Guinness in Dublin

I am not a big beer drinker. I really struggled in my early days living in London serially downing pints of lager to keep up with my colleagues at the pub after work. A pint is a lot of liquid you know, you metric minded europhiles, 0.56 litres to be exact. And beer is an acquired taste, as someone said, I haven't yet fully acquired. The fact that in Bangalore one was used to big bottles of Kingfisher drunk slowly poured into glasses doesn't help either. I gradually settled into drinking light lagers in pints, but still often drink the first pint too quickly. This led, so many times, to more pints being consumed in total - especially during summer months when Fullers of Chiswick bring out their summer brew Discovery - that I now restrict myself to long neck bottles on principle. I don't like half pints.

This ambling preamble was needed for you to understand why I don't do well on social outings in Dublin. I have just been to that very enchanting city for two more days of business meetings. And even the recession softened pliability of my clients couldn't mitigate my dejection at being severely out drunk by those fun loving Guinness worshippers who actually revere Arthur's Day, perhaps, secretly, a wee bit more than St P's. Today I drank a half pint of Guinness.

The well informed will tell you a Guinness drunk in Ireland is different. From anywhere else in the world. In London a pint is a pint - a bored pub worker quickly pulls it spilling a bit and charges you close to 250 rupees - even if it's a Guinness. Not so in Dublin. My man Donnchadh pulled the namby half pint glass full, set it on the counter, and instead of letting me have it, he disappeared, good man. I kept an eye on my soon-to-be-drink and slowly discerned the method in the madness. The brown fluid slowly, surely, purposely settled. Until the glass was only half full. Then he topped it up, charged me a hundred and fifty odd rupees, and let me have it. Finally. Boy what a head, and what a body. Aptly, Grand ! So my initiation was a cold summer Guinness drunk quickly in a half pint glass while the last call for Aer Lingus 184 was booming out across Dublin airport. When the well informed tell you a Guinness drunk in Ireland is different, take their word, it is.

Unconventional Body-shape

If you live in London you feel pressurised to buy lots of clothes, controlled as you are by the changing winds of annual fashion. I feel it especially, having been brought up in an environment where it was very normal to buy clothes a few sizes too big: boys grow after all. In Calcutta, boys grow up to be men and feel the need, without exception, to buy size 42 shirts, even when they've stopped growing. And this in a people who seldom grow more that 5 ft 6. A couple of years back I went and bought myself two one-colour Italian big knot ties - but by the time I got comfortable wearing them, harsh diagonal stripes were back in, and when I got used to wearing them .... If you approach Bond St with a Foriapukur mindset you'll forever be playing catch up! But then men in London are man enough to wear 38. It is in London that I first came across grown men openly discussing man-boobs. (Common in Calcutta of course, but never discussed, always hidden behind size 42 shirts).

Its my blog, I told my darling wife, as she read the paragraph above. I will write what I feel like. But I also undertake that I will write of myself, not of generalisations and truisms. So on to my personal predicament: I have an obsession with semi-formal jackets. I must have about a dozen of them; none of them fit! Since this note is about shoe-horning Bengalis into today's England I can tell you why they don't fit: its my unconventional body shape. I have a slight deviation from plan just above the belt which makes me a chop-and-weld job that went slightly off. In Calcutta the decision would have been made for me by the friendly panjabi seller of Kingbodonti (size 42), in London I make my own choice -- I have size 38 shoulders, to hell with the rest. I have now discovered what it means to say I have a jacket for every mood: am I feeling confident to be a 38 today, or do I feel the need to hide in a 40. As a risk manager I must diversify, and because I am a moody man my latest two purchases are size forties.

Remind yourself of the real thing

I am a keen cyclist, doesn't mean I'm very good at it, or even very regular - but I like to drop my cycling keenness into as many conversations as I can. Actually, I might be a gadget guy, in any case I have quite a gadgety bicycle: it's a Brompton M3L. It folds into a neat foot square and can be cleanly tucked away behind the spare bed - which flat-dwellers will appreciate is a huge thing in its favour. All this makes it a prized possession, a significant lifestyle choice and therefore well worth upgrading to titanium! Brompton do make a model using the metal titanium and of late I have been bidding for such a model on eBay. I had unsuccessfully bid on 5 bikes each of which closed at a price above my budget. For the last 5 weeks I had not been out cycling.

Yesterday, my darling wife made an evening demand for a punnet of cherries, sometimes her favourite fruit. The trusty folder unfolded in 5 seconds flat and I rode out to the closest grocery outlet - no cherries, I gathered up the courage to ride out to the one that is further out - across two major intersections and a rather steep uphill for a 3-geared machine. We found the cherries.

But I was reminded again by the surface of the back roads in these parts how front shocks save your arms, how rear shocks save other parts of you. And as I returned home with the cherries and the jarring, I thanked myself that I had stuck to my budget on the Titanium affair.

So 700 pound should win it, do you reckon?

Why you'll always need a deposit

Four years back I purchased my first BMW ! You will know how important this statement is if you grew up in Manicktolla (as I did) or for that matter Hatibagan or even Hajra. Anyway it was great, and a soft top at that. I showed it off to my friends and colleagues. For the more financial minded I even showed off the personal lease plan I had managed to get.

The lease plan meant I only had to borrow the difference between the new price and the residual value of my car, and since these German marques hold their value that meant I was taking a Toyota-sized loan but driving a Bimmer. I said to my wife, an intuitive sage in matters financial, in four years my car will hold its value even better than the average. So much better that it will give me the deposit money for my next BM.

She said you are stupid. I said you are a finance illiterate. This being our usual exchange of pleasantries we moved on. And we handed in our Ford Focus as a deposit and proudly drove away a black, topless model.

Alas I wish I had been cleverer. Or only trusted my partner's evaluation of my financial acumen.