New Apartment!

On February 2nd, we made the move from the hotel (Urban Oasis) into an apartment building called the "Royal House". The apartment will cost us 18,000 rupees a month, plus gas, electricity and Internet. We spoke with the manager and he estimates that all of that combined might come to somewhere around 20,000 rupees, or $400 a month.

Below: the new apartment building, with it's brain fryer antennas up top

The apartment is great. It's just a few buildings down from the hotel, so we're still in the same area. It has a kitchen area, a living room with tv and chairs, a large bedroom with 2 beds!!! (FINALLY!) and a patio. Also a nice big bathroom with a large shower area. The windows and doors are all constructed slightly better than at the hotel, so there is a decent amount of noise reduction throughout the apartment, which makes for great sleeps.

Below: inside the apartment

Hoping to still have a rooftop for tanning and doing light stretches etc outdoors, we decided to check out the rooftop of our new building. On top of the stairwell exit are 3 huge antennas (antennae?). The minute we stepped outside of the stairwell, we felt something like a fuzziness building in our heads, until after a minute or so, it was developing into a slightly swimmy head - so, no more rooftop visits. We'd like to avoid the high frequency radio-waves radiating our brains.

When we made the arrangements to move in, the building didn't have internet. This was pretty disappointing as I've been using Skype to talk to my girlfriend back in Canada, after I've finished my morning practice every day (international voice/video calls and IMS? For free?! Thank you, creators of Skype!). Knowing I would soon lose my connection, I'd found some internet cafe's that served breakfast. Unfortunately they are all western styled breakfasts and are a fair bit more expensive than I prefer. Just as the day of our move arrived, we received an email telling us that internet was being installed in the building! Problem solved! It didn't work right away, but a repair guy came by after a day or two and got it fixed for us.

Another disappointment was that moving was going to bring an end to our wonderful rooftop breakfasts. Then, the day before we moved, the breakfast server, Jai, explained that if we would like to continue having breakfast there every morning, he could speak with the manager and arrange for us to be able to come. They worked out a price of 55 rupees each, which is 1/4 what we'd be spending elsewhere.

So, all in all the new apartment couldn't have worked out better. We've got everything we need and are still nice and close to everywhere we need to go. At the end of the week we've decided it's time to see a few of the sights, so next week we plan on getting out and touring around!