Surreal...
So yesterday I was having a early dinner before embarking on my 10,405 mile trek back home (during which I had an opportunity for two more dinners plus two breakfasts and a light lunch, which bizarrely fell between dinner and breakfast).
I was eating in a Pizza Hut, of all things. One of the icons of US food imperialism, alongside McDonalds and its ilk (which aren't to popular in Southern India, for some reason probably involving the cows that wander casually around the streets of major cities).
In a slight departure from traditional American pizza options, I ordered a Tandoori Chicken Chutneywala Personal Pan Pizza. It was very good, too.
The radio then started playing a song called "LDN" by an English ska singer, Lily Allen, whose music tends to be upbeat and cheerful while the lyrics are rather more gritty ("Not Big", for example, covers the lack of prowess of a recently fired boyfriend, while the song that first caught my attention, "Smile" is about getting vigorous revenge against a -- presumably different -- boyfriend who dumped). "LDN" is a breezy, cheerful song about the pimps, whores, muggers, and the rest of London's residents...
Anyway, I encountered Lily Allen while in the UK, and she's so English in accent and 'tude, that the combination of hearing her singing in a US restaurant while in India rather mixed a number of my cultural expectations! Views and tastes of Bangalore, American food styles, English music...
Fascinating linkage: http://pizzahut.co.in/ (don't miss the grrooooveey pizza song on the front page), and Lily Allen's stuff is at http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/ (including the music in question).
I was eating in a Pizza Hut, of all things. One of the icons of US food imperialism, alongside McDonalds and its ilk (which aren't to popular in Southern India, for some reason probably involving the cows that wander casually around the streets of major cities).
In a slight departure from traditional American pizza options, I ordered a Tandoori Chicken Chutneywala Personal Pan Pizza. It was very good, too.
The radio then started playing a song called "LDN" by an English ska singer, Lily Allen, whose music tends to be upbeat and cheerful while the lyrics are rather more gritty ("Not Big", for example, covers the lack of prowess of a recently fired boyfriend, while the song that first caught my attention, "Smile" is about getting vigorous revenge against a -- presumably different -- boyfriend who dumped). "LDN" is a breezy, cheerful song about the pimps, whores, muggers, and the rest of London's residents...
Anyway, I encountered Lily Allen while in the UK, and she's so English in accent and 'tude, that the combination of hearing her singing in a US restaurant while in India rather mixed a number of my cultural expectations! Views and tastes of Bangalore, American food styles, English music...
Fascinating linkage: http://pizzahut.co.in/ (don't miss the grrooooveey pizza song on the front page), and Lily Allen's stuff is at http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/ (including the music in question).