Met Buddy Smith in the lobby and he went over some documents for a 1/2 hour or so. City layout, stuff like that. He also explained why he was the second Smith I'd met in as many days. Its from the English colonization. The English split, but their names stuck around.
We get through the orientation and head out the front door. Today we are being chauffeured in a tiny little TaTa diesel with no mirrors and no seatbelts. Its filthy. But, as we head out into Bangalore, I quickly realize why. Everything is filthy. A light brown dust covers everything and everyone.
The traffic is completely jammed. Its alot of these little tata cabs, a lot of old, old, old buses, and the majority of traffic are these even smaller 3 wheel cabs and motorcycles.
this is of course all mixed with bicycles, walking people, animals, and a few ox drawn carts. There is no concept of lanes of traffic Buddy explains to me, and no rules about passing. Just go. If you honk, you are going to go. Or, it means get out of my way. Or, it means I'm right here. And then there was another meaning to honking the horn that I couldn't figure out. I know there is another meaning because besides all the previously listed ones our cab driver honk his horn at least double that amount and at seemingly random times.
We start off by Buddy showing me some of the gated communities that expats on the company dime tend to prefer in Whitefield (the "suburb" of Bangalore that the studio is in - don't get the wrong idea about my use of the word suburb. its not all oak trees and kids on tricycles and Applebees and Olive Gardens.). We looked at a town house type one called Chrystallis that had a large back yard (called a garden here), a house in the development called Palm Meadows. And a house in a development called avondale. The house we looked at in Palm Meadows sucked. It was dirty (all the ones we looked at needed a good scouring though), partially furnished (which means that there are kitchen cabinets but nothing else), and the garden was just a tiny strip around one side. But the development looks like the place to be. As we drove around the development, the further in, the larger the houses got with big beautiful yards. Buddy also explained that palm meadows also has its own water treatment plant so you can drink the water and its own grocery store as well. The house we looked at in Avondale had a much more attractive architecture (Buddy explained it to me, its a style from south India - even farther south India) and was fully furnished with really nice looking furnishings. But the Avondale community wasn't nearly as nice as palm meadows.
Oh, no houses here have Central AC. Just specified rooms in them. Thats gonna be rough...
Time to leave Whitefield and head into Bangalore City Center. I'll post again about city center (teaser - I liked it a lot better than Whitefield).
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