Natalie Portman is crap.

There's money in Bangalore. A thriving metropolis in the south of the country, this place is home to India's IT industry and feels like a boomtown. With a population of about six million, all out on the street at any given time, the difference to other major cities is striking.

I stayed in the area near the bus stands, railway station, and city market - you're always bound to see a lot more in these parts of any town.

The Volga restaurant was across the road from my hotel, though I searched in vain on the menu and walls for a hint of Russia. No cabbage and no pictures of Catherine the Great. With the piped tunes of Enya swimming through the place, I settled on a briyani and for the first time in a while I got to eat with my fingers. Love that.

A pure delight. Coming from a culture that actively discourages eating with your hands and feet and instead invented three stupid implements that require you to put metal in your mouth, I admit to loving nothing more than feeding my face with my hands. Of course, it does take some getting used to; rice is the hardest of any foodstuff to get in your gob, whether you use knife and fork, spoon or chopsticks. Once you've tried eating with your hands, you get addicted, it's a liberating experience. Remember trying to balance potato and peas on the back of your fork? Stupid. Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, being left-handed, I'm sensitive to guidebooks that warble on during opening chapters about local customs. Indians, like Bangladeshis and possibly Pakistanis, use the right hand for eating and the left for ablutions. Since I can accomplish very little with my right hand, I searched around, worried that I might be attracting attention of other diners who noticed my eating with my pooing hand. The only diner who caught my eye let out a belch so loud and spat a small chicken bone onto his plate: he obviously had other things to concern himself with than my failure to observe riutal.

I washed down dinner with a coffee, only my second since I left Australia almost three months ago. The buzz was fantastic. I was transported immediately back to my daily ritual to the cafe across from where I worked, chatting away with my mate as we grabbed a fat sugar-laden latte and dodged traffic to cross the madness of the Pacific Highway and up the lift to my workplace. I felt an iota of homesickness. But then I got over that.

I left Enya to carry on nonsensically in Gaelic and stepped out into the heat of the city. With my propensity to hanker on about the weather, I'll try to keep it short.

WHERE IS THE MONSOON?

Resisting the desire to strip completely and hope the Times of India would skillfully act as both reading material and underpants to my nether parts, I remained stoic and, after two months of this, I really should be a little more used to temperatures that are more at home with Miele kitchen appliances than with supple human flesh.

Bangalore had footpaths. One of them allowed me to walk fifty-three consecutive steps without once having to adjust my sandals, increase or decrease the width of my gait, or even look down to check that I was not going to step on animal, vegetable or mineral. Traffic lights are operational, and more surprisingly, there appears to be some sort of order to the traffic. Streets are lined with shady trees ... it all helped me to withstand the heat a bit more.

But of course, perhaps in the process of modernisation, other things had fallen by the wayside. MG Road, the middle class shopping strip, could be any bland mall in the world. Thousands of people busily consuming more useless crap to fill their wardrobes, closets and garages. Western brands are prominent here, though why buy the real thing when fake is available (in a larger number of colours) around the corner, and at a fraction of the cost?

I found a couple of very well stocked bookstores. Brilliant. After the trial of a second reading of 'The monk who sold his Ferrari' (yep, I'm still working on it), it was very exciting to lose myself among the shelves. Picked up a couple of travel novels and selection of books by a south Indian writer, R.K. Narayan. He wrote in the 1930s and a couple of Indians I've met have recommended his novels. Looking forward to a couple of days sitting in a hammock somewhere ...

Bu the highlight of the day was yet to arrive ...

Star Wars has just been released! I was very, very excited and couldn't believe my luck; the next session was commencing in twenty minutes. I purchased my ticket, a couple of spicy samosas and something claiming to be a cocktail fruit juice, and worked my way up five flights of stairs to the auditorium.

As a child, I was the first and only in my neighborhood to have Star Wars wallpaper, though my mother refused to allow it on all four walls of the room. Now I was going to be one of the first (but not only) in India to see Anakin head over to the Dark side.

George, you did another great job (Lucas, not Bush). Thank God Senator Palapatine turned out to be the Lord of the Siths. Quite frankly that ridiculous affected speech impediment was more than I could handle. Yoda provided me with a number of laughs; watching a two foot green critter battle using his light-sabre against Sen Palp/Lord Sith in the Imperial Senate was a huge giggle. Special effects, as always, astounding.

And at least we know why Anakin eventually moved to the Dark Side. Not sure if it was the script or simply the poorest, most unconvincing acting performance the world's witnessed in some time. I'd definitely choose a life of swanning about the Death Star, Imperial Storm Troopers and a double-ended light sabre over the rest of my time spent with that wet blanket of a woman.

Never, ever give Natalie Portman another acting role. She is rubbish.