The city with short buildings

A couple of days after I landed in Washington, DC, I met someone for a Thai lunch at Pennsylvania Avenue (2200, not 1600). It was a good meeting -- he has been here for 20 years, and is now quite an authority on tips on how to live here.

He did not give me any, except he asked me what I felt about the US. I told him the truth -- I didn't know. It was too early to pass judgment on a country which my boss had told me was the "most advanced civilisation on earth, depite George W Bush." In between he told me that Washington, DC, did not have any skyscrapers because a law dictated that no building be taller than the US Capitol, the building that houses the Congress, or the US parliament. Wow!

Coming from Mumbai, which may soon see a civil war over parking rights, this place was heaven. It was quiet, no skyscrapers so the architecture retained a certain charm, people greeted each other on the streets and in the hallways, the buses and trains ran on time, they were airconditioned, and life looked so organised (organized?).

So, truth be told, I am starting to blog about my life in DC a month after I landed here. Not because I was lazy (ok, who am I kidding? I was lazy), but because I feel I know the city better than when I met the management guy who was a managing director of some division at a big consultancy.

I am enjoying my life here -- the excitement of learning new things, the magic of voicemail, the ups, the downs, the stories I am filing, the works. Now on, you may want to share that life and my thoughts on everything, including the short buildings.