Saturday Morning Ruminations

After last week's post a dear friend called me to assuage some of the loneliness I was feeling.  It was a real treat to know that someone cared enough to spend a few hours on the phone with me.  It helped tremendously.  J.T., I am in your debt.  While we we talking the night away I recalled some stories about my time thus far that I have not included in the blog.  Here they are:

Water:
Upon moving into the house 2 weeks ago I had a check list of items provided to me by my relocation company. There was no water in the master bathroom and no hot water in the kitchen.  Furthermore, the water filtration system for drinking water in the kitchen was ancient, dirty and had parts broken.  I figured that I would try to fix the master bathroom water first.  I surmised that there was a valve closed somewhere about the house.  I could not find it.  I did, however, find a valve in the downstairs shower.  I turned it on and then turned on the shower.  Water came out.  It seemed logical that the valve in the shower turned on the water in that bathroom.  Right?  Not so fast...

A while later I walked upstairs and heard water rushing.  I ran from room to room and nothing.  I made it to the patio and it got louder.  It seemed to be coming from the top of the roof.  There happened to be a bamboo ladder on the patio so I climbed up to investigate.  To my surprise there was a solar hot water heater there with water gushing out!  I called Srini, the maintenance man for my villa and explained.  He said he'd be there in an hour.  Meanwhile, water was rushing down the house and soaking the side yard which really isn't much of an issue.

Surprisingly, the hot water now worked in the kitchen.  I was perplexed.  Srini arrived and climbed up on the roof.  He then went to the downstairs bathroom and shut the valve on the shower wall.  That stopped the water cascading off the roof and down the side of the house.  Srini promptly left.  Later that day I turned the hot water valve on in the kitchen and nothing happened.  The it dawned on me; the valve on the shower wall in the bathroom provides water to the solar hot water heater on the roof and feeds the kitchen.  Wouldn't it have been nice if Srini had explained this?  This, it turns out, is a very Indian trait.  The full consequences of an action are never fully revealed even when pressured to explain them.   This happens at work all the time.

I called Srini back to the house this past Monday.  I demanded hot water in the kitchen and a new water filtration system.  He seemed incredulous as to why I would want hot water in the kitchen.  He then proceeded to turn on the broken water filter unit and proved that it worked.  I then asked about how to replace the filters cartridges and he replied that he replaced them when the previous tenants left.  I told him that I did not believe him.

Hot water is normally delivered by what are called geysers.  Geysers are small hot water heaters installed in every kitchen and bathroom.  It's quite efficient; they can be turned on 15 minutes before hot water is needed and turned off immediately afterward.  It save a good deal of electricity.  To my surprise, Srini convinced the landlord to install a new reverse osmosis + UV water filtration system and a geyser in my kitchen.  The filter is in and works just fine.  The geyser is attached to the outside wall but needs an electrical connection.  So far, they have beaten my expectations.

Internet:
Internet is expensive and unreliable in India.  However, I discovered why my internet cuts out on me when it rains:

This is the cat5 cable that runs from my router to the mux about 50 meters away in a neighbor's yard.  I called the internet guy who assured me that he will replace the cable.  He claims the crew that cut away most of the trees and plants before painting the house did it.  Makes sense.

I ride in a mini van, even though I swore I never would:

This is a Toyota Innova.  It is about 3/4 the size of a Siena and has regular doors, not sliders.
Here is the Innova in action the other day on the way to work:

If it looks to you as though I am on a 1 lane dirt road in bidirectional gridlocked traffic, you are correct.  Welcome to India!

Domestic Help:
My driver, Praveen, is a nice young guy who speaks good English and grew up in Bangalore.  On the first day we met he asked if I needed a maid.  He knew someone that cooked & cleaned and he would introduce me to her.  The next morning my doorbell rang and there was Praveen.  Standing next to him was this beautiful South Indian girl.  She was stunning!  I immediately said, no.  Sorry, I do not need anyone until July after my family arrives.  As understanding as Nancy is, suspicion would have certainly been aroused (bad choice of word?) if I had been living alone for 6 weeks with a beautiful 18 year old maid.  Nan's is an understanding lady, but...

Later that day Praveen asked me why I did not like the maid.  I reiterated that I do not need anyone until July.  Then Praveen told me that she is his fiancée and that they will be married in October.  I felt awkward and awful.  The truth is simply this: I do not need a maid.  Then he told me that she works for someone in the very first apartment complex that I visited.  The one that was a true slum.  I felt even worse.  Still, the answer was no.

Here are a few more photos:

Huge Snail on a bamboo tree in my yard.

Patio After

Squirrel in my tree.

1 Month Down, 17 to Go!

I am not counting the days until I leave.  I am, however, counting the days until I see Nancy, Courtland and Effie.  That is 3 weeks, 6 days.  Just a reminder, I arrived here in Bangalore India on 18 April.  I will fly home on 18 June, stay for 2 weeks and then take the family to India with me for a whole year.  Perhaps more.  I don't know yet.

Here is what I have been doing for the last few weeks: shopping.  I hate shopping.  This house was 'partially furnished'.  It had no bed linens or pillows which is OK.  I'd rather have new ones anyhow.  This is not billable back to my company, so it is an expense I did not consider.  These things are surprisingly expensive!  I know that I could buy these items cheaper in the US.  The house did have plates and cups, but no cooking pots or pans, no silverware or utensils.  This stuff adds up.  On a positive note, food is cheap!  Brand name US goods are costly, but the local items are very cheap.  I bought beef tenderloin (yes, you can buy beef here) for less than $3 per pound.

The mattresses in India must be made of thatch and concrete.  I tried to find better mattresses, but that meant paying exorbitant prices for US or European mattresses imported for the expats & upper class locals.  Amazon.com to the rescue!  I bought a memory foam mattress topper for my bed and egg crate toppers for the other beds.  I ordered them on Sunday and they arrived on Wednesday!  I am not exaggerating on this point, I had sores on my hips from the lack of padding from these mattresses.  The bunk I had in the navy was better than these.

I have been out in the evenings meeting my neighbors.  I am one of the few Americans close by.  There are several Swedes, and there is more French & German spoken than I expected.  Today at the pool I was the ONLY person who spoke English as their native tongue.  Surprisingly, there are quite a few newborns in the neighborhood.  My neighbors, Harry & Lilibeth (Swedes) have a 6 week old boy named Axel and a 2 year old girl named Ileana.  The sound of babies crying on a hot summer evening fills the air.

I have a little visitor nearly each night that comes in my bedroom:

This little guy, roughly 6 inches long is a welcomed visitor.  These guys eat the little critters that I do not want around.  He has even chattered at me before darting out of the room through a hole in the wall near the air conditioner.

Did I ever mention that it rains here?  The power of the storms varies, but it can get pretty intense.  We had a thunder storm that lasted over an hour with the hardest rainfall I have ever witnessed.  One thing that weighs on every westerner that I know is the amount of trash and pollution in the waterways.  Check this out:

These are (presumably) soap bubbles.  The pile was at least 15 feet high in this runoff stream near my office building.  This was caused by whatever pollutant was in this stream and the turbulence due to the flash flood caused by the thunder storm.  It is sad.  However, I remember driving on I90 past Gary, Indiana in the 1970s & 80s in disgust as the stench from the purplish-grey water made eyes water.

This place can frustrate even the most patient person.  Here are some examples:  When checking out of the Mayer Hotel the printer died and I could not get a receipt.  I waited for 45 minutes while 3 people huddled around it to no avail.  They asked if I could come back another day.  The next day the hotel manager called me and I headed back to get my receipt.  I checked it over and they had incorrectly charged me a higher rate on 2 of the nights than was quoted.  I was there for about an hour before they had reconciled the bill and was out the door.  While shopping for bed linens I waited for an hour at checkout.  There was a promotion that included 2 free pillows with a purchase of more than 4000 rupees.  Three young men plus what appeared to be the store manager could not get it to work.  FINALLY, after they spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone (which I can only hope / dream that they called some help desk in China) was the issue rectified and I was able to leave.  I needed an envelope while at work so I headed to the mail room.  They did not have envelopes.  Really?  No envelopes in a mail room???  So I headed to lunch (just as the torrential rain started) and walked to one of the food courts that serves Indian food very cheaply.  It's an odd arrangement where you order at a kiosk and are given a ticket for your food to be redeemed at one of the restaurants.   I tried ordering 3 different items on that day's menu; all were sold out.  So screw it, there was a coffee shop nearby.  At least I could get a coffee and wait out the pouring rain, right?  Wrong!  The coffee machine was broken.  On a side note, this food court is round, covered with a tarp and open in the middle.  It was designed to have rain drain into the middle.  This is how it looks:

If you look closely enough you'll see the rain pouring into the fountain.

Moving on...  The house is slowly becoming a home.  It won't truly be "home" until Nan, Court & Ef get here.  I am doing my best to spruce it up and make it comfortable for them.  Luckily, IBM has me working 12 hour days during the week and a few hours on the weekends, too.  I say luckily since during my few moments of idle time, rare though they may be, I begin to miss them so much that I hurt.  It is a deep welling inside of sadness bordering on despair.  I have been gone for 5 weeks.  How on Earth do my military friends do it for 6, 8, 12+ months at a time?  I have no idea.  Nancy and I spent more time apart than we did together the first 4 years of our marriage.  That was brutal.  I cannot imagine how much more miserable it would have been if we had had children at the time.

Enough of that.  Thanks for reading!

I Have The Keys!

Here are some photos of our place in Bangalore:

One of the pools:

The club house:

Small upstairs bedroom.

 Another small upstairs bedroom:

Master suite:

Marble stairs:

Dining room:

Kitchen:

Outside:

View down the street:

APPROVED!!!! Finally...

I have avoided this blog for several days.  When my parents called to see if I was OK I realized that I have been (careful, gross understatement coming) a bit on the negative side.  At 6:30pm IST on Friday evening I got a call from IBM's mobility people that my final review and decision had been delayed until Monday.  I lost it.  I was so angry.  Of the 3 possible outcomes of that phone call: 1) approved, 2) denied or 3) wait until Monday, #3 was the worst possible outcome.  I hate waiting.  No explanation was given as to why the decision was delayed.  In fact, the people assigned to help me with this process refused to provide the name(s) of the people reviewing my case.  I was stuck.  I sent an urgent note to my US management team and they rallied behind me.  For the first time in a few weeks I felt that someone was on my side.  There was a ray of hope and a new plan; I would wait until Monday.  That gave my US management team time to light a few fires.  Still, I was so dismayed that IBM would do this to one of their own.

After drinking myself to near stupor, I went to sleep around 10pm.  I woke up at 7 and called Nancy and vented for a good half hour.  Nancy is one of a select few people in this world that will listen to my rantings and give neither pity or sympathy.  She always gives me the perfect amount of support and comfort but does not let me wallow in self-pity.  Can you understand why I married her?

I digress.  After talking with Nancy for a while, I went back to sleep and awoke at 2pm!  In total, I slept nearly 15 hours.  I felt normal for the first time since I landed in India.  I then had a driver take me to HyperCity, a big department store that sells everything from groceries to furniture.  It also has a coffee shop with a decent latte, so I had 2 of them.  Soon thereafter a friend of mine named Kiran called and invited me out drinking with some Aussies.  Note from personal experience during my navy days:  NEVER EVER try to out drink an Aussie.  You will lose, you will hurt, you will regret.  The club where we met was called Pebble.  It was near the city center and was all out doors.  It was nice to talk to a cool bunch of guys for a while.

On Sunday I went to The Leela Palace for their fabled Sunday Brunch.  Many expats and affluent locals descend on The Leela in their Sunday best and indulge in the second best brunch I have ever had.  Top honors go to The Royal Hawaiian on Oahu, but that is another story.  I had lunch with a colleague, John and his wife, Wendy.  After 4 plates of food and 6 glasses of sparkling wine I was feeling great,  The food was wonderful and the service is top notch.  Well worth the $45 per person (every once in a while).

Sunday ended and I went to work to find that I missed a serious deliverable to my boss's boss's boss's boss.  Oops!  To quote Pvt. Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, I was in a world of shit.  I worked 16 hours, from 9am to 1am the next day, pausing only for a quick meal and a ride back to my hotel.  During this shit storm, I was informed that my housing allowance was approved by IBM!  It was small solace relatively speaking, but  welcomed.

Today, Tuesday 10 May, I sign the lease for the villa.  I will take lots of photos and post them later.

06 May 2011: A Few Photos Around The Hotel

This is my daily taxi to and from work.  This is a very small car,  much smaller than a Chevy Aveo  or Kia Rio.  My driver, Rangaswamy, is great.  He grew up in a nearby city named Mysore.  This guy knows every short cut, back road and navigable alley in Bangalore.  Instead of a 45 minutes to an hour each way, he has id down to 35 to 40 minutes.

This is the micobus that runs on propane, no air conditioning, wrecked suspension and  filled with mosquitoes.

This is the outside of my hotel.  

This is also outside my hotel.  Notice that there is no pavement.  This is the dry season, during monsoon this will be a sloppy mess every day.

A Thrill a Minute, and More Waiting

Since I am still waiting for IBM to approve or deny my requests to extend my house hunting trip and / or my budget increase, and since I have been paying for my accommodations out of my own pocket since 19 April, I moved to a smaller, cheaper hotel called The Mayer.  The staff is nice and helpful, the room is clean, but it is just not The Leela Palace.  I got spoiled rotten at The Leela.

I had The Mayer provide me with a car to get me to my office on Tuesday.  It was a microvan (think 1/3 of a minivan) that ran on propane, with a destroyed suspension, no air conditioning and no seat belts.  Oh yeah, full of mosquitoes.  It was a harrowing ride.  I was holding on to the 'holy shit handle' the whole time.  Making it even more experiential, the driver, a local, did not know where he was going.  I knew the city better than he did.  True, my ability to speak Kannada (local language) is nonexistent.  However, every other time I have been in a taxi or auto-rickshaw with a local that did not speak English, they all knew landmarks like Leela Palace, Ring Road, EGL (my office park) 100 Feet Rd.  This guy, nothing.

The waiting is killing me.  Anyone that has known me for more than 3 minutes understands that I am impatient.  I have been waiting 13 days for a decision on my housing budget.  In that time, my rep at IBM has been a lying, unresponsive and evasive pain in the ass.  If my budget is not approved, I will book my flight home and accept whatever negative consequences IBM throws at me.  I have now reached the point of ambivalence.  I don't care what their decision is.  Sure, I'd like to stay here for the year, have Nancy, Court & Ef stay with me in this exotic place, but I also miss my home and all the comforts.  IBM pushed me to this point.  Who knew I could go from pure excitement, to anger, to rage, to disgust and to ambivalence in 16 days?

Day 15: Waiting & Waiting & Waiting...

Have I mentioned that this is my 5th time to India?  Have I mentioned that things take a LONG time to get done here?  I thought that I was prepared for this.  I was not.  What bothers me the most is that the person causing the most delay works for my company!  I thought, mistakenly, that this person would be on my side.  This person would be my advocate.  This is not the case.  I get an unsettling feeling that these 2 weeks are a microcosm of the next 76 that are to follow.  I am still waiting for a decision by Big Blue to approve or deny my request for an increase in my housing allowance.  It has been 10 days since I submitted the request, numerous follow-up requests (which have been ignored) and days of frustration.  I have exhausted all the money that IBM fronted me for this adventure and needed to submit, you guessed it, an exception request to get more money.  I am moving out of The Leela Palace hotel to a more affordable place called The Mayer Hotel tonight.

How many times has your mobile phone company called you?  I have had a mobile phone in the US with Verizon (Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile originally) and they never called me once.  Airtel here in India has called me 5 times in the last 11 days.  They actually sent someone to my hotel and my office to verify that I exist, that I am who I purported to be and that I live and work where I said I do.  They have called me to verify this, and to verify the name of the person who visited me at my hotel and my office.  They called to welcome me to the service.  They called to explain my plan(s).  They called today to note that I have a credit limit of 2000 rupees per month ($44 USD) in overage use charges.  That is easily 10 times what I will need.