Around Chennai: Mylapore

Saturday we were fortunate enough to have our upstairs neighbor take us on a mini-sightseeing trip around Mylapore, in Chennai. Mylapore is one of the oldest residential sections of the city and is known for its tree-covered streets. It's probably even better known for Kapaleeswarar Temple. We started the day off by heading to a small temple that I never knew the name of to see their managiery of animals. These animals are 'kept' by the temple, in the sense that they provide them with a place to sleep. Otherwise they are pretty much feral, finding their own food and water. Our guide wanted to stop by this specific temple, because they regularly have an emu hanging around and as luck would have it, the emu was sitting just outside, apparently waiting for us.

I Think He's Jay Walking.

Long Earred Goat.

I'd love to share where this temple was (and maybe I'll edit this post in the future), but for now, it'll remain a mystery to me. 

After seeing the emu and long-earred goat, we headed to get breakfast at a very popular local place: Saravana Bhavan. The breakfast here is traditional South Indian and followed up with "filter coffee." The coffee is served with milk and sugar, however they boil the milk with the coffee, so it is served so hot that you have to pour it back and forth between two containers to cool it enough to drink. Breakfast was idlis with four "gravies" or curries to dip them in, served on a banana leaf. Breakfast and coffee for 3 people was around 220 rupees, or $3.75. This place was yet another great example of the "jobs jobs jobs" mentality in India. We caught the end of the breakfast crowd, but it was pretty close to a 1 to 1 ratio of tables to employees. We couldn't figure out what they all did, but I'm pretty sure our waiters had waiters... (Ok, that might be an exageration, but there were tons of employees.)

You can see the remanents of Breakfast.
Also, I'm definitely burning my fingers on those cups.

With full bellies, we started walking toward Kapaleeswarar. Temple streets are big market (and traffic) centers, so the streets were lined on one side with stalls and the other with stores.

Temple Market Stalls.

The Temple's "Tank."
Rarely, if ever used, according to our guide.

A Large Kolam. 

The main attraction at Kapaleeswarar.

A recently repainted section of the temple.

The side streets around the temple are also filled with fortune tellers. Several of which employ small animals. This guy has a small parakeet that rifles through a stack of cards to pick the custmer's fortune. He then interprets the card. It was neat to see the trained bird in action.

This wasn't an extensive sight seeing trip, but it does have the honor of being the first "around town" post in Chennai! I guess that's the nice thing about having two years to explore a place, we'll be back later.

Two Years in India, Week 1

There are huge trees all over the place.
(even in the street!)

Well, it's official. One week down, 103ish to go. That makes it sound like I can't wait to leave, which isn't right. I just was surprised when I realized that I'm pretty much 1% done with my first post. Really makes me think I can't waste a moment here!

I've had a number of first weeks at a new job, in my career, but this one was pretty different from all the others. First of all, I've never started a new job while at the same time combating jet lag. I've never really had a problem with adjusting my sleep schedule in the past, but I've also never had to do so while also caring for a not-yet-two-year-old. My son is completely oblivious to the concept of jet lag, so he pretty much sleeps whenever he wants. Fortunately, (for me) my wife has been playing with him when he's up in the middle of the night so that I would be awake and functioning for work. Of course, sleep is only one of the differences at this job. There's also taking a shuttle, living in a new place, meeting a workforce that is about to turn over by 50%, and heck, even experiencing new foods! Let's not get too far ahead though. 

I have just a three week overlap with the IMS I'm replacing here in Chennai. Since his boss, the IPO, left a week before I arrived, he's been showing me the ropes. It has been very interesting to see the similarities and differences between our training and what actually seems to be happening at post. The biggest difference I've noticed (especially when compared to my pre-Foreign Service jobs) is that almost all of the day-to-day work is handled quite capably by the Locally Employed Staff (LES) here. This means that the IMS, such as myself, tend to roam from project to project, working on whatever unusual or one-off problem that arises. A good example from this week: our AC units for the server room broke, leading us to spend a couple hours on the roof with the repair crew (a real pleasure in the Chennai heat!). 

Another shot of the crazy amount of trees.

Anyway, my predecessor arranged a "going away/welcome" lunch with me and all the LES working in our department. It was a great opportunity to meet everyone and I'm now planning to do the same thing when the new IPO arrives. Other than that, I've been eating lunch in the canteen. The lunch combo there costs 50 rupees (rs, approximately 85 cents) and consists of rice, chapati,  raita, and two gravies (which we'd call curry back in the States) that change daily. Everything is vegetarian and tastes alright, but you really can't beat the price! In the afternoon, I normally swing back down for chai to the tune of 7 rs (~12 cents). 

I ended up working a lot of extra hours this week, mostly due to my incredibly early shuttle-dictated arrival time. I don't mind the extra work, but it did kind of stink to get out right around when it was getting dark - really put a damper on my ability to take photos to send home. Of course, on the flip side, I also spent most of the week without internet (except at work), so I guess it didn't really matter!

Traffic on July 4th.
Fortunately, the jam only lasted half an hour.

Friday was the 4th of July, so we had the day off. The Consul General hosted a party at her residence with burgers, hot dogs, and a pie bake-off. I don't know about the pies' owners, but I'd say everyone that got to eat them was a winner. We also saw our future car (my son fully approved!) and met our soon-to-be driver. I had originally hesitated getting a driver, but after spending a week in traffic here... I'm glad we pre-arranged one. I'll post more about traffic later. 

Enjoy some random pictures of Chennai!

Small shrine in Alwarpet.

Our House

Welcome to a special "Foreign Service" edition of House Hunters International. In this episode, I was given one choice of places to live and after careful consideration, I picked it! On a more serious note, we filled out our housing survey a few months ago, a month ago received a text description of our house, but we were thrilled to finally see where we'd be spending the next two years. 

Our apartment is on the 2nd floor (that's the third floor for you folks back in the USA) and takes up the entire floor of the building. We're in a corner building on moderately busy streets. There is a decent amount of street noise (mostly polite honking, since people honk here instead of using blinkers... or brakes), but it is not very loud in the two bedrooms we're using. 

There are 4 bedrooms, 4 full bathrooms, 1 eastern style bathroom, two living rooms, a dining room, kitchen, pantry, and 5 small balconies in our apartment. It (in theory) takes 7 air conditioners to cool the entire house, but we generally only use 2 or 3 at a time. We also have 3 dehumidifiers that are running constantly to minimize the insane amounts of humidity in the air (we're trying to avoid getting mold in our less frequently used rooms). Every room has marble or tile floors and extra high ceilings.

The GSO-provided furniture is fantastic, much nicer than our previous furniture. We were also provided with a welcome kit which provides us with everything we need until our effects arrive. 

Enough talk already, here are the pictures!

Kitchen

Main Living Room

Auxillary Living Room

Dining Room

Dining Room's Balcony

Front Door + Fancy Bug Zapper

Guest Bedroom

Guest Balcony

Guest Bathroom

My Son's Room

Master Bedroom

Insane Amount of Storage
(that top cabinet goes back like 2 meters)

Master Bath

Fourth Bedroom / Office / Trampoline Room?

Fourth Bedroom's Balcony

Pantry, Giant Extra Freezer, Laundry

Eastern Bathroom

First Day of Work

This week started like any other, except: Oh yeah! It was my first day at my first post! My sponsor picked me up for a moderately early arrival time (I guess he likes to get a bunch of visas done before people start showing up in the morning). Once at the consulate, it became readily apparent that I was one of the first new people for the summer transfer season (in my case THE first person). I could tell because almost every one I ran into knew I was new. This was nice, because people regularly just walked up and introduced themselves. Of course, the downside to this is that many of them then immediately told me they were on their way out the door. So now my mind is cluttered with tons of names and faces that will shortly be disappearing from Chennai.

Anyway, my first day was busy with meeting people, administrative paperwork, and trying to memorize combinations to doors and safes. I got several short tours of different parts of the consulate, including (but not limited to) the consular section, HR, the canteen (that's cafeteria, in the US), the commisary, and the space I'll be working.

Midway through the afternoon, the GSO arranged a car for me to go home, pick up my cats, and take them to the government of India quarantine facility. This was one of the two "inspections" required to allow my cats to stay in the country without having to actually be quarantined. The facility was a 45 minute drive from my house and the inspection consisted of approximately 2.5 hours of waiting with 5 minutes of showing the cats to a veterinarian. I'm not complaining though, the cats passed...

All-in-all, it wasn't a bad first day!

Two Years in India, Day 1

I’ll be honest, our first day in Chennai did not live up to my pre-arrival expectations for myself. I really understand why our sponsors make sure to stock our kitchens with a couple days’ worth of food. Back in the States, I’d had high hopes that I’d immediately venture out for breakfast or lunch, like I have every time I've traveled overseas. However, we didn't quite make it that far. Between the two-ish hours of sleep and the end of all our travel-related-stress, we were pretty content to hang out in our apartment to unwind a bit. We ended up making breakfast and taking a 3 hour nap (awful for getting over our jet lag, but we couldn't help it!) for lunch.

We were just thinking it was time to go out for a walk (and by we, I mean my wife and I, my son spent the entire day pointing at the front door and every balcony door and saying, “Outside?”) when we noticed that it was much darker outside than it had been all day. Over the next 30 minutes the sky darkened even more and then unleashed a huge amount of rain. I’m from south Florida, so I’m no stranger to downpours, but this was even heavier than I’m used to there! I was later told that it was probably the first rain of the monsoon season, which should indicate the end of the hottest part of summer.

A little while later, our sponsor swung by to check on us. Coincidentally, our upstairs neighbor stopped by at the same time to introduce himself. We were going to go out for dinner, but my son was sleeping in my wife’s lap, so we ended up just going out for takeout. It was early for dinner by India standards (around 5:30), so we went to one of the only places they knew was open, a pizza place named Ox and Tomato.

Guess it’s time to try to beat the jet lag. Wish us luck!