This is where I live and work. Yup, my apartment's on the first - I mean... ground - floor and NEN is on the first floor.
Villa 2, Regent Place,Thubarahalli, Varthur Main Road
Bangalore- 560 066
Karnataka, India
I am fortunate to have an incredibly comfortable place to live. My "flat" has two bedrooms / baths, a kitchen, family room, dining area.. you know, the works.
Oh and did I mention a backyard? The backyard is home to a mother cat and her kittens, which are fed regularly by Laura (my incredibly cool & welcoming manager and NEN's executive director) and her daughter Zoe.
This is Zoe, my new best friend. Imagine: a white two-year-old girl with an Indian accent who is fluent in Hindi, English, and almost Kannada. It's truly mind blowing and incredibly cute. Talk about blasting away stereotypes..."Namaste! Mere naam Zoe hai!"
Lest you think I'm starving to death, may I kindly inform you that I get my groceries at Food Zone, a mini-grocery store the size of a 7-Eleven. With all of the familiar brand name cereals, snacks, and even Nutella, it's truly a god send to any American living in Bangalore.There are some things about India that still take a little getting used to. For example, the mosquitoes. I have concluded that Indian mosquitoes have a homing device targeting sweet American blood. Or maybe our exotic smell. When I mentioned to my work colleagues that I was going to stop applying deodorant, they didn't look too happy. I guess I'll stick to odomos. In other nasty-looking-bug news, a couple of us made an effort to exterminate hiding cockroaches when I moved into the apartment. Mission: successful. Btw, you can't really appreciate how big these buggers are...
... unless you put a penny next to them.
Another suboptimal characteristic about Bangalore is the traffic. Traffic is notoriously bad, and I count my blessings every day because I don't have a morning or evening commute. It can take a couple hours to travel less than 20 kms during rush hour! For taxis and rickshaw wallas who get paid by distance traveled, business must be getting tough. We salute you, Mr. Rickshaw-wallah.Working at NEN thus far has been fantastic. I'll write more about it in my next post.
TTFN (tata for now),
Shalin
p.s. Comments are welcome. :)
16 comments:
Wow...Glad you're acclimatizing well! Those cockroaches are intense!
Oh the irony of a 2-year old white girl bein' more fluent in hindi and kannada, than a motivated, Stanford educated adult...cute :-D
Hey Shalin, nice looking pad and superb that you don't have to commute to work. Do keep us posted on your work at NEN!
wow, a white girl with an indian accent? i love it! very cool that you have that convenience store...looks like you didnt need to take all that cereal with you. but ew...did you really have to take a picture of a disgusting cockroach? bleh! miss you. :)
Dude... u don't know how lucky u r... considering you don't have to travel to get to work... I remember we cover 2Km, in about an hour during a traffic jam...
Your life looks amazing. I love the humor of it all.
Great to hear and see some of what your experiencing. Thanks for sharing!
seems like a great pad, shalin, you should have us all over for some good indian home cooking. Hope the adjustment to work over there goes well, and stay cool. I'm sure it's heating up over there.
yayy- soo nice to see that humor of yours kicking in .. treasure that nutella .. i hardly find it in the caribbean lol ..
lol, you live 10 min away from my place....the local Food Zone is my savior...I'd recommend having dinner at Golkonda Chimney...they have some amazing North Indian Tandoori dishes.
Shalin, I love your blog! The pics are great and I love your little blurbs. Whew thank god you have access to cereal- I was beginning to get worried about you. Keep up the crusade vs. the cockroaches! :)
Shalin, waiting for your centipede post :)
Shubha
Hi Shalin,
Wonderful blog. Keep up the good work with NEN.
India needs good initiatives in the area of youth development and a momentum to advance with the potential it already has.
It'd be nice if you would share your experience in the area of your work at NEN also, and describe what basically motivated you to join NEN and work in India. What is your vision for what you are doing in Bangalore or India in general?
My all the best to you and hope if you do some good work, that it gets recognized in a good way.
Glad you like the work at NEN!!! and yes, I do know about the resume writing skills !! So what do you suggest we do about it?
hey! never seen a roach quite the way you did.
Hah.. thanks for the tip!
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