My address for three weeks...

...is Near Mini Punjab Restaurant, 16th Road, Bandra West. Getting used to the relational address system here is tough. You can Google just about anything, such as an electronics store (which I did since my alarm clock loses 5 minutes each half hour for some reason), and you will get something like "Universal Electronics, Pandurang Vila Co-Op Soc., Next to D. P. Zaveri Jewellers, opposite 7th Road, Khar Pali Road". And so we'll set off down Khar Pali Road (which we know is Khar Pali Road because it is the first cross street north of our apartment according to our maps, not because it is labeled as such), count and benchmark our way down to 7th Road, and alas, there is no Universal Electronics to be found. It's possible that it has closed, or that the name is different on the store itself, but in any case, we have struck out. I will just have to calculate the time that my alarm clock will display when it is time for me to get up. We've also ended up at In & Out Convenience Store twice in lieu of a grocery, because the first grocery charged us an especially Western rate and it's eluded us to locate another grocery with the maps and Google. This means I get to try a lot of British candy bars that I otherwise wouldn't, so it's not all bad.

In our initial electronics store quest today, the first thing we encountered on our street corner was one of Mumbai's famed free range cows, just wandering through an intersection as vehicles and people wove around it. I of course had to pause and video it...near the end of the video, it may not be audible, but Mark was voicing concern that the cow was approaching and was quite near to us when I decided it was a good idea to cut and cross to the other side of the road. I'm a little curious if it would have gone around me or become aggressive had I not cleared its path.



Finally, one last interesting detail that I've learned is that men who are friends frequently hold hands, often when crossing an intersection together. It's such a departure from the US's "don't touch me or I'll think you're gay" vibe and the general lack of hand-holding between people who aren't parent-and-child or romantic partners. I'm not a very touchy-feely person, so I'm not too eager to bring the hand holding back and try it out with my friends (I know you're all disappointed), but I think the social difference is interesting in a nice way.