Our New House

Today we shifted to our new house. We left hotel. The calls to India bill was $1620 for both of us. Only 4 calls were there.

The house is just opposite to Sasken office building. House has all the amenities including gas, hot/cold water, washing machine, fans, ac, fridge, microwave, basic utensils and kitchen ware. It is a fully furnished house. We will get the Wi-Fi and phone in few weeks. The layout is something like this.

There is a small colony of houses called Santa Fe. We live in house no. 111 on Clavo (nail) road. Other people are well spread across the area. Company hired nearly 6-7 houses so far for us. Everyone is same but the furniture differs.All bungalows are twin bungalows with two separate houses. There is small lawn in front of the house and behind the house. It is very common grass which is not so dense. There are small trees outside and one central park for kids having see-saw and slides swings. We saw red ants in the house today and are little bigger size than ours.

Our house is facing south-west and door opens fully inside the house up to 180 degrees. Only ground floor has the fans. Rest bedrooms have AC only. Nothing for bathroom. Here, I find it very typical to save the light as well as space. They have fans to which the lights are attached. It’s like fancy fans we see in India. They have the chain to control the speed and the light ON-OFF. So two chains on fan and one ON-OFF button on wall. That’s it. No more buttons or anything. I think it might be saving the wiring a lot. Don’t know the real reason. It power spec is typically US style. 110V, 60Hz, 6Amp.

Ground floor: after coming in, there is hall which is almost 10 by 12. It has TV and sofa set for 5 people. Just right to the entrance there is dining room which is nearly 12 by 15. It has only dining table and 4 chairs. It also has 2 overhead fans with lights.

When you are standing at table you see fully furnished kitchen. It is of size 12x12. They share one common wall to pass on the things. All things are brand new. I think the owner renovated the house recently. It has GE fridge and microwave. It has 6 gas burners. It has a special lighter button for all burners. It sparks when we push it. There is gas oven as well. We haven't tried it but it is very big as we see in most American movies. At the head level, it has all the cabinets and microwave. The fridge is beside the microwave. It is a double door fridge. The back entrance is thru kitchen only. It opens in the backyard which has the geyser and the washing machine.

Upon entrance only u will find the stairs going upward and below the stairs it has a half(!) water closet. It has only commode and wash basin.

First floor: There is our room at the right hand side. It is of size 14x16. It has attached bathroom and commode with wash basin. It is of good size and in good condition. We don't have any water taps in the house except the wash basin. I don't know why do they have such thing? We will store water from shower I guess. We just purchased one 10L size bucket and one big tub for washing clothes.

On the left hand there are two rooms which are of almost same size as ours. But they share a common water closet outside the room. It is the remaining part of the first floor. Two boys will be staying there with us. I haven't taken a look on the terrace but will find the way and tell. Many companies have offices here. I saw Pepsi, Emerson, hp, whirlpool, some cement and many more. There is one industrial area and one business area in the outskirts of city. Our office is in business area.

Our office is just a small one from outside. It is only single floor over 3000-4000 sq ft. both side parking is there with so many cars. They have trucks same as in US and cars as well. They just copy good stuff from US. Most popular brands in cars are Chevy, ford, some American. There is Hyundai here as well and they have Santro model; but it is used as taxi sometimes. Most of the cars are pretty big and has only 1 man. The diesel and petrol rates are very low as to India. They are $7 and $11-12 resp. (here $ means peso. they use the same symbol as USD.)

The weather is good so far. Yesterday it was very hot and temp was up to 40C. It changes day by day. It might rain in few days and later it will be hot summer.

The outside people don't know much English and company has arranged free Spanish classes only for Indians in the company. We are almost 15 people from all over the India. More are going to join us in few months.

Warm Regards,

Yatin.