Working week

Another busy week at work, with not much happening outside. On Wednesday I managed to meet up with Ziima Barbora, a model I'm shooting with today (Sunday). This involved going straight from work to a coffee shop in Bandra. Both of us were late, which is perhaps inevitable given the way the traffic is. It also struck me that there is no hesitation in Mumbai to travel for an hour for a brief meeting. The meeting itself went well, she is a lovely girl who wanted to meet up to discuss what we wanted to do for the shoot. We agreed to meet again on Saturday at a place which has a roof terrace that might make a decent location. She also asked if I wanted a make up artist. My initial thought was that I prefer a more natural look, especially in a casual setting. She was also going to get some clothing from her sister's for us to look at on Saturday. After the meeting we shared a taxi as we were both going in the same general direction - me to the hotel in Lower Parel and her to Worli. I mentioned that I had been at the Four Seasons hotel in Worli and she said she was going to her sister's opposite there. Opposite the hotel, of course, is the slums. The taxi dropped me off first (which seemed wrong even to my limited knowledge of the Mumbai geography), and she wouldn't take any money towards the taxi. She also mentioned that we could perhaps do a 1/2 day at the location and the other 1/2 day at the hotel.

On Friday evening a colleague and I went to the Comedy Store in Mumbai, a franchise of the one in London. There were 2 UK comics and a Canadian (based in London). They were all pretty good, although it is remarkable how little time it takes before the amount of swearing used by the British in general conversation becomes quite shocking again. One nice line from one of the comics was that whereas the British approach to driving looked like it should work but really didn't very well, the approach in Mumbai looked like it was chaos and couldn't work but actually did.