Saturday, July 26, 2014

where I'm staying

My Atlanta-based company keeps an apartment for the many people traveling to Bangalore to see our India counterparts.

My quarters are large and comfortable - I have my own bathroom, and my room is spacious and high-ceilinged with a bed, some large cupboards, a desk, and a flat screen TV i haven't used.

There are 3 other such suites and a large, minimally furnished common area - i like it a lot.

There's wifi and running water (although I can't drink it), although showers are interesting:

The running water isn't heated.  To bathe I have a switch outside my bathroom to turn on a little overhead water heater.  I turn it on about 20 minutes before i shower.

It only holds a couple gallons of hot water, and most of that comes out the lower spigot instead of the shower head, but I have a large bucket and smaller pitcher, so the shower goes like this:

  1. Turn on water, adjust to temperature
  2. Put big bucket under spigot to catch 80% of the water and use the shower head to get mostly wet and warm.
  3. Turn off water as the bucket is nearly full and the hot water is nearly gone.
  4. Soap up.
  5. Pour pitcher after pitcher of water from the bucket over your head to wash off the soap/shampoo.
  6. When done there might be some more water heated up, so you can get about 30-60 seconds more shower in.
It's definitely not as luxurious as an American-style "stand there with hot water pounding on your back" type shower, but it has a simple pleasantness.  Cooling down when the water is off is interspersed with the pleasant wave of warm water you pour with deliberate slowness.  It's a briefer experience, but I at least am more conscious of it.

i'll be glad to have my normal shower back, but as inconvenient as the manual shower sounds, it's really not too bad.  I find the greater inconvenience trying to keep the water out of my eyes and mouth.

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