Pictures around town

Strange to be writing this as I listen to/watch Bill Clinton address the Democratic Convention, with all those American flags waving in the background. He sure can give a speech. Wow, very impressive. He puts these other politicians to shame. Streaming video across the continents is great when it works, but the glitches intervene from time to time. We'll see how it holds up over time.

I will now post some of the pictures I've been promising.
Here is Amartya on the first day of school with our neighbor from across the street.


Next, some of the anthills near Amartya's school that he wants to make sure you see. They are huge.



I'm more impressed with the coconut groves and banana plantation.


Here is one of my favorite ads, full of some of the color that is all around, here applied to a high tech product in an Indian-themed way:

I love this store -- I can get organic veggies (including lettuce). Tthe street it is on, in a neighborhood not too far from our house, follows. The only bad thing about it is that it doesn't deliver, whereas most of the other grocery stores do.


None of us have gotten sick from anything food related, although we have stuck to our fairly healthy routine -- a salad with lettuce, cukes, tomatoes and croutons with chives and olive oil and pasta with some fresh veggies and/or a sauce. My big splurge here was on "snow" -- some Parmesan cheese -- for the pasta, and soon it will be on the really expensive olive oil. The impressive change now is that it is available in many sizes (and many brands) -- something I couldn't find a few years ago, and didn't even see to this extext last November.

Things are changing fast here, all around. This is what I came to India to see and experience. A new metro, actually a monorail system, is being built around Bangalore, and many things are being torn down (disassembled, in some cases) to make way for it. Any religious site, however, cannot be touched. I will try to take more pictures, but here are a couple of one such site:


Now, focusing in:

I need to address some of the questions posed by Giorgio in the first comment (grazie!), hopefully later today.