{"id":59,"date":"2015-06-22T01:58:19","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T01:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/?p=59"},"modified":"2015-06-26T05:27:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T05:27:10","slug":"the-south-city-mall-sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/2015\/06\/22\/the-south-city-mall-sanctuary\/","title":{"rendered":"The South City Mall Sanctuary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our apartment is cozy, difficult to find off a busy road call the Prince Anwar Shah\u00a0Connector. Our taxi driver got lost for an hour and a half on the way from the airport and we had to stop and ask nearly 20 people where our place was. Google maps wont help you here. We live on the bottom floor of an Indian home, upstairs live the landlord, his two children, his parents, and their house keeper (a live in maid that is very typical for all middle class families in India). They are all very kind friendly people and are constantly checking to make sure we are comfortable and everything is alright. We are not allowed to cook in our place (not that there was a kitchen) and there is no wifi. There were just two bedrooms, each with a bathroom, and a common area with a small couch and coffee table. For someone traveling outside the US for the first time, this place might seem a little dull and substandard but for India, its upper-middle class.\u00a0In India, even the middle class have house keepers – someone who lives in your home and cooks and cleans for you every day. But in India theres no swiffer and it did come as a bit of a shock to us to see the house keeper on her knees with a rag mopping the floors. Yet there are so many people in India that jobs like this are necessary to keep people employed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After arriving at our apartment, we relaxed a bit but needed to stay awake as long possible to fight the jet lag so we went out to the only place we could, a nearby mall named South City Mall – a few kilometers down the road but getting there proved to be a challenge. Cabs and tuk tuks here have predetermined routes so getting them to stop in the middle of one can take a while. We shortly discovered that most large buildings and stores here have airport-like security screenings when you enter – body scanners, bag searches, and sometimes bag scans. What we can\u2019t figure out yet is why though there are certain exceptions to this system.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, if you have a computer, you do not need to be searched but just need a small piece of paper that labels what kind of computer you own. We also learned that on occasions, they will ziptie the zippers on your bag together to stop you from shoplifting but this seems to be random selection. It wouldn\u2019t be long before we got used to this routine of having our bags searched multiple times a day although the searches are not very thorough – I\u2019m not actually sure they\u2019ve ever caught anything they are looking for with them. <\/span><\/p>\n

South City Mall would soon become our chosen place. In my experience, most Americans when they travel have one spot they choose in a developing country that has AC, wifi, and normally good food or coffee. In addition to that, it was across the road from our office. South City didn\u2019t have wifi nor coffee, but they had AC and some damn good samosas which worked for us. For our first week at work we didn’t have any wifi or data – it would eventually take us 3 days and 8+ hours to obtain SIM cards from vodafone. But being disconnected isn’t bad at home, it just severely limits your mobility in a place like Kolkata. We only went up and down the road we lived on and ate dinner at the mall. (That being said,\u00a0fast food from India is not fast food in the U.S. It is all freshly made food with good ingredients you can see in front of you, it just may not be the highest quality of ingredients or spices.) Still beats most American Indian food…\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our apartment is cozy, difficult to find off a busy road call the Prince Anwar Shah\u00a0Connector. Our taxi driver got lost for an hour and a half on the way from the airport and we had to stop and ask nearly 20 people where our place was. Google maps wont help you here. We live … Continue reading The South City Mall Sanctuary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":71,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",2048,1536,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",1000,750,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",427,320,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",660,495,false],"large":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644-2048x1536.jpg",660,495,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",1536,1152,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",2048,1536,false],"qubely_landscape":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",1000,750,false],"qubely_portrait":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",427,320,false],"qubely_thumbnail":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644.jpg",133,100,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/files\/2015\/06\/IMG_7644-825x510.jpg",825,510,true]},"qubely_author":{"display_name":"crohacz","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/author\/crohacz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Our apartment is cozy, difficult to find off a busy road call the Prince Anwar Shah\u00a0Connector. Our taxi driver got lost for an hour and a half on the way from the airport and we had to stop and ask nearly 20 people where our place was. Google maps wont help you here. We live…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}