Shown around some more by another Couchsurfing friend (Thursday, 10/2)

So I get in touch with another Couchsurfer in Chennai and arrange to meet up to get shown around town. Apparently I gave him the wrong hospital name, so it took a little longer for him to find me… What can I say, I am a dumb ass. Anyways, so he picks me up, I apologize for the bad directions, and we head to a restaurant for some tea. We talk about photography, Couchsurfing, my interesting living situation, and living in India for the better part of two hours until the restaurant is getting ready to close.
Next he wants to take me to a snack bar, so I happily agree. We get there, he orders something (you have to pay before hand and then present your receipt to actually get it), and then we walk over to the bar. There are about six people standing around, and we are all handed little stainless steel bowls. After that, we are one at a time served some tasty little snacks, of which I have no idea what they were called. Basically, the guy would take some sort of bite-sized, crunchy flatbread, break a hole in the top, stuff it with some sort of potato concoction, then dip it in sweet sauce, then dip it in spicy sauce, drop it in your bowl, and you would quickly stuff the whole thing in your mouth. He went around five or six times until he ran out of filling, then we drank the sauce that was left in our bowls. All in all, quite the tasty, if not spicy treat.
We were still hungry, so we decided to order something else. I have no idea what he orderd, but it made no difference because I recognized none of the items on the menu. He paid (he refused to let me pay for anything), and again we presented the receipt to the snack bar, where they proceeded to make some sort of concoction. It started with some cracker looking things on a plate, then some sort of potato concoction, then some sort sweet yogurt sauce, followed by some brown mystery sauce, followed by about eight different spices, all in generous proportions, and then topped with some sort of crunchy snack mix. What was it? I have no idea, and neither did my host. What did it taste like? Nothing I had ever tried before. Would I eat it again? Yep.
While we were busy devouring our spicy-cracker-potato-yogurt thing, they brought us our second dish. It was some sort of bean dish topped with fresh onions and came with some buttered Indian bread. It actually tasted allot like chili with dinner roles, but with an India flare for spice.
After that, we decided to go for ice-cream. We went to a little hole in the wall place, where I ordered some flavor of milkshake that was purely Indian. I had the option of getting it with icecream or without. My host counseled me to get it without, so I did. A few minutes later and it came… it was more like melted soft serve than it was like a milkshake, and it contained hard chunks of some sort of flavorless sweet stuff. By far the worst “milkshake” I have ever had. I choked down about half of it and then gave up. I wanted to wash the nasty flavor out of my mouth, so I decided to order something else. I tried to order a Pepsi, but was informed that he did not sell Pepsi. This, despite the refrigerator full of Pepsi behind him. When my host asked about this, he was told that the Pepsi was for the restaurant next door and that he did not sell Pepsi… whatever. So I order a black cherry float. At least it sounded good in theory. A few minutes later I am served this foamy pink syrup with approximately the same color and consistency as Pepto-Bismol. For that matter, the flavor was just about as pleasant. So, fully nauseated, we leave and head to his apartment to chill out. There is a security guard at his building, as there are at most middle-class homes around the city. About his only job is to open and close the gate when people get there, which he does admirably upon our arrival. We park the car literally under the building, in one of the tightest parking spots you have ever seen, and head upstairs. We talk photography and compare lenses a couple lenses for image sharpness, flare, color rendition, etc. After a while, I am so tired that my eyes are barely staying open, so we get back in the car so he can drive me back. We drive around to the front gate to find the security guard asleep, laying on a blanket on the ground. We flash the lights and he does not move. We honk the horn and he does not move. Finally my friend gets out of the car and has to actually wake him up so he can unlock the gate… now that’s some first rate Indian service J