Our First Saturday in Chennai

We'll catch up on the trip backlog little by little as we keep up with current events.

We decided to get out and do a few things today - kind of test the waters and see what the big world of Chennai had to offer. On the list was:

• Visit another apartment complex
• Go to Anna Nagar Park so the kids can ride bikes
• Check out Spencer Plaza mall
• Grocery shopping on the way home

We didn't get get out of the house until about 12:30pm even though we were awake 3:45am. We got on Skype and had a few video chats with people back home, made some coffee, sat on the roof and watched the sun come up and the city get going, Luanne gave me a haircut, and of course the maid came and gave them place a good scrubbing.

While we were sitting on the roof enjoying the sunrise, the boys had a great time being outside. They spent most of the time picking up and playing with centipedes. It took Noah a little while to realize that all of the centipedes he was collecting in flower pots, Micah was actually "trying" to let go. Micah would pick the centipedes back up out of the pots and squish them between his giant baby fingers all the while making his lovey grunting noises. I think he would have been devastated to realize he was actually killing them. Noah thankfully never caught on to the squishing part.

I called our driver and he came to pick us up, loaded the bikes in the trunk, and we took off for the park. Unfortunately, we found that the park doesn't open until 4:00pm so we were a few hours too early. We decided to tackle that adventure tomorrow instead.

Our driver didn't know exactly how to get to the apartment complex that we wanted to look at, which doesn't seem to be uncommon. An address here seems to be about as useful to the drivers as it is to me, and they're more interested in a phone number to call so someone can talk them through it. In this case, we weren't able to get a hold of anyone at the complex so the driver took us to the general area and started asking people where it was. It only took him a few stops to find it.

The apartment complex was nice, but didn't have any of the 'other' things we're looking for that would make it worth moving (pool, courtyard/common area to ride bikes in, & etc..) so I don't think we'll be pursuing it. The other undesirable thing it had was some large structure behind it that had huge blowers running on the roof. They were very loud in a low-frequency, background noise kind of way that would have gotten old quick. Real quick.

The apartment itself was nice as well, with nicer furniture but worse and fewer TVs than we have now. For me, that immediately excluded it. One of the 6 or 7 "American" channels that we have just happens to be the Disney Channel, and anyone with kids knows how important that channel is to properly raising your children. 'Nuff said.

As a side note, the kids were both sleeping in the car by then, so I had the back-and-forth with the front desk and took a look at the place while Luanne stayed in the car. It was nice enough that I wanted her to have a look, so we ditched the sleeping kids in the car with our driver for about 5 minutes and had a joint inspection of the "suite". We're not quite ready to have them baby sit while we have a night on the town, but all the "help" here are very fond of the kids and interact with them very well while we're around.

The mall is called Spencer Plaza, and is really three big buildings that seem to have been built separately and attached together with various halls and tunnels. It was gigantic and I was surprised by the number of clothing stores. Everything from a Levi store to silk/fabric to traditional Indian clothing, suits, and childrens' clothes. We by no means explored the whole mall, but we found very few electronics stores and never managed to get our hands on an alarm clock either (which is one of the things on our short list). Next time we go we'll take some pictures.

On the way home, Luanne caused a minor scene at the grocery store when she bought a half gallon of ice cream for the boys at a whopping 500 rupees ($10). The checkout girl and the three friends she called over were chattering away and laughing, but Luanne could only pick out the word "Americans" in all the ruckus. Considering a liter of milk costs 38 rupees (50 rupees ~ $1) the ice cream is definitely a luxury item, but it made the boys happy so it all worked out.

We had an enjoyable day overall and the kids did pretty good, all things considered. We saw a LOT of people today both driving around town and wandering around the mall, and only ran into five westerners (i.e. non-Indians) the entire time, all of them at the mall. Based on the crowd density and size of the mall, I would guess that's about a 10,000:1 ratio.

In the future, we'll take more pictures while we're out.