A trip to Little India

As time passes, we are feeling more at home and get a "settled down" feeling. The day to day routine resembles life in US for the most part. Wife gets ready for work and kid gets ready for nursery. Wife takes the kid and drops off in the nursery. I work from home, so my work day starts early. I find some time in the afternoon to run a quick errand - a trip to the post office to apply for license or a bike ride to the Indian store. I leave around 5 to pick up the kid and wife joins me near the mall. We pop into a store often - interesting how many times we go to stores every week to buy necessities. Then we head home, wife cooks, I take care of the kid and watch football, then we eat dinner and call it a day.

We have been going somewhere every weekend. Last Saturday, we went to East Ham, a locality in East London. Our plan was to go to a south indian restaurant and visit a Hindu temple. When we got down, I was pleasantly surprised to see only Indian stores and surrounded by Indians - Tamils and other south indians to be precise. Indian restaurants, clothing stores, grocery stores, jewelry shops, roadside food stalls - you name it. Many of the stores displayed notices in Tamil as well. The south indian restaurant we were planning to go - a chain called Saravana Bhavan - was a 10 minute walk, but we must have crossed at least five other places where we could have happily eaten. The menu was like a small book - at least 15 pages long and we had a hard time trying to shortlist the items. The food was authentic, very tasty and not expensive either (we spent about £15 for 6 items. Not satisfied with the lunch, we bought some yummy snacks to take home.

Then we explored the area a little bit. Visited a clothing store and a video store. Then we went to the Hindu temple nearby. It had an authentic feel. There were a lot of people inside and food (free!) was being served in the top floor. We had planned to go to Greenwich park in London, but the weather was a little chilly and the boy was a little cranky, so we headed home. It was a very satisfying day. I felt we got what we came for in the UK.

We can drive with the US license for a year. We have started the process to get a license here. Looks like we have to apply for a provisional license first, then write a theory exam and then take a road test (apparently, there is a 40% chance of clearing it in the first try). We were seriously doing research to buy a car. That is put on hold for now, since all the walking we do everyday do not bother us as much. The cars are fairly small and much more fuel efficient (40 mpg is common). That does not help much with the fuel cost with a liter of petrol costing £1.17, which works out to $6.50 per gallon at the current exchange rate, more than twice the price in US. I see many cars that I did not see in US - Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault. Hondas and Toyotas are around, but not that many. Car insurance seems to be very expensive. From a comparison shopping site (www.moneysupermarket.com), we got a quote of about £600 per year for the two of us for a 5 year old car. Maybe it will improve with more driving history here. In US, we were paying about $1100 per year for two cars - a brand new minivan and 5 year old Corolla. I should remember to stop comparing UK with US, especially with cars.