This past weekend we ventured out of Bangalore for the first time. A great thanks needs to go out to Prachee and Charles for planning this trip. Without them we never would have experienced as much as we did this past trip. These experienced travelers got us out of the hotel to experience things we would have never seen had we ventured on our own. Thank you.
Rather than write up a big ol’ post for you guys I’ve put captions into each of 35 pictures that I decided to upload. The pictures will give you a pretty good feel for what happened. The big picture is simply that we travelled from Bangalore to Pondicherry where we stayed for Friday and Saturday nights at the hotel “Le Dupleix”. On Sunday morning we ventured north to Mahabalipuram where we stayed at the “Ideal Beach Resort” for one night. Pondicherry is a beach town but the beach is really large rocks and you can’t swim. In Mahabalipuram they have sand beaches and we were able to swim in the warm ocean waters. All in all we had a fantastic trip where my favorite part was probably the driving in between the major cities and enjoying the pretty countryside.
Pictures from our Tamil Nadu vacation
September 4th, 2007
Bob
Last week I had the opportunity to go to a South Indian Hindu Wedding. This was the first Indian wedding I’d ever been to and it was definitely pretty cool. Apparently this wedding wasn’t nearly as big as they can get but I’d say there were enough people present for a good time. We missed the actual formal ceremony but were there for the immediately-after part. So the bride and groom were officially married but they hadn’t left the actual ceremony area yet as they were being greeted by all of the guests, including us, still. After this we ate lunch, with our hands, off of banana leaves. The food was pretty darn good and the experience was of course great. Pictures from the wedding.
September 4th, 2007
Bob
Prior to heading abroad on this little expat journey I got fairly into riding my bike. What I call bike riding most people call cycling. I have a road bicycle: it has a bunch of gears, skinny little tires with no tread and it doesn’t weigh very much at all. When I went to Ukraine I left the bike at home figuring that cobblestone roads and snow were no match for my bike. This turned out to be a decision that I regretted later: I ended up seeing plenty of cyclists riding through town and I wished that I had my bike. So I brought my bike to India.
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August 6th, 2007
Bob
From a neighbor we met last night we’ve learned that from now through early December it is considered off-peak time for visiting India. This means that the flights are at their cheapest. There are a few airlines offering SFO -> BLR for less than $2,000 (including taxes). This is far from cheap but since we’re out here you don’t need to pay $200/night to some hotel. It’s kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit India on the cheap. Something to consider 
August 6th, 2007
Bob
I’m Bob Van Zant and I’m a software engineer for a company in the silicon valley. I’m currently on international assignment with my wife, Heather in Bangalore, India building up a remote team of software engineers.
Prior to moving to Bangalore we lived in Ukraine working with a partner that does some software development for the company. This blog serves as the place where we’ll document all of the (very) wacky things that happen to us on a seemingly daily basis.
Thanks for visiting!,
Bob Van Zant
July 29th, 2007
Bob
The weather was really nice today so I finally got out this afternoon and took some pictures of our place. It’s a townhouse of sorts, we share the “far” wall with a neighbor that hasn’t moved in yet. It’s 2000 sq feet with marble floor everywhere. The interior, well I still have no pictures of the insides, but its rather nice. The quality of the finishing touches are very typical for houses of this sort: paint splatters on the trim, paint splatters on the windows, some windows close better than others, stains on the marble.
That big black pole in the middle of the photo ruining the picture is a light post. The light is also rather bright at night. It’s like having a full moon every night.
Here’s another picture just so that I can say I posted two. These airplanes fly right over our house when they come in for a landing at Bangalore airport. Check out the palm tree tops there. Looks like you’re on vacation every day.
July 29th, 2007
Bob
Typically Heather and I dread heading outside of our gated community. The walls and the security guards protect us from “India” and this makes our lives easier. Whenever we venture out we tend to have an awful time: the traffic sucks, restaurant employees give awful service, it’s dirty, it’s hot, it smells.
But yesterday we had a good day. I will go so far to say it was our first good day in India in the ~6 weeks we’ve been here. (more…)
July 27th, 2007
Bob
Ok, we’ve already lived here a month but I’m still considering this our welcome. A while back I killed a small roach in our kitchen. Charles told me about this roach chalk stuff that the roaches won’t cross. I found this at the store, it looks like sidewalk chalk but I get the feeling its not safe for children. Apparently it works. This one didn’t get far from one of my chalk lines before he rolled onto his back and started spewing whatever that fluid is. I took some pictures before taking him out of his misery and disposing of him.
July 22nd, 2007
Bob
Yesterday we stopped for lunch at a local pizza chain named Pizza Corner. We were excited to go here because Pizza Hut is getting old. We sat down for lunch and ordered a coke, a diet coke and a medium pepperoni pizza. 5 minutes later I got my coke. 5 minutes after that I asked a waiter where Heather’s diet coke was. “A diet coke?” “Yes.” “Ok, sir.” 5 minutes later I asked a different waiter “Can we have her diet coke, please?” “Sir, we don’t have diet coke.” Why did it take 3 waiters before one would tell us they didn’t have what we were ordering? After nearly 40 minutes I got fed up waiting for my pizza and went to manage the process myself. Our pizza came moments later. It was a small pepperoni pizza (recall that we ordered a medium). It can be terribly frustrating doing the most simple of things here.
July 22nd, 2007
Bob
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