I was looking for a new house in a Housing Society for a relative. A housing society around here is an agglomeration of buildings made by a single entity. These buildings are usually in a compound. The compound has its own shops, medical facilities etc. I was using my net book with my current video glasses. Part of the compound was still being constructed. My mom and I strolled over to it. I could hear men digging some distance away so I turned my head in that direction and tried to see whether I could watch them dig. That did not happen but I was able to make out a small pile of stones that was lying to the left. For some reason, that made my mom sit up for the first time in so many years and take notice of the vOICe. After that, I saw plants, several doorways and walls and even had a chance to look at some staircases. I had to of course remember to look down while on the staircase. Staircases do have distinct rhythms. I was also able to see people and was able to track the side profile of a man as he walked past my position. I did once mistake two walls that were close together for some plants but I suspect there was some clutter in the scene. Doorways are also easy to make out once you know what to look for. A half opened door has a sort of angry sound unless of course the door is a little broad which tempers the sound. Context of course plays a very large role in all of this. For example, I was looking at some corrugated sheets they had placed around one of the buildings. These sheets resembled shutters of shops. Subsequently, as we cruised around the compound in a battery-operated golf cart, I saw something else that looked like corrugated sheets. At that point, my dad explained that these were not corrugated sheets but, they’ve had a similar texture to those sheets. He described it in terms of ridges and valleys and, upon feeling them, I’m not going to disagree with that description.

I would recommend a battery operated golf cart to anyone. In case you want to try driving with the vOICe, I doubt you could find anything better. They are quite open so you can track traffic noise and I suspect it should be possible to mount a camera on them. I did not try driving the golf cart this time because of the poor field of view of my camera.

One of the reasons we had all gone to the housing society was to gauge whether we could estimate the quality of construction. My civil engineer father explained to me that gauging the quality of construction is virtually impossible in a plastered wall. Most of the initial houses we saw were finished so all you could see was smooth walls and floors. The trick apparently is to see a house that is being constructed. There would be irregularities in the concrete which would tell you that the construction is of poor quality. I was unable to really see any such concrete on this trip.

There were also several balconies that I was able to perceive.

After seeing a number of sample houses, we returned to the office of the real estate agent. I decided to flip through some of his brochures. Surprise surprise, I was able to distinguish that there were different shapes on that brochure. The trouble is, I don’t know the English alphabet all that well. Also, I wish there was a way to increase the inter-letter spacing and to make them larger. I did try two fold zoomed but that did not help much.