Anbagam Home for the Aged

Sunday I went to visit Anbagam CSI Home for the Aged & Allied Services. It's a senior citizen's home sponsored by a local church. My friend sponsored a lunch for them both to celebrate the purchase of his new car as well as a memorial on the anniversary date of his father's death and invited several of his co-workers along as well. We had lunch with the "inmates" (I explained the negative connotations associated with that word in English. :) ) and then walked around the campus and visited many of them in their rooms. I was almost completely useless in this situation, not knowing any Tamil. :) But the residents were happy to meet us and thanked us for the lunch and the gifts we brought. It was remarkable how spry they all were, even though many of them were in their 80s. I was amazed that most of them shared a room among 3 people very happily. They were all very eager to tell about how they were living independently (usually) until something happened (a fall, an illness, etc.) and they needed to come to this place. They all expressed thankfulness for having this place to come to. The home is run through donations from the families that can afford it, pensions, and sponsorship of individual residents by outside organizations. It was an interesting experience, but it left all of us thinking about what we will be like when we get that old. :)

I miss smoke-free NY!

Saturday was my first experience visiting the club scene here in Chennai. Before I came, many people told me that there weren't that many clubs here and the ones that were here weren't that good. (Chennai is generally thought of as pretty conservative.) However, most of the 5-star hotels here have at least one club. Liz, myself and a few of our co-workers went to visit Pasha at the Park hotel. It was actually very fun. When we first got there, it was pretty empty due to another club's opening gala across town, but as the night wore on, the dance floor became more & more crowded. The dance floor is on the bottom floor and on the balcony level there are couches and tables to sit back and watch the happenings downstairs. The music mix was pretty good-a mixture of hip hop and trance music-and people were crowding the floor the whole time. The only part I didn't like was that there are no smoking laws and everyone was smoking inside! Gasp! Choke! by the end of the night :) I miss NY's smoke-free bars & clubs...

Random funny experience: As we were sitting there, a photographer from the Deccan Chronicle took a picture of our group. "Let's take a picture of the white people enjoying!" Unfortunately, it isn't one of the ones they published. :)

The Beach

Friday, after getting out of work (at 5 AM-well, I guess technically it was Saturday :) ) we ended up going to the beach with a bunch of our co-workers. We cancelled our cab, hopped on the back of their bikes, and took off for Marina beach. AAAH...what a way to relax and unwind after a long week at work. I may never leave India... :)

Marina Beach is, I believe, the longest beach in India. Normally, it is pretty packed, but at this time of the day, we were only sharing it with the fishermen and early morning walkers. It was such a beautiful sunrise! The waves were pretty rough, but Liz, Bharat & I rolled up our pants and waded in a bit. (Liz and I left Jay, Zameel & Asif holding our purses-good practice for when they go shopping with their future wives! :) ) Of course, by the time we were done, it was hardly worth rolling our pant legs up-our jeans were so wet! I was hoping that riding on the bike would dry us off, but the guys put us in an autorick to head home before that happened. They even stopped for tea AFTERWARDS-without us! :( But it was such a fun spur-of-the-minute trip!

Furnishings

In all the excitement of getting to work yesterday, I forgot to mention the fact that WE ACTUALLY HAVE DISHES!!!!! :) The company has been promising to provide them (it is a corporate apartment) but has been a little slow to actually do so. (This is India, This is India!) I must admit it has been a little rough ever since Liz moved in (almost two weeks ago now) because we had to share the one plate, three glasses, two forks, two spoons and no knives that I had managed to scrounge. So yesterday we got to go shopping and pick out dishes and other necessary kitchen implements. Yea! Now we can actually employ the cook that we've engaged. Mmm...home cooked food...I may never go back to cooking myself... :)

Accidents

So, I have now been in two automobile accidents since I arrived here in India. I'm amazed because the whole three weeks I vacationed here before I kept expecting to see an accident (because of the driving) but never did. Luckily, the traffic speeds here in India are generally lesser than those in the US, so the accidents tend cause minimal damage. Apparantly, the rules are that after you get into an accident and pull the cars over to the side of the road, the drivers of each car get out and yell at each other and try to pull bystanders and other drivers into the fray. :)

Today's accident was the more lively of the two. We were in a company cab, heading for the office around 6:30 PM. The traffic was pretty heavy. Along the way, a bus on the left-hand side pushed us (it was a small car) into a bus on the right-hand side. Like I stressed earlier, we were not moving fast enough to cause much damage, but the front doors on either side were scratched and dented. Our cab driver takes off, driving like a maniac-overtaking and weaving in and out of traffic at excessive (for the traffic) speeds. He managed to overtake the bus that initiated the accident, pulls to the side, jumps out and starts yelling at the bus driver (who replied in kind!) After a bit of this, our driver informed us that another cab was on it's way to pick us up and take us the rest of the way to the office. Liz & I decided to take a coffee break-in a very full cafe where we were the ONLY white people [probably within a 20 KM radius]. (Liz's comment: "Not like we stand out or anything") Upon returning back to the (original) cab, we discoverd more people (friends of the cab driver?) had appeared on motorcycles. The argument between the two drivers had escalated to the point that the newcomers were actually holding them apart. We actually thought it might come to blows, but luckily the second cab arrived and distracted the original cab driver a bit.

We thought this might be the end of our story...but alas, it was not. We drive a couple more minutes down the road in the new cab (still in heavy traffic.) At one point, the driver leans out the front passenger side window and looks down at the car. Liz and I are exchanging "uh-oh" glances in the back seat. The driver pulls over to the side of the road, gets out, inspects the car and declares that there is a puncture in the front passenger side tire. What could we do except laugh at this point? The driver proceeds to change the tire while we attempt to use the toilet at the nearby petrol station. (EEW! No more details needed there!)

All in all we were an hour and a half late getting to the office (what a way to make a first impression at our new site!) but we spent 3 hours traveling the 30ish KM from home to the office. I'm starting to feel that we weren't supposed to be out on the roads tonight-or that the universe is conspiring against us! :) :) :)

Apology...

I apologize for not keeping this updated...all of the North American trainers have been assigned to observe the company's various clients, so I've been adjusting to working nights for the past couple of weeks. And, of course, there are log-in issues at each site, which makes it hard to stay in touch... I will try harder in the future. :)

Vineyard

This weekend I spent some time getting to know the Vineyard church here. It's about a half an hour ride from my place by rickshaw. (A native would pay 60 rupees here, but I ended up paying 80 rupees...which wasn't too bad...hopefully week by week I can knock that down a bit-once I learn enough Tamil to negotiate with the drivers! :) ) They run a separate facility called the Unwind Center, which is used to host live bands. (see www.unwindcenter.com) Every Friday night they have live music...this past Friday it was a couple of local rock bands. A few of the other trainers and I went up to see it. It was very good...we had a great time. They also have a cafe, which has some of the best fresh juice cocktails that I've had here. (They are promoting a clean atmosphere for the young people in the area-the musicians are required to sing clean lyrics and there is no alcohol allowed.) Afterwards, they pack up food packages to hand out to the poor in the streets-2 jam sandwiches (hence the "jamming session") & 2 eggs each.

On Sunday I went back for church in the morning. It was great to be back! The worship was wonderful-not that I'm surprised :) and the message was good. After church they have lunch together as well. (See, all good Vineyard functions involve food-no matter where you are!) This week I'm going to try to check out some of their work with the tsunami victims. They have been working to rehab an entire village-I think this week is the launch of some new fishing boats for the villagers. I'm so happy to have found a church home!

Things I don't get about India #1

I figured I better number this topic because I have a feeling there may be more than one. :)

So at my apartment complex, the car parking is located underneath the building on what I would typically call the ground floor. However, when you walk up one flight of stairs, that floor is actually called the Ground Floor. You go up one more flight of stairs to where I live and that is the First Floor. OK, but the strange part comes when you use the lift (elevator), the parking area is "0", the Ground Floor level is "1" and the First Floor (my floor) is "2". To me, this makes no sense.

A wedding

Last night we attended the wedding reception of my friend's friend's sister. (How long did it take for you to figure that out?) It was quite different than the wedding I attended in December. I guess now I appreciate better the cultural differences between the north & the south. It was funny, though, we showed up (Liz in a salwar kameez, and me in a saree) and immediately the camera and videocamera were trained on us. :) Nothing like being the center of attention! After our introductions, we had dinner-served on a banana leaf. It was so cool! And the food was very good! But it was very different from the formal, sit-down reception in the north.

Shopping locally...

My roommate-to-be came over last night, so we decided to explore the neighborhood. Luckily, we live on Velachery Main Road, so there are tons of little shops just down the street. We had such a good time-we found a "wine" shop and purchased a few beverages. (Wine shops here sell all kinds of alcohol-not just wine.) We wandered between a few stores to get mixers for the beverages. I love that if a shop owner doesn't have what you are looking for he will tell you which shop will and give you directions there. So helpful! :) I stopped at the electronics shop to get a plug adapter (converter) and the guy offered to get me any electronics I needed. Yea! I love this neighborhood! After a drink to celebrate our good day, we went to the gate and the security guard helped her flag down an autorickshaw and negotiate the rate. It's nice to feel like you're not getting fleeced all the time. :)

Dakshin Chitra

So after church on Sunday, we went to visit Dakshin Chitra. Translated, it means a picture of the south. It is a museum along the lines of Genesee Country Museum (for my Rochester affiliations :) ) or the Henry Ford Museum. They have taken typical houses from different regions of the southern states-Tamil Nadu, Karnatica, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerela-and you can see the differences as you walk from state to state. I was very impressed with how well it was done-even the vegetation changes as you walk from state to state! There is a craft bazaar on the grounds as well and in the various houses people will teach you certain crafts and trades. (I learned basket weaving and rice grinding-Wait until I can get the video out!) Some of you may remember the glass Ganeshas that were gifted to me-they came from the glassblower here. Beautiful stuff!!!!