Hello My Dear Local Guide Contributors ! This is my first story in Local Stories.
I am Raju Sreenivasan and I am working as Senior Architect in an IT Firm and loves travelling.
I live in Chennai with my wife and daughter from last 15 years.I have added lot of details in Google Maps during the Google Mapathon event that happened in 2012. I enjoyed the event and won few goodies from Google. Since then, I started contributing to Google Maps regularly after completing my short trips in the city. I did not even realize that I became a local guide. I love taking pictures and used to upload to Google maps after every trip that make within the city.
I am living in Adyar-Thiruvanmiyur area which is one of the greenest parts of Chennai. Chennai has lot of cultural and traditional values which we can experience as we travel through the city. It does not mean that urban youth cannot enjoy Chennai since there are trendy malls and pubs around the corner. I am going to list few factors of Chennai which any local guide can contribute
1) Beaches
There are many beaches in the city and every beach is unique and beautiful. I am staying close to 3-4 beaches - Marina, Eliot, Thiruvanmiyur and visit one of these beaches every week. Also we visit beaches near ECR and VGP
2) Food
You will love Chennai if you love south indian food. There are world famous restaurants here who will serve amazing breakfast- Sangeetha, Saravana Bhavan, Murugan idli, Ratna Cafe and the list goes on. If you love north indian chat then you can find - Gangotree, Shree Mithai, Gupta Bhavan. I am pure vegetarian and I am sticking only to veg options. Also I am not listing the chain of hotels which will be available in other cities. I can quote at least 25 places in Chennai where I get tasty food.
We as local guide can contribute a lot to the public by adding the rating, review and pictures of these places.
3) Cultural Events
Chennai is famous for Margazhi Utsav - a music and dance festival which will happen during December-January every year. Great musicians and dancers from India and other countries visit Chennai to attend this festival. These events happen in different stages like - Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha etc. Also cultural event happens around the ancient temples like - Kapaleeshwar Temple Mylapore, Marundeeswarar Temple Thiruvanmiyur, Sree Ayyappan Guruvayurappan Temple Mahalingapuram.
We can do lot of things as local guide to promote these events and culture to the outer world
4) Health activities
I am very happy to see that there are lot of runners and cyclists in every part of the city and they keep arranging events. I love to play badminton and there are plenty of badminton clubs within the city. There are cricket grounds and indoor turfs which are quite expensive thee days due to the demand.
There are indoor play areas for kids too where we can pay per hour and kids can enjoy ball pool, jumping castle etc. My daughter used to visit Kartwheel Adyar, Toys Day Out Velacheri, Kiddo Castle OMR and Coco Playnut Thiruvanmiyur
We can contribute a lot to promote the sports that we love in our area since new clubs are opened every part of the city.
Summary
I can add a lot more positive factors of Chennai including public transport, schools, people, industries etc. These are few factors that came to my mind. There will be other hidden features about this city that I am yet to discover. We can contribute a lot as local guides to promote the culture and uniqueness of Chennai to outside world. Also we should write and improve the shortcomings of our surrounding through our words and pictures.
Also I want to add one end-note - few of my friends used to say that they don’t like to share any data with Google since it is being used for advertisement. I always strongly disagree with them since these data always helped me. I am using Google Photos, Google Maps, Google Now every day and it always outsmarts me. I trust Google’s machine learning and Artificial Intelligence and I felt Google is always there for me when I need.
So Let’s keep rocking and make our locality smarter !!!