As I think I’ve said, India is a chaotic place. Full of dogs, cows, crazy driving, etc. So, I need my home to be an escape from the crazy. Otherwise, I couldn’t survive over here.
I live in a gated apartment community, or, ‘society’. There are about 1000 people in my society. We have a gym, swimming pool, vegetable shop, and small grocery store. It is lovely and green, with gardens and trees. There are always children around- playing cricket, riding bikes, just generally getting up to mischief. There’s always people around and you can hear them but it’s still (relatively, for India) quiet. There doesn’t tend to be huge noisy parties, and you respect other people’s space. I’ve met a lot of neighbours in the lift, and talked about cockroaches, monkeys, the rains, and the normal India-life-stuff.
It’s not flash, but it’s safe, friendly, and I feel comfortable here. My home is clean, with room for indoor hula-hooping and with a big balcony for skipping and burpees. One thing I miss about NZ- carpet! We only have marble tiles here, and vacuum cleaners are rare indeed. The place I used to work had carpet tiles and the cleaner swept them rather than using the vacuum cleaner!
Water is piped in but it’s not safe to drink, so we have a ‘can’ of water, similar to how you do in an office. Rs. 75 for 20L of drinkable water. There’s no hot running water in the apartment. Dishes are washed in cold running water, and if you want a shower, you have to turn on the geyser/ water heater to heat the water.
So… my first ‘vlog’! Excuse everything (voice-over, terrible camera-ing) about this, my first time doing this and I was anticipating it being technically difficult. It wasn’t as enraging as I expected so I might do this again some time.