Saint Thomas Mount

So we went where Saint Thomas is supposed to have lived for some time: Saint Thomas Mount in Chennai.

From the wikipedia article:

St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Christ and believed to be the first ever Christian missionary to set foot on Indian soil, is associated with Chennai. He is supposed to have visited India in the first century A.D and died in Chennai. He supposedly set up a church near the southern shoreline and made a small hillock his home. Legend has it that he used to walk to the church - a distance of over 15 kilometers - and back everyday through what was then, a menacing jungle. The names of the two suburbs in Chennai, Santhome and St. Thomas Mount, have cemented this link.

It was not particularly exciting...



... But we took some pictures anyway:

What you can see from the terasse of our appartment

Some random guy going to work on his three wheel bike:

The swamps, home of a zillion mosquitos and too often mistaken for a garbage disposal by locals (actually this one looks clean enough):



Living areas:


I do not know how I managed to get such a wonderful view at Velachery. Honestly this part of Chennai does not always look this good.

A close-up on the houses nearby:



A close-up on some traffic jam (generating dirt storms) outside our appartment complex gate:


For the record, we got stuck once in the alleyway that goes from the appartments to the road for 45 minutes straight. It must have rained the day before.

The skies above my workplace

Getting hair-styled

People (I won't tell you how many) say they do not see me enough on the pictures. Well here is me getting a haircut, followed by the little shop where I got it done. If you look closely you'll see me again in the mirror. And again. Facing mirrors are a wonder. That should be enough me's for a month now ;)

Hangin' around at Elliot's

Elliot's beach is one of the two beaches of Chennai. The other is Marina beach.

There is a food court in Elliot's beach and it helps drawing us there. So you must think "Oh that's nice, have a little lunch and then step outside for a nice digesting promenade". Well... Not exactly. Between the food court and the walkable beach is an old fenced area which contains nothing more than ruins and junk. Mostly junk. So we usually do not waste time contemplating the sea and rush into our car.

But that day we decided we had to brave the stench and take at least a picture to prove it...

Fascinating discovery of my bathroom

Before entering my bathroom, you will face your first challenge: What switch is the one to activate?

The answer is not "all of them". See those two bigger switches. One is for water pressure (so you feel less like someone is peeing on you, more like you are having a shower) and the other one is to warm up the water - or is it? Never really understood which one was which.

Now the second challenge is to find a use for this little "showerette" on the side of my toilet seat. After wondering for a while and then asking around I got my answer. I'll let you think about it.



And without bigger misteries, the shower:



Nothing too fancy about it except that the drain hole is higher than the actual shower floor. So I get to step in a day old smelly water puddle every morning. While I was in HK for 4 days, some three or four fungus spots managed to develop a nice glowy fluorescent green color. Very interesting. Not too appetizing though.

On my way to work

Seems like I am not the only one going to work :)

Just an odd looking shop

Here is a record shop located in Besant Nagar:

Contrasts

Also in Dakshin Chitra was this charming lady :

Dakshin Chitra

Not long after arriving in Chennai we went to Dakshin Chitra on Old Mahabalipuram Road. It is a sort of museum in the outdoors with a display of many different types of housing architecture. Here are a few examples shown by Rajiv and Pete.

Various activities were taking place in Dakshin Chitra on this Sunday afternoon: Flower drawing on the floor (as previously described), traditional dancing / martial art, shadow puppet theatre and glass sculpting:

Immigration

Here is a picture of the building where we litterally wasted a few days :

Here is how: My stay in India was planned from August '04 to May '05. However something went wrong with the Immigration (2 months ago) and the Chief Immigration Officer (CIO) decided to let us - non native Indians - stay no longer than 180 days. Following is the non-exhaustive history:

• Thursday, August 12th: Daphne, Jerry, Pete and I waited until 4:30 pm to see the CIO. Didn't happen.
• Monday, 16th: The 4 of us tried again to have an interview with the CIO. Jerry was not feeling well so he tried to kill time on his laptop. In order to get lunch, we stacked in a Tata Indicab. 6 persons. Guess who had to sit on the shiftstick... Coming back in the afternoon we ended up playing cards in the middle of the Immigration's offices, not aware that playing card is regarded as being highly futile! Nothing happened.
  
• Wednesday, 18th: Just the basic waiting until 11:00 am when we were told that we would not see the CIO today.
• Thursday, 19th: Armed with iPods, books and a gameboy we were ready for a long day. Nothing happened again so we left at 2:30 pm. We asked our passports back though. Immigration was keeping them without knowing whether they would do anything with them or not.
  

Drawings on the floor

As I was saying, flower drawing usually hapens for festivals. However what is more common is drawing with rice powder in front of your appartment / house door. I have not yet understood how the thing stays on the ground but it kinda stays like chalk although it is not. Women (one of their first job for the day, performed at dawn) lay rice powder as a sort of blessing.

There is something in India about naturally providing food to animals. For example, in villages, you regularly leave something to eat at your front door for the cow to eat. And if I recall well, those drawings are made of rice so ants stay out of the house.

PS: I am not sure anymore about what is the actual material used. I believe it is rice powder but if an Indian native could confirm, it would be nice. I could use details on the purpose too ;p

Indians rule at bakery

I was surprised to discover that Indians love bakery. And they make it well too. Of course they have all kinds of specialities (sweets made of almond/cashew paste) but they also have common western breads and cakes. The image below doesn't illustrate too well what I mean but it's good enough :)

Neon

Once in the Academy, I took a glance outside and saw this amazing sky with sunrays going through the clouds and all that. I decided to take a photograph and the reflection on the window gave this:

I thought I could share it with you. Gives a little twist to that common representation of gods in the sky.

Flower composition

        
This type of creation is common for festival days. Women will set flower petals - yes, they are all flower petals - on the floor in order to draw (mostly) geometrical shapes. It is usually impressive!

Wicked!

There will be more pictures soon. But while you wait, why not take a peek at (or even participate to) my next big thing: My Wiki. It is a website that lets you edit any page and comment on it. So my colleagues in India can add their own thoughts and you can share too (comments or articles).

The most famous wiki available must be Wikipedia.org which is an online and free-to-edit world knowledge base, really.

So I will keep this blog updated but you will also find some other things (maybe less politically correct, maybe funnier) on my wiki site.