Week 1 at Magnolia

Its a week here already ... we moved here the night of last Monday 27th July,2009.
I must say the week has been pleasantly smooth ... compared to the 13 previous house shifting Vimala and i were in during our 25 years of marriage. One thought on my mind is ... "i dont want a 15th shift". capturing some essentials for those following us ...

1) Packers : we used leo Packers. The guys were amazingly good. Fast and efficient. Not a think broken and the deal was to pack-move-unpack-arrange( u still need to rearrange). (Baalu .. cell 98453 17563)
2)Milk, paper, water fountain for immediate use before your filter is up and operational : Mr Nagaraj , 98804 72994. They even deliver you Nilgaris bread if you tell them when and how much you want. That works real well
3) On the ground support : Ms Vasanthi , the house keeping supervisor (cell 99722 05789) is very quick and to the point. Whatever little teething issues we faced were fixed in a jiffy. She is very good and supportive.
4) Power : havent had any problems in the week.
5) Security : see the folks around. I presume they are taking good care. Surely hear them making rounds in the night
6) Car wash : If you want some day 1 help till you / your driver figure out water source etc., pl go to item 2. I think Nagaraj has someone do that
7) TV : I went with Hathway. They are already wired up. It took just a day to have 4 connections operational. If you want Tata Sky, the Tata Sky chap is making rounds here. Call harikishan on 934196 1499
8) Telephone : BSNL forms are with Ms Vasanthi. The line ( which is also the intercom) was operational in a week. We went for a Reliance wireless landline for backup. That was operational ( including address verification) in 24 hours.
9) Broad band : BSNL application is available with Ms Vasanthi. Please budget for a week to 10 days to turn this on. Our connection request got filed last Thursday and we got a work order no today.. Airtel declared that broadband connection to Magnolia is technically infeasible ....!!! I dont believe this. They must be working hard to lose business. I escalated to their regional support manager.
10) WATCH THIS ONE : If you are in the lower floors, be careful what geysers you buy. The water pressure is enormous and you will have problems if you do not buy the geysers that can not handle high pressure. The joints will leak.
11) Showers or are you unde the Niagara falls : We are in the ground floor. The water pressure is very high. The shower head design Sobha has chosen to use sprays extremely painful jets of high speed water at you. I am serious. It hurts just standing under the shower. So, we are changing the shower heads. The pressure is great for a rain shower. We just fitted one without pressure pump and the experience is divine!!!!

In all, vimala , the kids and I are really happy with the one week here. Did not experience the frustrations we were ready for. We even went for a cup of tea in the amphi theater this morning. It was great.

We might beat up Sobha for their complete mess up on project management, but i can not but praise them for the quality of the product they delivered ....

please do reach out so you dont have to go through the learnings we went through ...

an, vimala
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