Hot spot

Happier by the hourHappy hours are even hotter than the sun this summer. Popular restaurants and eateries are wooing customers with booze an...

Happier by the hour
Happy hours are even hotter than the sun this summer. Popular restaurants and eateries are wooing customers with booze and food at a discount. TGI8217;s Friday at Basant Lok is swarming with the young at heart between 5 p.m. and 7.45 p.m., when they give two beverages for the price of one. You pay for one, and get another, free. The scheme, on throughout the week, excludes imported wines and beer. And if you go to Rodeo in Connaught Place between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., you get a 50 per cent discount on beer and cocktails.

Domino8217;s Pizza has a preference schedule which varies with the days of the week. On Mondays, a Regular Margarita pizza with two toppings comes at a 50 per cent discount between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. The hours get happier as the discount increases by the hour 8212; it8217;s 60 per cent between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. and 70 per cent between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Pizza Hut is not far behind. A medium-sized pizza ordered between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. brings with it a free Pepsi pitcher or a beer bottle. book markArcher8217;s best yet

He led a double life for 28 long years and just before retirement, he found that his ally was his biggest foe. It8217;s all in a day8217;s work for CIA agent Conner Fitzgerald in Jeffery Archer8217;s The Eleventh Commandment. The author of bestsellers like Kane and Abel and The Fourth Estate says 8220;this is the best book I8217;ve ever written8221;. Like in Archer8217;s last work, Twelve Red Herrings, this novel contains clues for the dicerning reader. 8220;There are 17 clues in the game I8217;m playing and they are honourable clues, no red herrings,8221; says Archer. The novel is available at all leading bookstores for Rs 150.

Going dotty
Don8217;t do a double take if you see a hip young thing sporting a bindi with her form-fitting Levi8217;s. This summer, girls seem to have taken to bindis of various shapes, sizes and colours. And they match them with any outfit, be it jeans and tank tops, clogs or strappy sandals.

The trend was begun by Gwen Steffani, the lead singer of No Doubt. At the Channel V Awards at Delhi in October last year, the Madonna lookalike and bindi freak established once and for all that wearing bindis was not about Indians. Go for the crystal look bindis, available in funky neon colours. Silver ones look great on a night out. Priced between Rs 5 and Rs 25, these are available everywhere.

Beauty blast
With all the celebs out of Delhi for summer, one doesn8217;t really wonder where their accompanying beauties are. But one does wish they were around for a contest like the Indian Summer Queen Contest, held at Annabelles, the Inter-Continental Hotel8217;s disc, on June 6.

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As things turned out, it was hardly a contest. Though most of them belonged to the BTM behanji-turned mod variety, the saving grace was the winner, Harneet Saini, an air hostess with Jet Airways.

Worse, the contestants were asked to scream their lungs out, which made us suspect that lung-power was going to be the deciding factor! Which, in retrospect, wasn8217;t such a bad idea given the dearth of either beauty or brains!