The gang

On the following picture you can see the guys I hang around with on most occasions. From left to right: Pete, Debraj and Jerry. This picture has been taken in Besant Nagar, one of the beach areas of Chennai. We like to go there for food, mainly.

Rue Montgallet

This street is where you will find most electronic / computer stores in Chennai. It is the "High Tech Street":

The rear of a rickshaw

There you have it (gotta love boy bands):

More on traffic

    
Just a quick rear / front view from our car in Chennai. Although I grew used to it I cannot emphasize enough on how crazy the roads are here in India. Either everything is jammed and you then attend a little horn concerto or it goes smoothly but way too fast. Cars never stop. There is always a little spot further.

Oh, and, see the yellow 3 wheels vehicle on the lefthand picture? This is an auto rickshaw. Also called auto or rickshaw. They have the funniest way of signalling that your car is getting dangerously too close to them: They squeeze an old-school horn that goes "wnkeee wnkee" or "weetee weetee". Hearing one of those cracks me up all the time.

A little quote from wikipedia.org:

The Chennai auto driver is considered the most daring of species who manoeuvres the auto in very tight situations without compromising on speed. The triangular form of the auto also makes this easier, with the front single wheel negotiating the available gap, and the rear two wheels forcing a larger space that results from frightened drivers of all other types of vehicles moving away!

The coolest place in Chennai

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Park Hotel, a venue that would not look out of place in New York or Paris. The Leather bar plays great lounge music and the sixty-something centiliters bottle of Kingfisher is less than Rs. 200. Nice place to hang out and find other palefaces. The lobby is amazing: It has this long bar that serves as a reservation stand and two huge screens who usually show a movie about Gandhi. You can eat Korean there or continental. If you ever go to Chennai: Stay at the Park!

The view from the office

So I told you that I spent the first month at Cognizant's Academy. Well here is a picture of what I could see from my desk and a little zoom:

There is much to say on this picture.

1. Everybody has a motorcycle. Not everyone has a helmet though.
   
2. Here I am, sitting in a high-tech building and not 50 meters away from me are people cooking on a campfire, in the midst of their huts. This is why people say India is a land of contrasts.
   
3. Since those people do not have unlimited wealth, there is no real trashbin. Hence the trash all over the place. Roads around Chennai are pretty much like this. There is trash everywhere. Bangalore looked nicer.
   

Another picture of Chennai's traffic

I am blogging like crazy tonight :)

What you're seeing here on the right is a (blurry) picture of a small traffic jam.
On the foreground is the back of a rickshaw (3-wheel vehicle in which people try to fit the maximum amount of persons).
I found no more than 10 road signs in Chennai. If you want to go somewhere, you'd better know where it is before leaving.

Ivory Statue

Ranjini from Global Adjustments (the company that gave us a presentation and a guided tour of Chennai when we arrived) invited us at her place. She is the one who offered us the typical lunch which you can read about lower. Ranjini lives in a superb house full of beautiful things. For example she has a nice collection of these wonderfully detailed ivory statues representing gods:

My workplace

Guys, guys, guys! Am I excited? I found an image hosting service for free and without ads! I am so happy. Thank you Papi for this! Blogging is going to be so much easier. My pictures will now be thumbnailed and you can click on it to see a bigger version of the image. Please let me know if I should make the pictures smaller.

So here is TCO (teecee-oh), the brand spanking new offices of Cognizant in Chennai:

This is what you see from the entrance. Actually this is the Academy. This is where I spent the first month, attending corporate presentations and working (hard) on a small project.

And here are Pete and Daphne in front of SDB2 (left) and SDB1 (right):

Going into SDB1, you'll find the Telecom practice where I sit. This is my (temporary) office:    
Yes it is just like the office of a Prime Minister ;)