Gita takes us to her world. (bwj)

Soon we had a snack/lunch at a small crowded restaurant where I had a samosa, and D had a sort of donut-like thing (not sweet), called vaida. I had my first samosa here at a stand near the ginger garden in the botanical gardens on Saturday: a palm-sized triangular pocket of something like flatbread filled with a mix of potatoes and herbs and vegetables [I don't know the ingredient list, but it's vegetarian]. With my first one I got some red sauce and some mustard. I infer that mustard here may often mean strong horseradish. I had the samosa in Little India without mustard. We also shared a tomato uthappen, which Gita smilingly called "Indian pizza"; it does sort of look like a small tomato pizza, but the crust is a kind of flatbread, soft and chewy, and you have a choice of three sauces to dip it in, two fairly mild and one hotter. I sipped from a "tender coconut" to cool my tongue; a peeled green coconut cut flat on its bottom and with a little cap cut off its top so you can insert the straw and sip the coconut water. I remember the Polynesian yard crews, when they arrived at our place in Laie to hack the shrubbery, would first take a "Samoan seven-up" break by knocking down some green coconuts and chopping their tops off with a machete to drink the cool water. A note here from Donna: none of the hawkers or small ethnic restaurants offer napkins. You just have to remember to bring some tissues and/or wipes. Most areas have a hand washing area, just a sink, separate from restrooms (if they have a RR).

After lunch we wandered and shopped some more, mostly in a huge place called Mustafa or, I think, One Store: everything you might think of, all in one building with many levels, on a corner or maybe it was the whole block and I didn't really learn its full extent. Here I did indeed, after trailing up and down many aisles, sit down on the corner of some steps and read Lord Jim while D and Gita looked at various tops and skirts. For a while, at Gita's suggestion, I browsed in the book department on the next floor up. It wasn't much of a book dept, but I did learn that two of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books are still on its bestseller shelf; and I skimmed a few random pages of something called "Succubus in the City," narrated by the succubus herself: it seems that if a mortal man can sufficiently please a succubus he may, at least temporarily, stave off being "delivered," whatever that is; I didn't really want to know, though I kind of did wonder if this guy Marten was going to survive his encounter with the succubus. Obviously she survives to tell the tale. But really, J. Conrad is a lot better, so I went back down the stairs and took up my previous post and resumed Marlow's account of his encounter with Jim during the court of inquiry on the Patna incident.