Part 1: “Aieee! Get the camera! Ewww…. What are they?!?”
This is the building that our flat is located in. We are on the second floor—or actually, by Indian terms, the first floor.
When I first walked into my new home in Chennai, I was happy to find myself walking into a nice spacious two-bedroom apartment. Amy hadn’t really told me too much about the place before I came—just that it was big and that it was across the street from one of the most famous sweets-shop (Shree Mithai) in Chennai.
So, I walked in, dropped my bags in the middle of the totally empty living room, and Amy started giving me “the tour.” We started in the kitchen—furnished only with a small folding table, a couple of chairs, and a fridge. Bare, but nicely sized and somewhat functional with lots of counter space. There was a door to one side, and I looked at it questioningly. “Storage,” Amy said, “and the place that we lock up everything important when the cleaning lady comes.”
“Ok,” I thought, and we went on to the other rooms—all virtually equally empty. The living room—the room you first enter when coming into the apartment—was brightened by a wall of windows. There were two glass display cases on one of the other walls, a built-in floor-to-ceiling TV cabinet/cupboard thing on another, and a recessed section in the fourth wall that I can only imagine is a little shrine area. I stood in there for a moment, impressed by the sunlight reflecting off of our shiny polished granite floors, then moved on into the bedroom.
Quiet times on Chennai’s roads
My friend, Martin, really wants me to get a motorcycle while I am living in Chennai, India….
… I think I may be too much of a road wimp to actually go through with it. It’s just that the people here seem to know the boundaries of their vehicles by the centimeter, and they drive so close most of the time…. One local friend told me that he would even get these mini anxiety attacks every time he actually tried to drive…. So, here are some videos of somewhat quiet times in Chennai, so you can get an idea what I’m talking about. It’s not too bad…. Really….