Today we are going back to the city centre to fix our cameras.
Claudia had found a shop that sells the Canon Recharger at about 70 euro but thanks to some good advice from Joe we found a shop that sold a non-brand charger for less than half the price. My camera needs to be repaired and will also cost 70 euro, but on a forum we read that this problem is a very common Canon problem and since I still have a warranty in Belgium, I have decided to leave my camera like that and take Rajan's offer of using his Nikon.
Hospitality really is amazing here in India. And thanks to that we are back in business (camera-wise) because there are so many wonderful pictures to be taken here.
If you ever need any kind of electronic equipment, just go down to Ritchie Street. One other street was filled with broken down autoscooters, and repair shops that sold every possible part. Everywhere there were people working on their auto.
For lunch we went back to Spencer Plaza and tried some typical Indian fastfood at Sangheeta's with several dishes and wonderful fruitcocktails of pomegranates and sweet lime juice. They have these lunch specials that consist of naan bread and little pots with spicy dishes, butter milk and sweet rice for dessert.
Chennai's Spencer Plaza is today the largest shopping complex in South India. From the 1890's to the 1950's Spencer's was known not only for being the largest departmental store in Asia and Africa, but also for being among the city's best known landmarks. A fire in 1981 left the building in ruins. The complex, as we see it today, was built after the old structure was pulled down.
In the evening we met up with Ivana and Rajan in a trendy coffee shop called Cafe Coffee Day where I recharged my cellpone (they have a cool docking station where you can virtually plug in any phone) and we had some cold coffee and smoothies.
Then Rajan invited us to another Sangeetha restaurant (called Veg restaurant as oppossed to the non-veg restaurants) where the boss of the restaurant had us taste a large variety of Tamil Nadu dishes. It was a delicious experience and we had about 5 waiters around our table at all times. The owner of this restaurant chain (he owns 22 places and will open soon in San Francisco) also gave us some cds with yoga exercises and promised to arrange for us to stay in a real Ashram in Tiruvannamalai.
After dinner we drove to a new multiplex cinema. From the outside it looked amazing, but when i saw a sign inside the cinema that said :"spitting is a dirty habit" I got a bit afraid to sit on the seats...but luckily there was nothing on my seat LOL
We watched a Tamil movie called Something Something. It started at 10.45 pm and ended around 02.30 am (including intermission). The story was a typical Tamil/Bollywood movie where boy meets girl, there is a song, then the girl gets attacked by a villain, there is another song, some action, the guy saves the girl, another song and they live happily ever after. Yes, they need 3 hours to show you that :)
We had a great time but were so tired.
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