Oh the smells of India

When I got up this morning. This morning this is what it looked like out my window. Apparently My hotel is right on the beach here. I was looking out the window for afew minutes and there were so many people out walking on the beach. I guess that Mumbai (Bombay) can be a great resort area? But it is still in India:) We headed to the airport at 6 am to catcha flight to Chennai, India - where we made potential site visits for the possible manufacturing plant.

when we got to Chennai we had a nearly 2 hour drive to the Industrial Park. My friends the cows were all along the dirt highway. It was only 10 am when we arrived and it was already over 100 degrees!

The Induistrial Park that we went to was called Sri. It was 1 year into the development. There were roads already, 8 companies have already started construction of thier manufacturing facilities at Sri. We were here to have a look. This the font entrance to the part. Im pressive huh?
This picture is of the site that the comany sho ownes the park would like for us to buy. We could get 29-1,000 acres.

Here are some photo's of the manufacturing plant that we being built right now that was similar to the size requirments that we had told them we wanted. All the work was being done by hand. Even the cleaning of the freshly poured cement.

The building construction was not bad. They use steel beams (not like the sturdy ones that we would use in the US, but steel none the less).

Ths lady on the right here is mopping the floor by hand.

Here is a photo of the Park President making the hard sell to little Anders. At this point the Swedes were melting and the Indian people where stinking.

More example of buildings that were under construction.

This picture is not that great. I wish that you could have seen this. We went to the housing section of the Park. On the other side of the fence is the village where out non-skilled labor would be coming from. The lady to the middle left is the Vice President of the Industrial Park. The people to the right of her are the villagers. These people were living in GRASS HUT's. I thought that all of a sudden I was in Africa. These people lived in grass huts with no running water or bathrooms. There was families with kids and everything. No wonder the wage of these people was expected to be $75 a month per person. We were checking out the housing because the company would be expected to provide basic housing fo rhte employees at the park. By the way did I mention that the part did not have indoor bathrooms. All of the bathrooms were like outdoor (no roof) stalls. Everywhere.

The photo above is in the mens dormatories that we would purchase housing in. Each room was for 2 people to sleep in. There was a common area for cleaning your self at the end of the hall and bethrooms outside. This room cost the company $11/month. This includes all water and electricity. And people were lining up to take the jobs to live in the dormatory. It was way over a 100 degrees by this time and there was no airconditioning in the dorms.

They also had single family homes for $22/month. They did not include water or electricity, these things were extra. The homes had a kitchen and water up to the door. Bathrooms outside. Funny thing is behind me when I was taking this picture was the grass hut village. No one was living in the homes yet.

This house had an add on of a covered patio. A family with 3 or 4 kids lived here.

Here are some more buildings at the industrial park.

This was a building that was being built for engineers to sit and work on designs for American comanies. SO picture places like this when you call a company and get someone with an Indian accent on the other end.

at around 9 pm we made it back to Chennai to the Courtyad Marriott. This was my solice for the night. Flight back to Mumbai at 5 am. Hotel was not that bad but the bathrooms were dirty, But on the up side - they were indoors and had tp.