in the cupboard, went out to work, got back. Yup, laundered. Hotel 5 Magee 1.

Must come up with a fresh strategy if I’m not to be totally annihilated in the laundry stakes. ♥