another sandwich

Still in the tourist state of mind, one of the Saturdays, Aman and I went to the Maparium -- a three story glass globe of the Earth, built to scale with 1 inch representing 22 miles on earth.
The globe had some very intriguing acoustics, where a person standing on one corner of the globe can perfectly hear a person's whisper when this other person is standing in the opposite corner.(If you are the nosy kinds and are already wondering "how can a globe have a corner?", see below for explanation)
And if you stand in the absolute center of the globe, you can hear everything you say or whisper in surround sound magnified many times over.
Not to forget the different perspective that you get by walking through the center of the earth and not looking at it from outside.
Outside the maparium is a fountain called the "fountain of ideas". It is designed by some celebrated architect and after looking at it, one is convinced that the architect deserved to be celebrated. There is a stream of text projected on to the surfaces around the fountain in a way that it feels like the text is coming out of the fountain. The text is famous quotations and teachings of great men and women from history and religion.

So, after all this food for thought, we were debating about food for the tummy and about what and where and so on. It occurred to me to put to use my new found friend, the GPS, and ask for anything good in the area.
Sure enough, back came the reply, "Au bon pain", less than 70 meters from where we were standing -- surprise surprise.
Now that I've been in Boston for some time, I am surprised that I didn't even know about these "pain" points until so recently. Now that I know, I see that there almost as many of these as there are "dunken donuts" in this place, one in every cluster of shops, if you will.
And now that I know, I am not necessarily any better off -- sometimes ignorance is bliss.

We walk in and there is this kindly old lady making the sandwiches. This time we ask for Aman's vegetable sandwich first.
"Which bread?", I ask.
The woman responds with something that I completely miss. I am not doing this again I tell myself.
"This bread is soft. Right?" I ask again.
"Sure. It is really fresh" says the woman as she holds out a loaf for us to examine.
Satisfied, we move on to what she is putting inside that loaf.
"No lettuce, no olives, and no pickle, please. Put everything else." "Yes, all of these."
"Chicken" asks the woman.
"No meat" Aman and I say in unison.
"No meat?" the woman asks again.
"No meat" we go again.
"Alright." the woman says.
So, we are relieved at getting it right so far.
"And for me, a chicken sizzler wrap" I say.
"Chicken wrap?" confirms the old woman.
"Yes".
"Alright" says the woman and fusses around for what seems like a rather long time for something that they have pre-prepared on the shelf.
We pay on the counter and sit down to eat.
I dig my teeth into the thick wrap thing -- no chicken so far...only the wrap and cabbage. I dig deeper and deeper in search of the "real stuff...but all I find is more cabbage and this wrap...
As it turns out, the kindly old woman took our "no meat" instruction to heart and put in extra effort to remove every morsel of chicken from that wrap before handing it over to us. How do you explain a chicken wrap without chicken in it?
It will take really extenuating circumstances to force us to eat at the pain point again.

* And as for the corner in the globe, there is a bridge in the center of the globe that the tourists use to look at the globe from inside and I am referring to the corners of this bridge.

Sandwich

It is a Saturday morning and one of those days when you know there is no pressing thing to do and you have all the free time in the world and no one will ask you to get out of bed and get ready and still you just can't stay on in bed any more.
I got up at 5 in the morning and after tossing and turning for half an hour without any trace or hope of falling asleep again, finally decided to get up and write this blog; which is why, for the first time, here is a second entry on the same day:
July 4 was on a Wednesday (almost awkwardly for most Americans -- it should have been on a Friday or Monday). For me, it feels really good to have a vacation right in the middle of the week; it feels like a weekend throughout the week.
During the day Aman and I went to Harvard Square after a lot of procrastination - we decided not to have lunch at home as a trick to force us out of our laziness. (Food can be a really good incentive for us to do anything)
We took the outbound "T" from Kendal square and quickly landed in a very "happening", busy and beautiful Harvard square.
It was 4 in the afternoon and by this time we were very hungry and "getting despwrate". We came to "Au bon pain", which I did not know is a reasonably popular chain. There was nice live music in the square outside, violin/guitars -- I'm not really sure of the instruments, and interestingly enough there were a lot of people playing chess on the tables outside Au bon pain.
This was the place that looked good enough to sit and eat and we really did not think our stomach will allow us to look any more. We went in and ordered sandwiches and came out to sit and eat.
This brings me to the reason for this post:
Do not ask for "baguette bread" if you don't know what it is. It is super crusty - very hard bread, which I seriously don't understand why anyone will eat... poor Aman.

Tarangini

Aman and I went to Road Island with Vijay (from office) and his wife Meera to look at 19 or so "Sailing ships" that had docked on the Newport harbor as a part of some around the world race.
Although all ships are meant for "sailing", these were ships that have the old styled "wind sails" mounted on huge, really tall, masts and no fancy engines or gadgetry.
There were all kinds and ages (both ships and people). The oldest (ship), Nova Scotia, we saw was from 1911 and this one had won this race 16 years running from 1911 to 1927 or something like that. For its age, the boat still looked in perfect condition and well kept.
The Indian ship, Tarangini, was one of the youngest -- built in 1996. Tarangini was also one of the best looking ships and to our delight had won the last lap of the race coming into Road Island.
Now why will someone build a ship with wind sails in 1996? The answer: it is used to train Indian naval cadets in the art and science of manual sailing, using the wind to your advantage, astro navigation using the sun and the stars etc. About half the ship's crew was young cadets straight from the naval academy.
We looked at about 5 of the 19 or so ships and by then realized that all of them looked more or less the same from inside...so, we moved on to our favorite alternative, food.
The weather was very nice and the wind was loaded with an overpowering smell of dead/cooking fish (and probably other sea food).I had some kind of "clam" dish, which was really nice. Aman had a "funnel cake", on Meera’s suggestion. Both were firsts for us and we were not disappointed -- will have them again any day.
(Will put in some pictures once I get them from Vijay)