Day Two

The senior manager that is accompanying me for three weeks arrived early Sunday morning and joined me for breakfast at 8am. Afterward, we explored around the residence some more, and also took a walk down the 'main roads' and a little beyond. The temperature was rather pleasant outside. Today it was about 22°C, or 72°F.

The area we are living in is Koramangala, and there are some really nice houses close by. Here are a few pics.

For breakfast, I stuck with the traditional western breakfast, but branched out a little for lunch and dinner. Since we haven't really been given contact information for our drivers yet, we ate all three meals at the hotel restaurant, 12th Main. For lunch today, I had a chicken tikka pizza. For dinner, I went with a regional specialty, kori gassi, with steamed basmati rice (to throw some of the curry on, of course), followed by dark chocolate mousse for dessert. Both dishes were excellent, and had just the right amount of spice. Each had one chili pepper beside them on the menu to indicate how spicy the meal was. While I was taking a gamble on the locals determining the spiciness, the dishes turned out to be exactly as I expected.

As mentioned in "The Drive", I had yet to see any unusual animal sightings...until our walk today. See below for a pic, but yes, that is a boar just roaming around on the side of one of the 'main roads'. There was also a cow roaming in someone's front yard, but unfortunately, I did not get a photo.

The streets in this area definitely are named differently than I am accustomed to, but they seem to be in a grid similar to some U.S. cities. They go in order from the 'main roads' of 1st Main, 2nd Main, and so on to 'blocks' of 1st Block, 2nd Block, etc. (Mercure is located on 12th Main, 3rd Block). The third part of this system are the cross streets. For example, an address on a cross street might be 8th Main, 7th Block, 4th Cross. Confusing? Yeah, maybe just a little bit.

Check out the scaffolding for the construction on this house. Looks real sturdy.

Lastly, here is a little video at one of the marketplaces not far from our residence. And no, I haven't had the pleasure yet of riding on one of the auto rickshaws.