The Cattle Are Grazing
On Friday we are headed home for Christmas holidays. We are looking forwards to seeing our old friends and our family. It seems like a good time to summarize experience till now. We came on September 4th. Since then we have seen some of the attractions of India. We feel very fortunate to have experienced the everyday here as well. Part of our everyday routine at home was a walk around the block. The block of Parkside and Weber by NCR and the block of Ashberry Place, Woodbend and KeatsWay. In India we have been walking around the block as well now that the weather is Canadian summer like ~22 during the day 10 at night. We are in the Northern Hemisphere still so it is actually winter here. It just seems like summer to our Canadian sensibilities. This posting is about a walk around the block in DLF Phase 4 and in Udyog Vihar Phase 1 in Gurgaon.
Any walk starts at home, usually with a false start or two. We are staying in a 3-bedroom apartment. It has broadloom over tile floors. The bathrooms and kitchens have marble counter-tops. There is a huge amount of marble here. The floors at work are marble as well, and quite slippery. The stairs also seem to be spaced differently then at home, and I twisted my ankle on them right after we arrived. Ben and Joel have their own rooms here. We picked up little study desks for Dianne, Ben and Joel. We went to a place on the main road to get them, turned out that Lokesh knew a better place, so we went there. The desks showed up the next day on a bicycle rickshaw. There are individual hot water heaters or geysers. The kitchen one had a plastic supply pipe that burst spectacularly, completely soaking us. We had Lianne over at our place. Ben had a bunch of boarders over on the Diwali long weekend. It was pretty neat, they played vids, and also played my guitar.
We can walk a little within the walls around our complex. Dianne and I often do our after supper walk like that. The walls of the compound are covered with flowering shrubs, everything is nicely landscaped and the other buildings even have fountains in front. The flowering shrubs grow over barbed wire. On the other side of the wall , with the wall forming one of their walls is a few rows of brick huts with corrugated steel roofs. These huts are walled on 3 sides and open in the front. Some nights when we are walking the air is thick with smoke from their fires. Sometimes the people look from one side of the wall to the other. The huts are businesses as well. There is a taxi stand an auto mechanic and numerous barbers all operating from these open sided huts. I used the taxi stand, which is on the edge of the huts, and a pay phone, which I may have mentioned in a previous post as a bright yellow plywood hut with an operator inside. The one operator also had a sideline renting beds in his hut, so I went to another.
One of the advantages of living in a densely populated area is the services. We can walk to a health club that we joined where they have a basketball court and a rowing machine. Ben and Joel and a friend played basketball several times since we got our membership early last week. We also live within walking distance of 2 markets, both with small grocery, book, clothing shoe and computer stores. We can get Ben’s frequent cell-phone recharges at the pictured market as well. To go to a movie, or a friend’s house or to his soccer games the kids have taken bicycle rickshaws. The grocery stores, pharmacy, bakery and butcher all deliver. We haven’t used this service, because we don’t do very well on the phone here. It is hard to point to what you want over the phone. Pizza delivery, by scooter. is the one semi frequent exception.
Bhakta works for HCL and was in Waterloo for some time. He loves to read and Dianne and he went to the British library in Delhi once. Bhakta also likes to walk around the block at lunch as do I. It is quite a long block that HCL is on, and we have never walked all of the way around it. Generally we walk about 1 km. Right across from HCL is some undeveloped land. On the one side of the street is order and peace in an environment not unlike the office environment in Waterloo. Then wilderness. Things are slowly starting to go better for my project. When we started out in September I had HCL’s brightest and best developers on my team. They knew the product, but still more importantly were pretty good at characterizing problems. That was a double-edged sword unfortunately, because their abilities were also required for the ongoing development work. When the crunch mode just wouldn’t stop we realized that it was unrealistic to try to combine learning expert level support of customers with expert level internal support and development. We hired 2 new guys and HCL’s trainer also expressed an interest in joining, so now we have a dedicated team, sitting together with one morning guy and one afternoon guy to a phone.
I have just finished a meeting with the team. We digressed a little and got started talking about motorcycles and cars and Tim Horton’s coffee. We are after all still guys. Dianne stopped by on the way home from bible study and picked up some papers for her course. She bust me out of the meeting for a minute and was hacking around with us about cell-phones. Dianne and Ben and Joel and I are excited to be going home for a holiday. We are honored by the good will that we feel from both West and East. Blessed to be Canadian it is also a blessing to realize that the world is much more complicated and diverse than our Canadian minds could even fathom.
Any walk starts at home, usually with a false start or two. We are staying in a 3-bedroom apartment. It has broadloom over tile floors. The bathrooms and kitchens have marble counter-tops. There is a huge amount of marble here. The floors at work are marble as well, and quite slippery. The stairs also seem to be spaced differently then at home, and I twisted my ankle on them right after we arrived. Ben and Joel have their own rooms here. We picked up little study desks for Dianne, Ben and Joel. We went to a place on the main road to get them, turned out that Lokesh knew a better place, so we went there. The desks showed up the next day on a bicycle rickshaw. There are individual hot water heaters or geysers. The kitchen one had a plastic supply pipe that burst spectacularly, completely soaking us. We had Lianne over at our place. Ben had a bunch of boarders over on the Diwali long weekend. It was pretty neat, they played vids, and also played my guitar.
We can walk a little within the walls around our complex. Dianne and I often do our after supper walk like that. The walls of the compound are covered with flowering shrubs, everything is nicely landscaped and the other buildings even have fountains in front. The flowering shrubs grow over barbed wire. On the other side of the wall , with the wall forming one of their walls is a few rows of brick huts with corrugated steel roofs. These huts are walled on 3 sides and open in the front. Some nights when we are walking the air is thick with smoke from their fires. Sometimes the people look from one side of the wall to the other. The huts are businesses as well. There is a taxi stand an auto mechanic and numerous barbers all operating from these open sided huts. I used the taxi stand, which is on the edge of the huts, and a pay phone, which I may have mentioned in a previous post as a bright yellow plywood hut with an operator inside. The one operator also had a sideline renting beds in his hut, so I went to another.
One of the advantages of living in a densely populated area is the services. We can walk to a health club that we joined where they have a basketball court and a rowing machine. Ben and Joel and a friend played basketball several times since we got our membership early last week. We also live within walking distance of 2 markets, both with small grocery, book, clothing shoe and computer stores. We can get Ben’s frequent cell-phone recharges at the pictured market as well. To go to a movie, or a friend’s house or to his soccer games the kids have taken bicycle rickshaws. The grocery stores, pharmacy, bakery and butcher all deliver. We haven’t used this service, because we don’t do very well on the phone here. It is hard to point to what you want over the phone. Pizza delivery, by scooter. is the one semi frequent exception.
Bhakta works for HCL and was in Waterloo for some time. He loves to read and Dianne and he went to the British library in Delhi once. Bhakta also likes to walk around the block at lunch as do I. It is quite a long block that HCL is on, and we have never walked all of the way around it. Generally we walk about 1 km. Right across from HCL is some undeveloped land. On the one side of the street is order and peace in an environment not unlike the office environment in Waterloo. Then wilderness. Things are slowly starting to go better for my project. When we started out in September I had HCL’s brightest and best developers on my team. They knew the product, but still more importantly were pretty good at characterizing problems. That was a double-edged sword unfortunately, because their abilities were also required for the ongoing development work. When the crunch mode just wouldn’t stop we realized that it was unrealistic to try to combine learning expert level support of customers with expert level internal support and development. We hired 2 new guys and HCL’s trainer also expressed an interest in joining, so now we have a dedicated team, sitting together with one morning guy and one afternoon guy to a phone.
I have just finished a meeting with the team. We digressed a little and got started talking about motorcycles and cars and Tim Horton’s coffee. We are after all still guys. Dianne stopped by on the way home from bible study and picked up some papers for her course. She bust me out of the meeting for a minute and was hacking around with us about cell-phones. Dianne and Ben and Joel and I are excited to be going home for a holiday. We are honored by the good will that we feel from both West and East. Blessed to be Canadian it is also a blessing to realize that the world is much more complicated and diverse than our Canadian minds could even fathom.
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