Population density
This weekend has been a little less eventful than last weekend but still fun. Saturday we didn't do much in the day time (I mostly slept), but in the evening we went to a vegetable and fruit market near the office. It was a great experience but unfortunately, my battery recharger nearly burned the flat down (that's quite an exaggeration) so I didn't have any batteries in my camera and thus, I have no pictures. I would like to go back and take some pictures, however. It was essentially about a half mile (or a "kilometer", as those crazy Indians call it) of people selling fruits and vegetables. At the end was a vendor selling Sugarcane Juice, which I drank with a great deal of hesitation. It was good, though, and did not make me sick, as surprising as that sounds.
The whole trip was a great experience; I have never been quite so close to wild cows before. I have also never been so close to so many people. Wow. Driving back in the car, we were surrounded by literally thousands of people in every direction. It took us probably 45 minutes to make it to Raj's place, which is maybe a mile away. I didn't think the population density would be that noticeable but it is every day; the buses are so crowded that people literally hang out the doors (see right). Last night I was glad to have the 6 inches surrounding me on every side in the car and I was also glad to not be driving because I would have run over someone. I definitely would have run over someone. It was fun, though, and afterwards Raj made us dinner out of the vegetables we bought, which you can see in the included picture.
The thing about India is that it never ceases to surprise you. There's always something that you haven't seen before. Enter the Saravana stores. Tonight we went out to purchase some kitchen utensils. First we thought we would go to the mall; I'm always interested to visit malls in cities I'm not from because it allows me to compare something that I know from my home to something in a new place. Unfortunately the mall in Chennai, Spencer's Plaza, was pretty much like the mall in Portland with the exception that all the store owners stand outside their stores and ask you very politely to come and see what they have. I would include a picture of the mall here (I did take a few), but it would look surprisingly similar to your local shopping mall. The other difference in Spencer's Plaza was that there were no stores selling kitchen utensils; we spent an hour looking for one that we saw advertised only to find it permanently closed. I suppose that's why there aren't any kitchen utensil stores.
So next we headed to Saravana, a store that is heavily advertised throughout Chennai. It had been described to me as "crowded" but I now realize I didn't know what crowded meant. I'm sitting here trying to think of something to compare it to but I'm not coming up with anything. My first thought is to say that it's as crowded as the Rose Garden seconds after a Blazers game, but it's actually more crowded than that. To get an idea, take a look at the picture to the right. The entire store- every isle on all eight floors- were this crowded. Once we made it to the eighth floor, it took us an hour to get to the isle we needed, find the one item we were looking for, get back to the cashier, pay, and then pick up our bag from the "Delivery" section (which is the counter that bags your items while you're paying). And now that is the largest amount of people I've ever been around.
That pretty much sums up my weekend. I was able to take a video of my apartment and upload it to YouTube so feel free to take a look. Perhaps an error in judgement on my part but I took the video right after working out (I'll include some shots of the gym in the future). This means I look really ghetto in my gym shorts and socks (I may be wearing shoes but it's funnier to think of me in just socks). It would have taken some preplanning and forethought to not walk in front of the mirror but instead I just went for it. This is what I call "keeping it real" and I hope everyone appreciates that. I'm planning to upload several of the photos I've taken onto Flickr in the next couple of days so I'll send out an email and mention it here in the blog when that happens.
Comments
Nice!...now thats more like it!