We went to India with no idea of which school to put M into. A lot of people, when they R2I, are in constant touch with a school (or two) and also fill out online applications, etc. Some even make a trip to India, prior to the move, to check out schools, talk to staff, etc. These are all good things to do IMHO. However we did not have the time to do this kind of follow up from Seattle. We did speak to a few folks who had moved to Bangalore recently. However they were all in south Bangalore (on the outskirts of the city). For those not familiar with Bangalore, the south side is where the IT area is and hence has a lot of NRI crowd. So a lot of things are taken care of over there - good schools (international or otherwise), good appt complexes, after schools classes/activities, big malls and grocery shops, etc. For reasons not known to us, Amazon was in the process of moving to North Bangalore (Malleswaram). Malleswaram is the 1st township in Bangalore and so is the real old bangalore with narrow lanes, local kannada crowd, small mom and pop shops, etc. The big question for us was - where do we stay and subsequently in which areas do we look for schools? Staying in south bangalore, meant a minimum of 1 hr drive for Arti (one way). Also there were certain areas in South Bangalore which were automatically ruled out for us due to Arti's work location. However staying in South Bangalore was a very attractive proposition - most of our friends and friend's friends were in south bangalore. So initially we decided to check out schools all over bangalore within 1 hr driving distance from Arti's work.
After about 1 week of landing in India, we decided to start touring schools for M. After talking to a few folks, we had the following categorization for schools
- International schools. These schools charged big bucks (2Lacs - 5Lacs per year), were located on the outskirts of the city since they had big campuses, offered International Baccalaureate (IB) program and followed Sept - June school year. Like the schools in US, there was is lot of focus on extracurricular activities and subsequently less focus on technical education. The main crowd is foreign nationals and expats who are here for a few years and want to subsequently go back. They want international syllabus and continuity for their kids above anything else. These schools would be good to ease the transition for our kids and after a couple of years we could move them to other schools if we decided to stay in India for a longer time.
- ICSE/CBSE Board schools. Both the ICSE and CBSE boards are uniform across India and hence are the preferred boards for a lot of people who are not tied to a place/state for a lifetime. From my limited knowledge, CBSE has higher focus on technical education while ICSE has more focus on languages. Both of these boards have extracurricular activities built in (though the implementation is upto the schools). There are chains of schools called National Public Schools (NPS) and Delhi Public Schools (DPS) there are all over Bangalore. They offer either the CBSE or the ICSE board education. NPS is focused solely on education (with little to no extra curricular activities) and is the favored school for most of Indians. DPS has decent emphasis on extra curricular activities as well. Then there were the catholic schools which were rated to be among the best and oldest in Bangalore. Most of these were in central Bangalore.
- State board schools. We did not consider these since Kannada would be the primary medium of communication.
After 5 days of landing in India, Arti started going to work. She would leave around 8:30 am and the driver would be back around 10 am. Till then, I would finish the kids breakfast and get M ready for school tours. N would stay behind with my parents. We would leave around 10:30 am. On the first day, we went to Greenwood International School. It was a very small school and had classes only till UKG (upper kindergarten). For higher classes they had a bigger school in Sarjapur that is about 17 kms from central bangalore. For a fairly modest school they were charging about Rs 80K per year with a one time admission fee of Rs 70K. Wow!! I think I might have finished my whole schooling till 10th grade in that amount. Anyway, this school was not going to work for us since going to Sarjapur was not feasible.
Next we toured a school on Bannerghatta road called Sherwood High. There were lot of good appt complexes on the way and so staying fairly close to the school would not be a problem. However these places would entail at least an hours drive for Arti. The school seemed pretty good - it was new, some parts like swimming pool were still under construction, seemed spacious and airy and had a lot of US returned kids (so they knew how to transition them). The fee structure was similar to the previous school. This definitely seemed liked a school we would be interested in. They also had a few opening (mid term since the school year had started in June).
Indiranagar and Kormangala were areas we were considering staying. So next, I explored schools in these areas. There were a couple of NPS schools there. When I called the school to ask for basic info (ICSE or CBSE board, teacher to students ratio, class size, fee structure, admission process, etc) the responses were short and curt. Finally I asked when I could tour the school. From the other end came the reply - we do not allow parents to tour the school. I was shocked for a few moments and then hastily ended our conversation. However NPS schools are rated very high here and people are scrambling to get into one. So inspite of the unfavorable experience over the phone, I decided to tour the schools. Both the schools said that they did not have any free seats midterm and for next year, their admissions were going to start within a week or so. Secondly the only free seats they anticipated for next years admission were from students who transferred somewhere else. Otherwise existing students from the lower class went to the next class. So to get admission even for next year seemed a very remote prospect (hundreds of people waiting for a few seats). Also the school did not have a fixed admission process - no website to clarify when the admissions would start. All they gave was a phone number and you have to call every few days to get the date for collecting form. Then you had to fill and submit the form ASAP and hope that you are among the first few to submit the application. Even if we were diligent enough to do this (there was really no hope of this ever happening since we were about 10% as proactive and knowledgeable as the local crowd), forum feedback indicated they the seats were given to people who paid higher donations or were influential. Some people even advised us to flaunt our NRI status and ability to pay a lot of money when we would meet the school principal. That way we would have a better prospect of being selected. This whole state of affairs is really really sad. We then visited a couple of other schools in those areas. They looked pretty ordinary from the outside and inside but had fees close to 1 Lac per year. Forum feedback was that they were just after money and were pretty ordinary schools even though they portrayed themselves as NPS equivalent. They were for people who didn't get into NPS and so had a huge demand as well. Even over there, there were no free seats for the current year and a trending to zero probability top getting into next year. After a few of such school visits (no need for a tour) we came to the conclusion that it was just not possible for us to get admission for Mihir in any school in these areas even if we were inclined to apply. The only good that came out of this was that it ruled out a few areas for us to stay. Next I concentrated on central bangalore schools (catholic schools) that were rated as the top schools in bangalore. These are really old schools with the old school discipline and ways of imparting education. At the 1st couple of schools I couldn't even get past the receptionist. Obviously there were no free seats for the current year and they told me to come back in Jan for next years admission. We had an interesting experience at the 3rd and final school (Baldwins High School). We reached there at a time when the school was done and so all the 1000+ students were getting out of school - in buses, overpacked rickshaws, on narrow alleys, etc. Seeing this mass chaos, M was petrified and tightly held my hand as I waded through the crowd to get to the admission office. This school was fairly receptive in hearing me out and there was even an possibility that we might get into the current year. There were about 50 students in each class and it was a huge school. It was an overtly catholic school with Jesus and his preachings reaching out to you from every free space on the walls. Seeing how vastly different this was to his school in Seattle and seeing how intimidated he was, there was no way we could have considered putting him here. This ruled out another area for us to stay. So after a couple of weeks of school hunt there was only this one far away school (Sherwood High) where we would consider putting M in. Poor M was in jet lag when we started the school tours and he would invariably sleep in the car. I would wake him up when we reached the school and he would then see different schools. Most of the schools were huge and I don't think he felt very comfortable there. But he was very patient and we would also have fun on the way - make some silly stories, read his favorrite books, play fruit ninja on ipad, etc. After this sorry state of affairs, we next toured schools in north bangalore (even north of malleswaram about 30 - 45 mins drive). Most of these were international schools. A couple of schools that I went to (Canadian International and StoneHill International) were true international schools and had tuition in excess of 4 Lacs per year. They were on the outskirts of the city and had sprawling campuses with huge cricket, soccer, tennis fields, etc. Also they were all single storied building spread out in the campus. So even though the schools were huge (much much bigger than the schools I had been to before), they were very inviting with lots of open spaces. We were not too thrilled about the price and the location (if I were to find a job in central or south bangalore the commute would be at least 2 hrs one way). So we didn't pursue these. Another one called Ryan International only had international in its name (there was nothing that we liked about the school during the 5 mins I spent talking to receptionist) and its fees. Another highly rated school - Vidyasagar, had us on a wait list (number 272) for next year when they were expecting about 5 free seats. I then visited Mallya Aditi school and we liked it a lot. It was a good blend between a true international school and offered ICSE board. The fees were about 2 Lacs per year, high but not overly exorbitant. One big problem was the location. It was a good 45 mins north of Malleswaram. Since their next years admission process was starting in Jan we decided to keep this as a backup option. In the meanwhile, Arti had looked at Brigade school in Malleswaram. It was in the same complex as her work place and had the ultimate convenience of being at 2 mins walking distance. The school was very new and Brigade schools at 2 different locations in Bangalore had decently good reviews. The fee was about 1.5 Kacs for the 1st year and about 80K for subsequent years. And they had openings for the current year!! Just for the heck of it we also looked at one more school near Malleswaram called NAFL. It looked so rundown from the outside that we did not bother going in. So finally we had 3 potential schools for M -
1) Sherwood high. We could get in current year. However it was very far from Arti's workplace.
2) Brigade school. We could get in current year and it was very close to Arti's workplace.
3) Mallya Aditi school. Not for current year. May get in next year. North of Arti's work and so a potential problem when I started looking out for job.
In the meanwhile, we were doing apartment hunt in parallel. We were focusing on areas near the schools that we liked as well as areas that we liked (or had resemblance to bombay/pune). Through Amazon, Arti had the services of Global adjustment folks who could help us with appt hunt for 3 days. She first decided to check out some appt complexes closer to work. We were only going to look at big apt complexes with gate community. This was one of the things suggested by folks who had moved to India. There are a number of advantages to this :
- Its self enclosed, secure and a place away from the hustle bustle of the outside world.
- Most facilities like Gym, play area for kids, electricity backup, swimming pool, etc are part of the enclave.
- Getting services (like kamwali bai, cook, carpenter, plumber, etc) is handled by the central office and folks are screened before they can work in the community.
- there would be other people with similar income range, kids and hopefully similar wavelength to mingle with.
Another thing was that we wanted newer appts (less than 5 yrs old) so that there wouldn't be many maintenance issues.
There are a few good areas closer to Malleswaram - Dollars Colony, Sadashiv Nagar, etc. However the rents in some of the nice complexes were 70K+. This was well above our range. Arti did look at a few complexes in Dollars Colony that were in the 40 - 50K range, but none of them impressed her. We were looking at 4 Bedroom (or 3 BD + Den) appts which were ideally greater than 2000 sq ft in size. In India, the advertised size is not the actual livable area (it is approx 80% of the total size). So when we looked at some 1800 sq ft appts, they seemed very small since the livable area was just under 1500 sq ft. Most apts that we saw had many balconies and restrooms (some had 4 bathrooms for a 3 bedroom appt). Consequently the room size as well as kitchen size was very small. Also most bathroom had barely enuf space to accommodate a sink, commode and shower. Nothing like the master bathroom in our
US house.
Seeing apts in India is very different than seeing apts in US. In US, you are used to seeing well kept and very clean apts. Here, the apts are dirty since they may have been on the market for a few weeks and are not cleaned. 1 week of no cleaning in India, and the appt is covered with dust, bird poop, etc. So it is kind of impractical to maintain a clean appt when no one is staying.
We then looked at appts in Brigade Gateway. This residential complex was in the same complex as Arti's workplace and Mihir's school. So staying here would be very very convenient. We looked at a few apts in Brigade Gateway and found a bedroom plan that would work for us (and the stuff that was being shipped from US). In the meanwhile we also looked at appt complexes on Bannerghatta Rd and near Aditi School. The appt on Banerghatta rd was just awesome from inside. However it was surrounded by 4 mosques and 4 different call to prayers were heard at 5 am everyday. Not hte best of starts everyday. I would think. Once we went to the appt in evening and decided that it was not going to work since the traffic was really bad and it would have taken Arti 1.5 hrs + to get back from office.
Finally we settled on the school as well as the appt in the same complex as Arti's workplace. Settling on the appt was just a small part of moving in. But more on that fun stuff later ....
Monday, December 12, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
R2I - APPLIANCE SHOPPING
We had to buy the following appliances before our move to a rental appt and have it delivered there once we took possession of the rental appt.
- Fridge
- ACs (3)
- Water Purifier
- Washer + Dryer
- Iron
- Microwave
- LED TV (we had one and wanted another one) + DVD player
- Toaster
- Grinder
Since we have to smash food for N, we had to buy a grinder the day after we landed in India. When we turn it on, it makes as much noise as a plane would when it is ready for takeoff. For the rest, we were told to go to a consolidated store like Girias or Pai International. They give a discount on the entire amount and the more you buy the better the discount. For fridge, we debated between side by side door models and top down door models. The 1st store we went to was Pai Intl. The salesperson was selling us all samsung stuff and pointing out the competitive advantage of samsung over LG. Most of the salespeople in India are not very knowledgable. They know answers to a few questions. You ask anything else and many don't even understand the question or the motivation behind it. Some do and they have no clue as to the answer. Usually there is some stud salesperson who can answer such questions. So very soon you get referred to him. Regarding washer and dryer, there are 3 types of washers in India
- One with a small dryer on the side. The capacity is generally very small. We did not look at such washers.
- Washer that washes and dries clothes 80%. The clothes are still fairly wet (not soaking wet) and need to be put in a drier or be hanged to dry.
- Washer that washes and dries clothes 99%. What that means is that the clothes are decently dry but cannot be worn right away. So they need to be put in a drier or be hanged to dry.
Being used to huge washer and dryers in US, we definitely wanted a washer with big capacity and clothes that were bone dry without any extra effort (convenience over cost). The extra cost of the 3rd type of washers did not justify the marginal extra convenience that it provided. Even the salesperson called them a "dead investment" since one had to buy a dryer anyway if one needed the clothes to come out bone dry. So we went ahead with the 2nd type of washer.
Water in Bangalore is very hard and needs to be softened before it can be purified. There are only 2 water purifiers that work with hard water and we decided to go ahead with Kent. The model is very ugly looking with the internal filters and pipes encased in clear plastic. Wonder who wants to look at them.
The second store that we went to was Girias and was a LG shop. He rubbished everything that the other salesperson had told us and touted LG over samsung. So now we were thoroughly confused. Speaking to friends we gathered that both the brands were good and there were some people that were samsung loyalists and others that swore by LG. After much deliberation we decided to go ahead with Samsung side by side door fridge, LED TV, DVDplayer and ACs, IFB (top end brand) washer, dryer and microwave. This we realized was only half the job. The next part was scheduling the delivery of the appliances from the store and setting up time with people from the different companies to setup the appliances and verify that they work correctly. Since we had bought stuff from a single store, the 1st part entailed only 1 day delay. Then came the interesting part of getting the company people to plug in the appliances and give us a demo. People would say that they are very near our home (in morning) and not show up the entire day. Since we had as yet not moved to our rental place (we had just got possession and were setting up our stuff from seattle), we were not available the entire day. The moment we left the rental place to go to our service appt (in evening), people would call us and say that they can be there in 30 mins. This blatant lying continued for 3-4 days even with our diligent calls and reminders. Finally after a week or so all the appliances were setup and demoed to us. But of course things cannot be so smooth, right? After installing the ACs, we found that we were given different (cheaper) models than the ones we had asked for. The bill also had the cheaper model number. of course we had not thought of verifying the model numbers on the bill when we purchased the appliances. Secondly we were given only 2 ACs when we had asked for three. In the bill we were charged for only 2 as well. We asked he store for the 3rd AC and they gave the cheaper model as well. When the model discrepancy was noticed, the ACs were already installed. So getting the store to take them back was an ordeal. The salesperson accepted his mistake but would make different excuses so as not to give us the better models (saying they are not available, etc). Finally after 2 weeks of following up everyday we gave up and have accepted the cheaper models into our house and family. The store had not charged us for the 3rd AC and don't seem inclined to do so. They figure it is cheaper than having to sell 3 opened ACs.
When the guy from Kent came to install the water filter, he did water hardness test and found that the water at our rental is especially hard and that would put too much strain on the filters. So on his recommendation we installed an external filter that removes some hardness and then flows the water to kent purifier. Even the washer needs to have a water softener for it to have a longer life. There is a lot of treatment that needs to be done on water before it can be safely consumed. After all this we found that people still hesitate to give Kent water to young kids. So we have 20L mineral water delivered to our house every week for consumption by M and N. It costs only Rs 25 and so I am not sure whether it is truly mineral water. However so far there have been no illness, so keeping our fingers crossed.....Our washer and dryer are in the utility room (kitchen balcony). However it has only a single plug point. So we had to alternate between the two for a few weeks while we were following up with the appt electrician to get another plug point. of course the follow up required daily reminders to the electrician, him getting 5A plug point (instead of 16A one), etc.
- Fridge
- ACs (3)
- Water Purifier
- Washer + Dryer
- Iron
- Microwave
- LED TV (we had one and wanted another one) + DVD player
- Toaster
- Grinder
Since we have to smash food for N, we had to buy a grinder the day after we landed in India. When we turn it on, it makes as much noise as a plane would when it is ready for takeoff. For the rest, we were told to go to a consolidated store like Girias or Pai International. They give a discount on the entire amount and the more you buy the better the discount. For fridge, we debated between side by side door models and top down door models. The 1st store we went to was Pai Intl. The salesperson was selling us all samsung stuff and pointing out the competitive advantage of samsung over LG. Most of the salespeople in India are not very knowledgable. They know answers to a few questions. You ask anything else and many don't even understand the question or the motivation behind it. Some do and they have no clue as to the answer. Usually there is some stud salesperson who can answer such questions. So very soon you get referred to him. Regarding washer and dryer, there are 3 types of washers in India
- One with a small dryer on the side. The capacity is generally very small. We did not look at such washers.
- Washer that washes and dries clothes 80%. The clothes are still fairly wet (not soaking wet) and need to be put in a drier or be hanged to dry.
- Washer that washes and dries clothes 99%. What that means is that the clothes are decently dry but cannot be worn right away. So they need to be put in a drier or be hanged to dry.
Being used to huge washer and dryers in US, we definitely wanted a washer with big capacity and clothes that were bone dry without any extra effort (convenience over cost). The extra cost of the 3rd type of washers did not justify the marginal extra convenience that it provided. Even the salesperson called them a "dead investment" since one had to buy a dryer anyway if one needed the clothes to come out bone dry. So we went ahead with the 2nd type of washer.
Water in Bangalore is very hard and needs to be softened before it can be purified. There are only 2 water purifiers that work with hard water and we decided to go ahead with Kent. The model is very ugly looking with the internal filters and pipes encased in clear plastic. Wonder who wants to look at them.
The second store that we went to was Girias and was a LG shop. He rubbished everything that the other salesperson had told us and touted LG over samsung. So now we were thoroughly confused. Speaking to friends we gathered that both the brands were good and there were some people that were samsung loyalists and others that swore by LG. After much deliberation we decided to go ahead with Samsung side by side door fridge, LED TV, DVDplayer and ACs, IFB (top end brand) washer, dryer and microwave. This we realized was only half the job. The next part was scheduling the delivery of the appliances from the store and setting up time with people from the different companies to setup the appliances and verify that they work correctly. Since we had bought stuff from a single store, the 1st part entailed only 1 day delay. Then came the interesting part of getting the company people to plug in the appliances and give us a demo. People would say that they are very near our home (in morning) and not show up the entire day. Since we had as yet not moved to our rental place (we had just got possession and were setting up our stuff from seattle), we were not available the entire day. The moment we left the rental place to go to our service appt (in evening), people would call us and say that they can be there in 30 mins. This blatant lying continued for 3-4 days even with our diligent calls and reminders. Finally after a week or so all the appliances were setup and demoed to us. But of course things cannot be so smooth, right? After installing the ACs, we found that we were given different (cheaper) models than the ones we had asked for. The bill also had the cheaper model number. of course we had not thought of verifying the model numbers on the bill when we purchased the appliances. Secondly we were given only 2 ACs when we had asked for three. In the bill we were charged for only 2 as well. We asked he store for the 3rd AC and they gave the cheaper model as well. When the model discrepancy was noticed, the ACs were already installed. So getting the store to take them back was an ordeal. The salesperson accepted his mistake but would make different excuses so as not to give us the better models (saying they are not available, etc). Finally after 2 weeks of following up everyday we gave up and have accepted the cheaper models into our house and family. The store had not charged us for the 3rd AC and don't seem inclined to do so. They figure it is cheaper than having to sell 3 opened ACs.
When the guy from Kent came to install the water filter, he did water hardness test and found that the water at our rental is especially hard and that would put too much strain on the filters. So on his recommendation we installed an external filter that removes some hardness and then flows the water to kent purifier. Even the washer needs to have a water softener for it to have a longer life. There is a lot of treatment that needs to be done on water before it can be safely consumed. After all this we found that people still hesitate to give Kent water to young kids. So we have 20L mineral water delivered to our house every week for consumption by M and N. It costs only Rs 25 and so I am not sure whether it is truly mineral water. However so far there have been no illness, so keeping our fingers crossed.....Our washer and dryer are in the utility room (kitchen balcony). However it has only a single plug point. So we had to alternate between the two for a few weeks while we were following up with the appt electrician to get another plug point. of course the follow up required daily reminders to the electrician, him getting 5A plug point (instead of 16A one), etc.
R2I - FIRST FEW DAYS IN INDIA
Now that we had landed in India, there were a bunch of things to take care of. However there was no immediate rush and so we spent the 1st few days getting over our and more importantly the kids jet lag. We were staying in a service appt in the heart of bangalore. It was bang opposite UBCity mall (the most hi-fi mall in bangalore) and two mins walk from Cubbon Park (kind of like central park in New York). So every morning for the 1st few days, we would be going out for a morning walk at 5:30 - 6 am along with kids. Fellow walkers would be surprised to see kids up so early and looking so fresh. It was very refreshing and relaxing after the taxing last few weeks. M is mamma's boy and N is daddy's boy. So the separation of responsibilities and duties to get the kids over jet lag were clearly laid out. Since M is by now a very seasoned international traveller (this was his 6th or 7th India trip in addition to traveling to Mexico and Canada) he got over his jet lag within a couple of days. That was very convenient since Arti had to start her work after 4 days of landing in India. N got over his jet lag after 7 days and so I also took that long to get over mine. cubbon park has lot of trees and thereby many birds. There is one place where hundreds of parrots, crows and mainas would flock over for early morning breakfast as enthusiastic joggers/walkers would feed them grains, chilies, etc. I haven't seen so many parrots together at the same time. Anyway, as we started to get out of jet lag, our morning walks stopped as well. The park is open to cars at 8 am and gets very crowded thereafter.
The weather was very good and it would pretty much rain everyday for a few mins. The rain in Bangalore is very different to the rain in Mumbai or Seattle. Here it rains for a few mins (30 mins of rain is a long interval). It is fairly steady but not as hard as in Mumbai and is not irritatingly persistent as in Seattle. Also the sun might come out right after the rain and so the roads are dry for most part of the day. The rain just serves to keep the temp in check and doesn't cause much inconvenience. However there is a lot of dust everywhere. So after a few days, I started having dust allergies. It took about a month or two for my body to kiindof get used to the dust. Now I have watery eyes only if I step out for an extended period of time. The traffic here also takes some getting used to. Its best if you dont have to go out from 5 pm - 9 pm Mon-Sat. Mornings are a little better but 9 - 11 am are best if avoided venturing out. Bangalore is actually a fairly small city (distance wise).. However it takes time (even with little to no traffic) to get from one point to another. The roads are small and not potholes free. To give a comparison point for folks in Redmond, Mihir's school was 9 miles (15 kms) from our house. With little to no traffic it would take less than 15 mins. The distance from our service appt to Arti's workplace is 9 kms and with little to no traffic it still takes about 25- 30 mins.
The first few days, we ate outside food. There were many restaurants nearby and we would generally order food from outside. That way we got to sample whats good and whats not good in Bangalore. The service appt was a 2 bedroom appt with a very small living room and even smaller kitchen. It is meant for business traveller and not for families with young kids. We also had my parents with us and so it was a bit cramped for all of us. One bedroom had a queen sized bed and the other had 2 twin beds that were fixed to the wall. So the 4 of us would sleep crammed in the queen bed while my parents slept in the other bedroom. The kitchen had very few utensils and little storage space. So we had got a few of our utensils. We had to do grocery shopping in small quantities since there wasn't much storage space. To cook lunch, my mom would prepare dal/vegetables then wash some utensils and reuse them to cook remaining food. The good part was that every afternoon, cleaners would clean the appt, make the beds, and clean all utensils. However they would come when the kids were asleep or trying to fall asleep. anyway, pretty soon we settled into some sort of routine. I cannot imagine what we could have done without the help of my parents. They made sure we had good home cooked food and would take care of the kids multiple times during the day so that we could do outside work. We had to spend time on the following
- Appliance shopping
- Appt Hunt
- Car
- Bank accounts
- Cell phones
- School for Mihir
I will write in some detail about our experiences in future posts. Stay tuned.
The weather was very good and it would pretty much rain everyday for a few mins. The rain in Bangalore is very different to the rain in Mumbai or Seattle. Here it rains for a few mins (30 mins of rain is a long interval). It is fairly steady but not as hard as in Mumbai and is not irritatingly persistent as in Seattle. Also the sun might come out right after the rain and so the roads are dry for most part of the day. The rain just serves to keep the temp in check and doesn't cause much inconvenience. However there is a lot of dust everywhere. So after a few days, I started having dust allergies. It took about a month or two for my body to kiindof get used to the dust. Now I have watery eyes only if I step out for an extended period of time. The traffic here also takes some getting used to. Its best if you dont have to go out from 5 pm - 9 pm Mon-Sat. Mornings are a little better but 9 - 11 am are best if avoided venturing out. Bangalore is actually a fairly small city (distance wise).. However it takes time (even with little to no traffic) to get from one point to another. The roads are small and not potholes free. To give a comparison point for folks in Redmond, Mihir's school was 9 miles (15 kms) from our house. With little to no traffic it would take less than 15 mins. The distance from our service appt to Arti's workplace is 9 kms and with little to no traffic it still takes about 25- 30 mins.
The first few days, we ate outside food. There were many restaurants nearby and we would generally order food from outside. That way we got to sample whats good and whats not good in Bangalore. The service appt was a 2 bedroom appt with a very small living room and even smaller kitchen. It is meant for business traveller and not for families with young kids. We also had my parents with us and so it was a bit cramped for all of us. One bedroom had a queen sized bed and the other had 2 twin beds that were fixed to the wall. So the 4 of us would sleep crammed in the queen bed while my parents slept in the other bedroom. The kitchen had very few utensils and little storage space. So we had got a few of our utensils. We had to do grocery shopping in small quantities since there wasn't much storage space. To cook lunch, my mom would prepare dal/vegetables then wash some utensils and reuse them to cook remaining food. The good part was that every afternoon, cleaners would clean the appt, make the beds, and clean all utensils. However they would come when the kids were asleep or trying to fall asleep. anyway, pretty soon we settled into some sort of routine. I cannot imagine what we could have done without the help of my parents. They made sure we had good home cooked food and would take care of the kids multiple times during the day so that we could do outside work. We had to spend time on the following
- Appliance shopping
- Appt Hunt
- Car
- Bank accounts
- Cell phones
- School for Mihir
I will write in some detail about our experiences in future posts. Stay tuned.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
N SPEAKING
Hi Everyone!! This is Nishanth here. Thought I would contribute to the blog as well. I think everyone around me is trying to communicate with me. My parents and grandparents talk to me in some strange language. They also try to make some signs with their hands. They try to read to me from books. But I am on to them. I already know to talk. The problem is that others dont understand what I talk. I am a firm believer in "early to bed early to rise" and am generally the first one to wake up. If I don't find anyone around me, I start bawling. That usually gets someone very quickly. Nowadays, we all sleep together - baba, me, M and Aai. So I don't have to resort to bawling. Since I am very serious about teaching others to communicate with me, I start talking in a very melodious voice the moment I wake up. My parents don't seem to appreciate my sincere attempts at teaching them my language and call me "aakashwani" or something similar. Throughout the day, I keep on talking, hoping that someone would consider learning my language. No luck so far. Even at night time before going to sleep, I get to spend some one on one time with baba. I try my very best to talk to him but after some time he hushes me with a stern face. It is very discouraging but I am not one to give up. Finally I have decided to learn some of the alien language they are trying to teach me. I already know "woooon, twoooooo, thleeeeeeeeeeeee" and sometimes if I am in the mood, I can also say "fouuuul". I can say "mumum" and "dudu" when I am hungry. Finally when I am done eating, I can say "aal dun". When I was a baby, they used to feed me tasteless stuff and I would say "aal dun" after the 1st bite. But no one listened and they kept on feeding me. I used to put up a fight, but how long can an individual fight? So nowadays I let them feed me whatever they want and let them decide when I am "aal dun". I also know my animals. I can say "bhu bhu" whenever I see a 4 legged animal and "kaka" whenever I see a 2 legged one. One day my parents and grandparents took me to Bannerghatta National Park. There were lots of animals there. I saw a big "bhu bhu" with stripes and whiskers, another "bhu bhu" that was black, hairy and likes honey, a third bhu bhu that is the king of the jungle and many more. For the benefit of others, whenever I pointed to a bhu bhu and said "bhu bhu" they would laugh. I just dont understand them.
I don't understand what else is there to learn. But my parents keep on trying to read some books. I feign interest for a couple of pages and then scamper away. Got to go now.... Bye Bye.
I don't understand what else is there to learn. But my parents keep on trying to read some books. I feign interest for a couple of pages and then scamper away. Got to go now.... Bye Bye.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
R2I - FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Imagine this.... its sunday afternoon..... u have just come back after having a sumptuous meal at a restaurant..... the kids have fallen asleep in the car on the way back..... you have just had a meetha pan...... you are staying in a service appt and it is all cleaned up by the time you are back.... the a/c is at full blast..... it is very quiet, clean and laidback .... perfect time for some cuddling or kicking back and penning some thoughts. However it takes two to tango. So here comes a blog post -
It is hard to imagine that it has been over a month since we moved to India. Life has been very hectic inspite of me being at home full-time. Here are some of the likes, dislikes and generic observations.
LIKES
- I have this sense of belonging here which was not there in US and I like it. it is apun ka india and I feel I always can do simple things that I feel like doing. Like going for a walk in morning or evening and always finding myself surrounded by a whole eco system (people, vehicles, animals, birds, garbage, shops, etc). In US it was just main aur meri tanhai.
- Weather. Never thought I would put it in the LIKES category. Bangalore weather is great. Period. Locals say that it is possible to experience all 3 seasons (summer, winter and rainy season) in a single day. It feels great to be able to go out for a walk at night (and not worry about it being too cold or wet as in seattle) albeit for now the walks are restricted to going out with N in a stroller for putting him to sleep.
- People. People here are very curteous and simple. I haven't met a rude person so far. Also due to the sheer amount of people you encounter every day, you don't have to put on a forced smile every time you pass a person.
- Family. currently my parents are with us and they have been of great help. couldn't have imagined what we could have done without them. The kids are getting to spend real quality time with them. my parents are free to do things on their own without relying on us for everything. they independently go out, do groceries, entertain kids outside in their own ways, go to temple everyday, etc. at the same time i feel that they don't have to always stay here for a long time as they can come and go more often. so they would get to have their life as well as enjoy more frequent time with us. similarly we are not constrained to be their sole entertainment providers when they visit us and we get to see them more often.
- Food. Eating out is cheaper and we can generally expect tastier food. Also there are more veggie choices when we go out for grocery shopping. In US, esp in winter, it used to get tiring to do grocery shopping and then eating the same set of 3-4 veggies.
- Exposure to indian mythology (I am not convinced I can put culture instead of mythology). M is learning stories about Krishna, Hanuman, Ghatochkach mostly via cartoons. He is totally into going to temple with his aaji everyday. At some level it feels good and I think it would be easier for us to inculcate things like respect for elders, keeping a promise, guru shyshya parampara, etc since there are many handy mythology stories.
- Non-stop cricketing action on TV and local grounds. Great to see the passion this sport evokes among people.
- Don't have to wait for days/weeks to get a doc appt. Just show up, wait for a while and get seen. On the flip side, even if you have an appt, you still have to wait past your appt time.
DISLIKES
- Infrastructure. There are days when we yearn for good basic infrastructure - roads, parks, utilities, etc. I cannot take N in a stroller and go for a walk on the roads since there are too many potholes on the pavement (if there is any). So you are stuck with either carrying him or traveling by car. Bangalore is a city of parks and so there are many parks to take the kids to. However, the facilities are basic and competition intense.
- Inefficiency. It is everywhere and seems like here to stay. In our service appt, there are over 30 such appts. They only have 2 washers and 1 dryer to meet the laundry needs of all the appts. The washers and dryer are of smaller size than the ones we use for our personal laundry. This includes doing the sheets, towels, etc in addition to the personal laundry of the people staying here. every time it is a battle to get laundry done - sometimes the clothes come back not fully dry (or rather wet) and they stink since they have been kept that way in the washer for a while, sometimes they are still dirty, sometimes they need to to sent outside since the dryer is under repair, etc. The people responsible for laundry are very honest and work very hard to meet the incessant demands. However they are just not equipped to do their job and life goes on this way. This is just one example and I can go on and on here. I will give just one more example. When we had to open a citibank account, we had 3 people show up to talk about it. They accord gold status on anyone willing to put more than 3 lacs rupees and give special treatment. However the whole process of opening a citi gold account took about 2 weeks with 3-4 personal visits by multiple people to our place. At the end of it we were irritated by the length of process and the number of times we had to be home to meet these folks. Citibank people did not think twice about having to come to our place after a long work day to collect one document when they could have been diligent and given us the entire document list that they would have needed. Also in almost all cases only 1 person per visit would have been sufficient.
- Lack of kid related activities. Many days, we have a whole day free with car and driver available and 2 hyper active kids at home. The whole situation begs for taking them outside . But where? Other than parks and malls there are no other places. Going to mall means spending at least Rs 500 - 1000 to keep the kids entertained. So that is not a viable everyday option. We are still exploring here.
- Work culture. I haven't dealt with this since I am at home. Arti tells me a bunch of stories to make me cringe. Even in multi nationals, work culture is not professional. Managers don't think twice about berating employees publicly and in a loud voice (praise is mostly reserved for private interactions), employees don't have much loyalty to the company, HR has no clue what they are doing, there isn't any thought process given to team values, team bonding, employee satisfaction and retention, etc. No wonder people switch jobs so often and are so stressed out.
- dust and pollution. Cannot escape it. Period. The effects are on health, clothes, appliance wear and tear, appearances of people, houses, buildings, etc.
- Treatment of and by worker class. There is a very conscious effort to segregate the worker class from the rich people. This is visible in small details like them having to use service elevator in a luxury high rise, pathetic condition of servants quarter within a appt, having a middleman (like a contractor) to deal with the laborers, etc. It just didn't seem right. However, I soon found that the behavior of the worker class also warrants this behavior to some extent. They cannot be trusted at all - to do what they are supposed to do without being shouted at, to NOT do what they are not supposed to do (like steal) and one has to be at them all the time to get the work done in a timeframe that is close to what they promised in the 1st place. As an example, there have been so many things missing from work (at Arti's workplace) that they have sacked the janitor company. Things that go missing range from IPhones (like Arti experienced), laptops to pens, cereal boxes, etc. Now that the janitorial service has been fired (they have another 15 days till termination), everything goes. Even small items like noodles packets are being stolen from office. Another example is that in the appt that we are going to rent, wardrobes are currently being put up. There are 2 workers doing the work and 2 contractors shouting at them to get the work done. Apparently without the shouting, nothing gets accomplished. I am not sure how much gets accomplished with the shouting as well since we have seen minimal progress over the last 2 weeks.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
- Not to sound offensive to Kannadigas, but I haven't seen too many attractive locals (applies to both men and women) here.
- An average indian spends a lot of time in front of TV. Also the decibel level of the TV is higher than it is strictly needed.
- Cleanliness awareness and enforcement is appalling. Navmi and Dushera are big in Bangalore. On Navmi, every tom, dick and harry, after doing pooja, throw and break open a pumpkin like fruit. So far so good. However no one bothers to do anything with the broken fruits (other than put gulaal in it). So on navmi, we see hundreds of broken fruits with seeds and red gulaal spilled out and lying on the roads. This is even in front of posh malls. Two days later, they are still on roads and don't look and smell so fresh.
- When I go to drop off/pick up M from his school, I see people sleeping in parks, under trees, etc. It does not matter if there is commotion around them, if the sun is beating down harshly on them. Even with such high stress levels among people, there are some who have the time and inclination to pursue such activities.
- There are a lot of old growth trees in central bangalore. These trees are huge (really huge) and must be many years old. I hope they stay that way and don't get chopped down for a mall or high-rise.
It is hard to imagine that it has been over a month since we moved to India. Life has been very hectic inspite of me being at home full-time. Here are some of the likes, dislikes and generic observations.
LIKES
- I have this sense of belonging here which was not there in US and I like it. it is apun ka india and I feel I always can do simple things that I feel like doing. Like going for a walk in morning or evening and always finding myself surrounded by a whole eco system (people, vehicles, animals, birds, garbage, shops, etc). In US it was just main aur meri tanhai.
- Weather. Never thought I would put it in the LIKES category. Bangalore weather is great. Period. Locals say that it is possible to experience all 3 seasons (summer, winter and rainy season) in a single day. It feels great to be able to go out for a walk at night (and not worry about it being too cold or wet as in seattle) albeit for now the walks are restricted to going out with N in a stroller for putting him to sleep.
- People. People here are very curteous and simple. I haven't met a rude person so far. Also due to the sheer amount of people you encounter every day, you don't have to put on a forced smile every time you pass a person.
- Family. currently my parents are with us and they have been of great help. couldn't have imagined what we could have done without them. The kids are getting to spend real quality time with them. my parents are free to do things on their own without relying on us for everything. they independently go out, do groceries, entertain kids outside in their own ways, go to temple everyday, etc. at the same time i feel that they don't have to always stay here for a long time as they can come and go more often. so they would get to have their life as well as enjoy more frequent time with us. similarly we are not constrained to be their sole entertainment providers when they visit us and we get to see them more often.
- Food. Eating out is cheaper and we can generally expect tastier food. Also there are more veggie choices when we go out for grocery shopping. In US, esp in winter, it used to get tiring to do grocery shopping and then eating the same set of 3-4 veggies.
- Exposure to indian mythology (I am not convinced I can put culture instead of mythology). M is learning stories about Krishna, Hanuman, Ghatochkach mostly via cartoons. He is totally into going to temple with his aaji everyday. At some level it feels good and I think it would be easier for us to inculcate things like respect for elders, keeping a promise, guru shyshya parampara, etc since there are many handy mythology stories.
- Non-stop cricketing action on TV and local grounds. Great to see the passion this sport evokes among people.
- Don't have to wait for days/weeks to get a doc appt. Just show up, wait for a while and get seen. On the flip side, even if you have an appt, you still have to wait past your appt time.
DISLIKES
- Infrastructure. There are days when we yearn for good basic infrastructure - roads, parks, utilities, etc. I cannot take N in a stroller and go for a walk on the roads since there are too many potholes on the pavement (if there is any). So you are stuck with either carrying him or traveling by car. Bangalore is a city of parks and so there are many parks to take the kids to. However, the facilities are basic and competition intense.
- Inefficiency. It is everywhere and seems like here to stay. In our service appt, there are over 30 such appts. They only have 2 washers and 1 dryer to meet the laundry needs of all the appts. The washers and dryer are of smaller size than the ones we use for our personal laundry. This includes doing the sheets, towels, etc in addition to the personal laundry of the people staying here. every time it is a battle to get laundry done - sometimes the clothes come back not fully dry (or rather wet) and they stink since they have been kept that way in the washer for a while, sometimes they are still dirty, sometimes they need to to sent outside since the dryer is under repair, etc. The people responsible for laundry are very honest and work very hard to meet the incessant demands. However they are just not equipped to do their job and life goes on this way. This is just one example and I can go on and on here. I will give just one more example. When we had to open a citibank account, we had 3 people show up to talk about it. They accord gold status on anyone willing to put more than 3 lacs rupees and give special treatment. However the whole process of opening a citi gold account took about 2 weeks with 3-4 personal visits by multiple people to our place. At the end of it we were irritated by the length of process and the number of times we had to be home to meet these folks. Citibank people did not think twice about having to come to our place after a long work day to collect one document when they could have been diligent and given us the entire document list that they would have needed. Also in almost all cases only 1 person per visit would have been sufficient.
- Lack of kid related activities. Many days, we have a whole day free with car and driver available and 2 hyper active kids at home. The whole situation begs for taking them outside . But where? Other than parks and malls there are no other places. Going to mall means spending at least Rs 500 - 1000 to keep the kids entertained. So that is not a viable everyday option. We are still exploring here.
- Work culture. I haven't dealt with this since I am at home. Arti tells me a bunch of stories to make me cringe. Even in multi nationals, work culture is not professional. Managers don't think twice about berating employees publicly and in a loud voice (praise is mostly reserved for private interactions), employees don't have much loyalty to the company, HR has no clue what they are doing, there isn't any thought process given to team values, team bonding, employee satisfaction and retention, etc. No wonder people switch jobs so often and are so stressed out.
- dust and pollution. Cannot escape it. Period. The effects are on health, clothes, appliance wear and tear, appearances of people, houses, buildings, etc.
- Treatment of and by worker class. There is a very conscious effort to segregate the worker class from the rich people. This is visible in small details like them having to use service elevator in a luxury high rise, pathetic condition of servants quarter within a appt, having a middleman (like a contractor) to deal with the laborers, etc. It just didn't seem right. However, I soon found that the behavior of the worker class also warrants this behavior to some extent. They cannot be trusted at all - to do what they are supposed to do without being shouted at, to NOT do what they are not supposed to do (like steal) and one has to be at them all the time to get the work done in a timeframe that is close to what they promised in the 1st place. As an example, there have been so many things missing from work (at Arti's workplace) that they have sacked the janitor company. Things that go missing range from IPhones (like Arti experienced), laptops to pens, cereal boxes, etc. Now that the janitorial service has been fired (they have another 15 days till termination), everything goes. Even small items like noodles packets are being stolen from office. Another example is that in the appt that we are going to rent, wardrobes are currently being put up. There are 2 workers doing the work and 2 contractors shouting at them to get the work done. Apparently without the shouting, nothing gets accomplished. I am not sure how much gets accomplished with the shouting as well since we have seen minimal progress over the last 2 weeks.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
- Not to sound offensive to Kannadigas, but I haven't seen too many attractive locals (applies to both men and women) here.
- An average indian spends a lot of time in front of TV. Also the decibel level of the TV is higher than it is strictly needed.
- Cleanliness awareness and enforcement is appalling. Navmi and Dushera are big in Bangalore. On Navmi, every tom, dick and harry, after doing pooja, throw and break open a pumpkin like fruit. So far so good. However no one bothers to do anything with the broken fruits (other than put gulaal in it). So on navmi, we see hundreds of broken fruits with seeds and red gulaal spilled out and lying on the roads. This is even in front of posh malls. Two days later, they are still on roads and don't look and smell so fresh.
- When I go to drop off/pick up M from his school, I see people sleeping in parks, under trees, etc. It does not matter if there is commotion around them, if the sun is beating down harshly on them. Even with such high stress levels among people, there are some who have the time and inclination to pursue such activities.
- There are a lot of old growth trees in central bangalore. These trees are huge (really huge) and must be many years old. I hope they stay that way and don't get chopped down for a mall or high-rise.
Mihir's Observations
Taking a break from R2I posts. Over the last month or so these are some of the observations that M has made -
1) Yesterday when I was dropping him to school, we saw a street urchin in his dirty clothes, rummaging through garbage and wiping his dirty hands on his pants. Since we discourage this (wiping dirty hands on pants) behavior in M, he asked me why that street child was doing it. I told him that maybe he didn't have parents to teach him good habits. Why are his clothes dirty? Ummmm... maybe he doesn't wash them. Why? Maybe he doesn't have a house? At this point I told him that he is probably very poor, doesn't have money, good clothes and food and is probably searching the garbage for something valuable or food. M was very sad on hearing this. He then asked me if we can give him some money. I told him that it wont be very useful since tomorrow he will still be poor. So to really help him we would have to give him some money everyday. M then remembered that he had 21 money (pick your unit - dollar, rupees, paise) and he can give it to him. I told him that it was nice of him to think that way but it wont be enuf. Again he was sad. Then his face lit up and he asked me if we could get him home. He said that we could buy a new school uniform so that he could go to school with him. M was even ready to share his toys and food with him as well as share N. And as usual we could be the universal Aai-Baba so that the kid would have parents as well. Since by then our car had gone much ahead, i agreed to his proposal and said that on the way back we would be on a lookout for the kid. of course by then a new adventure had gripped his mind....
2) In Seattle, M used to get fed up of the cold wet weather and would often pray to sun god. A few days back he felt like praying and so started saying "Oooooommmmm Namashivaya". When I asked whom was he praying to, he mentioned sun god. When I told me it is always sunny here, he agreed that there was no need to pray to sun god and said that he is praying to wind god. In bangalore, there is almost always a good breeze and so the sun is bearable. M enjoys the wind during his evening walks with aaji-ago and thats where this piece of wisdom probably came from.
3) Initially he was very happy that it was always summer in India just like in Mexico (his favorite place since we have twice gone on vacation over there). Today I had to drop him to school in a rickshaw. It entailed 45 mins ride and he was very happy. However, soon, we were stuck in traffic with the afternoon sun beating down on him. He turned to me and said that he doesnt like that it is always summer in india. When I asked him if he preferred Seattle weather then he said that he preferred summer with wind. After a few moments, at another traffic signal, he saw vendors selling razor scooters. He was genuinely amused and was like - they are selling razor on the road!!! Who would want to buy it since it is all covered with dust. Next he saw someone selling car adapters for IPod and he was like - Baba, they are selling wires on the road!! why would anyone want to buy them?
4) As like most indian kids, M loves to travel by ricks and being a rick driver is one of his current career goal. So he considers most of the rick drivers to be demi-gods. One day, while we were waiting in traffic, he saw a rick driver smoking. Since subtlety is not his forte, he shouted that the rick driver is doing a very bad thing (while pointing at the rick driver). After a min, the rick driver spitted on the road. M was really scandalized at this point. He turned to me and said that the rick driver did 2 bad things one after another and that he is never ever going to go in that rick. Luckily he hasn't observed people peeing on the roadside. I don't want to have that conversation with him....
5) Now that he has spent more than 2 weeks in his new school and has become comfortable, he is able to explain some of the differences between his current school and his school in seattle. One day he asked me how come there are no toys in the school. He found the concept very alien. He said that in his current school, you have to sit all the time, sing many nursery rhymes and do many worksheets. He has a natural mohawk and one day after I applied gel to his hair (so that they stand all spiky) he said that spiky hair are not allowed in his school. And this was his favorite hairstyle. So much for the ability to express ones individuality at an early age. He likes his school uniform very much though and is very excited to put it on and blend with the crowd.
6) No discussion is complete without the potty topic coming up. We are always after M to do his poopie in the morning so that we dont have to have a prolonged encounter with the toilets in india when we step out of the house. Also since I have to do the duties, I am very motivated to ensure that he finishes his job in the morning itself. Ofcourse, it is an everyday battle to get him to do it. One day M had to go for poopie at school. They have an aaya in each class who helps kids with their toilet needs. After washing M, the aaya put on his undies on his wet bum. So from that day onwards, M is very particular about doing his poopie at home before he goes to school. The aaya is going to get a diwali gift from me.
7) Our shipment has arrived in Bangalore and we should have our stuff within another week. We are very excited and looking fwd to it. when I asked M what he is missing, he mentioned that he would like the staircase from our seattle house shipped here. All the appts that he has seen here are at a single level and I guess he is missing the staircase to go to his room.
8) M's career options keep on changing every week or so. When we reached India, we were staying in a service appt. Cleaners would come in the afternoon to do the dishes and clean the rooms. Since M likes doing "pusa pusa" (wipe wipe) he wanted to be a cleaner when he grows up. Soon it was Ganapati and Navratri time and he wanted to be a priest so that he can stay bambu (bare chested) and get to do pooja. Rickshaw driver is his all time favorite and I guess that is the ultimate backup. Nowadays he watches Krishna DVD while eating food. So he wants to be Krishna when he grows up and keeps on asking us when his skin color will be blue. At night time he wears his superman or spider man night dress and then behaves like one. It is good to have so many career options. However even after a few weeks in school, he has not expressed desire to become a teacher.....
1) Yesterday when I was dropping him to school, we saw a street urchin in his dirty clothes, rummaging through garbage and wiping his dirty hands on his pants. Since we discourage this (wiping dirty hands on pants) behavior in M, he asked me why that street child was doing it. I told him that maybe he didn't have parents to teach him good habits. Why are his clothes dirty? Ummmm... maybe he doesn't wash them. Why? Maybe he doesn't have a house? At this point I told him that he is probably very poor, doesn't have money, good clothes and food and is probably searching the garbage for something valuable or food. M was very sad on hearing this. He then asked me if we can give him some money. I told him that it wont be very useful since tomorrow he will still be poor. So to really help him we would have to give him some money everyday. M then remembered that he had 21 money (pick your unit - dollar, rupees, paise) and he can give it to him. I told him that it was nice of him to think that way but it wont be enuf. Again he was sad. Then his face lit up and he asked me if we could get him home. He said that we could buy a new school uniform so that he could go to school with him. M was even ready to share his toys and food with him as well as share N. And as usual we could be the universal Aai-Baba so that the kid would have parents as well. Since by then our car had gone much ahead, i agreed to his proposal and said that on the way back we would be on a lookout for the kid. of course by then a new adventure had gripped his mind....
2) In Seattle, M used to get fed up of the cold wet weather and would often pray to sun god. A few days back he felt like praying and so started saying "Oooooommmmm Namashivaya". When I asked whom was he praying to, he mentioned sun god. When I told me it is always sunny here, he agreed that there was no need to pray to sun god and said that he is praying to wind god. In bangalore, there is almost always a good breeze and so the sun is bearable. M enjoys the wind during his evening walks with aaji-ago and thats where this piece of wisdom probably came from.
3) Initially he was very happy that it was always summer in India just like in Mexico (his favorite place since we have twice gone on vacation over there). Today I had to drop him to school in a rickshaw. It entailed 45 mins ride and he was very happy. However, soon, we were stuck in traffic with the afternoon sun beating down on him. He turned to me and said that he doesnt like that it is always summer in india. When I asked him if he preferred Seattle weather then he said that he preferred summer with wind. After a few moments, at another traffic signal, he saw vendors selling razor scooters. He was genuinely amused and was like - they are selling razor on the road!!! Who would want to buy it since it is all covered with dust. Next he saw someone selling car adapters for IPod and he was like - Baba, they are selling wires on the road!! why would anyone want to buy them?
4) As like most indian kids, M loves to travel by ricks and being a rick driver is one of his current career goal. So he considers most of the rick drivers to be demi-gods. One day, while we were waiting in traffic, he saw a rick driver smoking. Since subtlety is not his forte, he shouted that the rick driver is doing a very bad thing (while pointing at the rick driver). After a min, the rick driver spitted on the road. M was really scandalized at this point. He turned to me and said that the rick driver did 2 bad things one after another and that he is never ever going to go in that rick. Luckily he hasn't observed people peeing on the roadside. I don't want to have that conversation with him....
5) Now that he has spent more than 2 weeks in his new school and has become comfortable, he is able to explain some of the differences between his current school and his school in seattle. One day he asked me how come there are no toys in the school. He found the concept very alien. He said that in his current school, you have to sit all the time, sing many nursery rhymes and do many worksheets. He has a natural mohawk and one day after I applied gel to his hair (so that they stand all spiky) he said that spiky hair are not allowed in his school. And this was his favorite hairstyle. So much for the ability to express ones individuality at an early age. He likes his school uniform very much though and is very excited to put it on and blend with the crowd.
6) No discussion is complete without the potty topic coming up. We are always after M to do his poopie in the morning so that we dont have to have a prolonged encounter with the toilets in india when we step out of the house. Also since I have to do the duties, I am very motivated to ensure that he finishes his job in the morning itself. Ofcourse, it is an everyday battle to get him to do it. One day M had to go for poopie at school. They have an aaya in each class who helps kids with their toilet needs. After washing M, the aaya put on his undies on his wet bum. So from that day onwards, M is very particular about doing his poopie at home before he goes to school. The aaya is going to get a diwali gift from me.
7) Our shipment has arrived in Bangalore and we should have our stuff within another week. We are very excited and looking fwd to it. when I asked M what he is missing, he mentioned that he would like the staircase from our seattle house shipped here. All the appts that he has seen here are at a single level and I guess he is missing the staircase to go to his room.
8) M's career options keep on changing every week or so. When we reached India, we were staying in a service appt. Cleaners would come in the afternoon to do the dishes and clean the rooms. Since M likes doing "pusa pusa" (wipe wipe) he wanted to be a cleaner when he grows up. Soon it was Ganapati and Navratri time and he wanted to be a priest so that he can stay bambu (bare chested) and get to do pooja. Rickshaw driver is his all time favorite and I guess that is the ultimate backup. Nowadays he watches Krishna DVD while eating food. So he wants to be Krishna when he grows up and keeps on asking us when his skin color will be blue. At night time he wears his superman or spider man night dress and then behaves like one. It is good to have so many career options. However even after a few weeks in school, he has not expressed desire to become a teacher.....
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
R2I - ARRIVAL IN INDIA
We landed in India at about midnight. The plane journey turned out to be better than what we had expected. The kids had slept and eaten well and we also had a chance to catch a few hours of sleep. One of the things we were worried was custom clearance. We had 13 bags with us and anyone could make out that we were NRIs. We were not carrying anything that would interest custom officials, but you never know. One big question we faced when we were packing was what to do with Arti's jewellery. We couldn't send any valuables in the shipment and so we had to carry it with us. However we did not have any documents to prove that it was for our own personal use, has been more than 1 yr old and is not a gift to someone. We were worried that custom officials would give us unnecessary trouble over it. In one of the phone calls, Asim (Arti's brother) suggested that both of us wear cargo pants (shorts) and stuff the jewelry in our pockets once the plane lands in India. The thinking was that custom clearance entails only passing all bags through the X-ray machine. AFAIK it does not involve in-person checks. So here we were, after immigration and getting our bags, going towards the customs check with 2 kids, 13 bags, tired faces and minds and some pockets stuffed with jewelry. We were surprised to learn that we had already passed custom clearance. All they did was take the custom slips from us and waved us on without even looking at the bags. Phew!! That was the smoothest custom clearance I have ever had in my life. So we moved towards the exit gate with high spirits. We (and more so the kids) were immensely relieved to find my parents waiting for us at the exit. As soon as we stepped out of the airport, there was a wonderful breeze blowing, rain was in the air and the temperature was a perfect 18C. It felt very refreshing and all of our worries and stress were temporarily forgotten. Ooohhhhhh.... did it feel good or what. The kids were happily playing with my parents, drivers were getting 2 cars, it has started raining, we could just stretch our arms and soak in the breeze mixed with little rain.....We reached our service appt (in central bangalore) within 30 mins. As soon as all of our luggage was brought up, we kept N down and he started walking as if he had been doing it for the last few months.He was over 17 months old and could potentially walk but had no inclination to do it so far in seattle. The only time he had tried to walk was in june when we had visited bangalore for 3 days. So back to bangalore and here he was happily walking like a drunkard with a cute smile on his face.... Or maybe he took a look at the floor and decided dirty feet were better than dirty butt (he did butt scooting before). The mysteries in the life of a toddler.....
R2I - GRAND AIRPORT SENDOFF
Finally the day arrived and we had to leave Seattle. So at about 11 am we found ourselves at seattle airport with 2 kids, 1 friend (Aswin), 13 bags and a long checkin line. This was after we had slept on average for about 5 hrs/night the last 10 days..... after we were popping 4 painkillers everyday for the last 10 days to make the pain and exhaustion bearable..... after we had thoroughly neglected our 2 kids the last few days to concentrate on getting things packed up..... after the kids felt thoroughly neglected and were looking forward to some quality time with us.....after having travelled to india with young kids multiple times, we knew what pain and hardship awaited us and our fellow passengers for the next 24 hrs..... All in all, fair enough to say that all of us were not in the best of moods. We also knew beforehand that the flight was really full and we didnt have seats that were together. Great! We had reached the airport 3 hrs early with the hope of getting "good" seats. We were travelling by Lufthansa. The airline person at the start of the line told us to make sure that all the carryon luggage were less than 9kg each. So I spent the next several minutes, transferring stuff between bags to make sure we were complaint on that front. After about 15 mins we reached the checkin counter. When the time was ripe, the person asked us to get our bags. Aswin & I started to get our bags (2 at a time) to the counter while the kids were with Arti. No sooner did I get the 1st two bags, the airline lady at the next checkin counter told us to make room at the counter so that she could service other passengers. I told her that we had 13 bags and it would be a while before we got all weighed and checked in. She retorted something to the effect that she didn't care and that other passengers had the same problem and so we had to make space at the counter. By now, my temper was rising and I very politely asked her where she thought I should put the bags. Her reply was the same that other passengers had the same problem and she wanted us to make space. I looked around in disbelief. I couldn't see any other passengers with 13 bags and 2 young kids. Needless to say, one thing led to another and soon we were not trading christmas cards with each other. At that time Aswin stepped in and told me to not deal with her and keep my cool and told her that it would be in her as well as our best interest to not talk to each other (we really didnt have a need to talk to each other since she was not at our counter). Sanity restored, Arti proceeded with the checkin process. After checking in all the bags, I was waiting behind arti with N and couldnt help but observe that the same lady was helping another family with a big smile on her face. That family had 6 people (2 decently big kids + 2 grandparents + 2 adults) and understandably had many bags. They were taking a lot more space than we had taken (rightfully so). But I didn't see anyone telling them to take less space or hurry up. On the contrary they were all smiling at them and being courteous. One big difference between us and them was that they were a German family!! Anyway, after this auspicious start to our checkin process, the agent told us that we be getting the middle two seats (out of 4) on 2 rows. Great!! We pleaded and begged with him to give us better seats (also pointing to by now crying Nishanth). No such luck. There were 2 options - upgrade to business class (about 3K extra) or go on another flight (they were handing out $750 per seat and free hotel stay). Even though the 2nd option was very attractive, it would have required changes once we landed in India. We didnt want to have any confusion once we reached India and so we decided to pursue the 1st option. After about 10 mins they told us that we couldn't upgrade to business class since we had ordered special meals (Hindu Veg) and they couldn't give those in business class. We said we didnt care about special meals and would happily have the meal served in business class. After a couple more mins, the status was still the same - could not upgrade. The reason was the passengers in economy class that got our seats would now have to eat the special meal. For all we cared, they didn't have to. We thought airlines would always carry a few extra standard meals. So here we were, after 30 mins of being at the checkin counter, trying to upgrade to business class, on a flight which was completely booked, on a flight where they were getting about 3K from us, on a flight where they were offering $750 to give up an economy class seat, all for not having 4 standard meals. didn't make sense to us whichever way we looked at it. There was another surprise in store. The 2nd leg of the flight did not have business class upgrade available. So we were required to pay the full upgrade price even though we were going to be upgraded for only 1 of the 2 legs. All this while the agents from adjacent counters were feeling free to pitch in in not too polite tones and tell us why we couldn't upgrade even though it was none of their business. Finally the man at our counter said that we would have to speak to his manager to get his approval. That entailed another 20 mins wait and another explanation of the whole situation. Finally the manager gave his approval. Then it took a mere 15 mins to get the approval in the system and another mere 30 mins to get the payment from us and finally after more than 90 mins we were able to upgrade to business class for half of our journey. The only thing that we could do was to take the names of the various agents and managers and write an email to lufthansa once we reached India. However I dont think it mattered since we didnt get any reply even after 1 month. No wonder the airline industry is going downhill. While Arti was dealing with all the mess, I fed N and stuffed enuf junk food in M to last him a couple of hours. With all this delay, by the time we made it to the gate, they had already started boarding. Once we boarded the flight, it was smooth sailing and the business class was appreciated by us as well as the kids. M was super excited with all the stuff that he could do and N could sleep on his chair which went completely horizontal. Once N slept, we could also catch some sleep. The food was also good (it was a 5 course meal). only problem was that it took too long to finish the courses. We wanted to maximize the time we could nap since N had already fallen asleep. So finally I skipped dessert and fell asleep. The 2nd leg of the journey was good as well since the flight was empty and so Arti and M stretched out on 4 seats and me and N did the same on the row behind. of course no India trip can be without its share of excitement provided by our boys. N had a diaper leak once (luckily only pee) that transferred to my shirt and shorts and M had an accident while he was asleep. M's accident is no small matter anymore. The entire seat, 2 blankets and 2 pillows were drenched. I am not sure how they are going to clean the seat. Some things are better not known.........
R2I - THE DEATH MARCH - LAST 2 WEEKS
Pretty soon the last 2 weeks of our stay in Seattle was on to us and we still had a lot of stuff to take care of. Finally Arti was off work and so she could spend substantial time on move related stuff. The big thing to take care of was the categorization of stuff that we were going to take with us. We had 3 options
- Immediate need items. they would go in our checkin luggage. We would be very limited by what we could take.
- Intermediate need items. We had 400 lbs of air shipment that would reach bangalore about 10 days after we reached. So we could replenish supplies (diapers, wipes, clothes, etc).
- Everything else that would reach us after 60 days by ship.
This was important since we had to set aside stuff for air shipment and sea shipment for the movers to pack. The movers were due to arrive 4 days before our departure. By default most of the stuff was categorized for sea shipment. There is a lot of small stuff that actually needed to be sent in the 1st 2 categories. However we didn't have much time for detailed categorization and so we ended up sending less stuff by air. After staying in temp housing for 3 weeks, we have now realized so many things that we could have sent by air.Secondly, we were buying stuff (mostly from amazon) and everyday we had a parcel or two. So every few days we had a trip to drop off boxes and trash as well as donate stuff to thrift store. The process of selling furniture and cars was also in full swing and taking up a lot of our time. We also had 2 kids to take care of. We really utilized the help of our wonderful nanny by asking her to stay extra hours. inspite of all this help, we felt that we had too many things to take care of. The last few days were also taking up by change of address notifications, closing of accounts, taking copies of our medical records, get kids immunizations up to date, etc. Some of this stuff, we could and should have taken care of before. A couple of weeks before our departure, someone from the moving company came over to take a look at the stuff that needed to be moved. We did a walk through the house and at the end he estimated about 125 boxes worth of shipment. 15 yrs ago, I came to US with 2 suitcases and slowly accumulated all the stuff for the whole family. The movers were scheduled to arrive on wednesday and thursday and we were scheduled to depart on sunday. The days leading up to the movers arrival were very frantic. Ideally we had to be very organized so that we could pack all related stuff together and keep things that we had take in checkin luggage separate. During the walk through the person from Grebel had joked that there have been cases where the movers had packed passports since they were not kept separately and then they had to open a hell lot of boxes to find the passports. Now that seemed like a distinct possibility. Surely we would miss to separate out something very important. My brother came to help us during the move. His help proved invaluable. He did a lot of errands (trash removal, boxes recycling, donation of items, depositing checks) and also helped with packing stuff for the movers. The movers would ultimately pack stuff themselves but we had to keep stuff organized so that it would be easier to unpack. Also for kitchen, we had to empty out a lot of containers so that we could ship the containers. We were literally on 3-4 hrs of sleep everyday and were pretty much standing the rest of the time. Our feet were killing us. The day the movers came was the busiest of all. There were 4-5 people in different rooms packing stuff as fast as they could. Since we were not completely organized, for certain rooms we had to tell them which stuff went where. At the same time we were getting kitchen, some restrooms and garage in a state where the movers could start packing stuff. Also by this time we were both mentally and physically dead tired. The 1st day the movers just packed most of stuff. The only rooms remaining were garage, restrooms and kitchen. They also kept the beds so that we could sleep in our house. The next day was supposed to be easier since they had to pack the remaining stuff and then load it. However the next day was also equally taxing and we felt it more since our energy level was further down. Finally by about 5 pm on thursday the big truck left our house and we had an almost empty house with lot of trash in it. My brother also left around the same time. We were so busy that we didn't get any time to sit and chat. inspire of all the effort there was stuff that didn't go by the route it was supposed to go and we are finding that out in bangalore. I guess that is inevitable. I really feel for the movers. It is hard work and they end up eating junk food all the time. Both the days the movers were here, we ordered pizza for lunch for everyone. For us it was a welcome break from the usual stuff we have and very convenient. For them it was everyday meal, but they still devoured with gutso. For the next fews days we were going to stay at our friends place. So we had to pack our checkin bags. Also we had to get the house ready for prospective tenants to come and take a look. We had called a handyman on friday, move out cleaners on saturday and carpet cleaner on saturday evening. The handyman took 9 hrs on friday to fix small things here and there as well as do touch up paint. However there was a fiasco with the touch up paint. The extra paint that we had was all dried up. The one he got from Home depot was a slightly darker shade (he found that out after doing most of the touchup work) and the one from our neighbor was a lighter shade. So the touchup job was still outstanding when we left seattle. It took another 3-4 days to get that completed. The last day when I bid farewell to our house, it was a very sentimental moment. I was completely alone is an empty house and felt bad leaving our house which was our home for almost 8 yrs and where we started our family. Rest of the stuff went ok and we got to spend some time with different friends for lunches, dinners, etc. We were really thankful to our friends for helping out so much. Without their help we wouldn't have been able to be half as organized as we were.
- Immediate need items. they would go in our checkin luggage. We would be very limited by what we could take.
- Intermediate need items. We had 400 lbs of air shipment that would reach bangalore about 10 days after we reached. So we could replenish supplies (diapers, wipes, clothes, etc).
- Everything else that would reach us after 60 days by ship.
This was important since we had to set aside stuff for air shipment and sea shipment for the movers to pack. The movers were due to arrive 4 days before our departure. By default most of the stuff was categorized for sea shipment. There is a lot of small stuff that actually needed to be sent in the 1st 2 categories. However we didn't have much time for detailed categorization and so we ended up sending less stuff by air. After staying in temp housing for 3 weeks, we have now realized so many things that we could have sent by air.Secondly, we were buying stuff (mostly from amazon) and everyday we had a parcel or two. So every few days we had a trip to drop off boxes and trash as well as donate stuff to thrift store. The process of selling furniture and cars was also in full swing and taking up a lot of our time. We also had 2 kids to take care of. We really utilized the help of our wonderful nanny by asking her to stay extra hours. inspite of all this help, we felt that we had too many things to take care of. The last few days were also taking up by change of address notifications, closing of accounts, taking copies of our medical records, get kids immunizations up to date, etc. Some of this stuff, we could and should have taken care of before. A couple of weeks before our departure, someone from the moving company came over to take a look at the stuff that needed to be moved. We did a walk through the house and at the end he estimated about 125 boxes worth of shipment. 15 yrs ago, I came to US with 2 suitcases and slowly accumulated all the stuff for the whole family. The movers were scheduled to arrive on wednesday and thursday and we were scheduled to depart on sunday. The days leading up to the movers arrival were very frantic. Ideally we had to be very organized so that we could pack all related stuff together and keep things that we had take in checkin luggage separate. During the walk through the person from Grebel had joked that there have been cases where the movers had packed passports since they were not kept separately and then they had to open a hell lot of boxes to find the passports. Now that seemed like a distinct possibility. Surely we would miss to separate out something very important. My brother came to help us during the move. His help proved invaluable. He did a lot of errands (trash removal, boxes recycling, donation of items, depositing checks) and also helped with packing stuff for the movers. The movers would ultimately pack stuff themselves but we had to keep stuff organized so that it would be easier to unpack. Also for kitchen, we had to empty out a lot of containers so that we could ship the containers. We were literally on 3-4 hrs of sleep everyday and were pretty much standing the rest of the time. Our feet were killing us. The day the movers came was the busiest of all. There were 4-5 people in different rooms packing stuff as fast as they could. Since we were not completely organized, for certain rooms we had to tell them which stuff went where. At the same time we were getting kitchen, some restrooms and garage in a state where the movers could start packing stuff. Also by this time we were both mentally and physically dead tired. The 1st day the movers just packed most of stuff. The only rooms remaining were garage, restrooms and kitchen. They also kept the beds so that we could sleep in our house. The next day was supposed to be easier since they had to pack the remaining stuff and then load it. However the next day was also equally taxing and we felt it more since our energy level was further down. Finally by about 5 pm on thursday the big truck left our house and we had an almost empty house with lot of trash in it. My brother also left around the same time. We were so busy that we didn't get any time to sit and chat. inspire of all the effort there was stuff that didn't go by the route it was supposed to go and we are finding that out in bangalore. I guess that is inevitable. I really feel for the movers. It is hard work and they end up eating junk food all the time. Both the days the movers were here, we ordered pizza for lunch for everyone. For us it was a welcome break from the usual stuff we have and very convenient. For them it was everyday meal, but they still devoured with gutso. For the next fews days we were going to stay at our friends place. So we had to pack our checkin bags. Also we had to get the house ready for prospective tenants to come and take a look. We had called a handyman on friday, move out cleaners on saturday and carpet cleaner on saturday evening. The handyman took 9 hrs on friday to fix small things here and there as well as do touch up paint. However there was a fiasco with the touch up paint. The extra paint that we had was all dried up. The one he got from Home depot was a slightly darker shade (he found that out after doing most of the touchup work) and the one from our neighbor was a lighter shade. So the touchup job was still outstanding when we left seattle. It took another 3-4 days to get that completed. The last day when I bid farewell to our house, it was a very sentimental moment. I was completely alone is an empty house and felt bad leaving our house which was our home for almost 8 yrs and where we started our family. Rest of the stuff went ok and we got to spend some time with different friends for lunches, dinners, etc. We were really thankful to our friends for helping out so much. Without their help we wouldn't have been able to be half as organized as we were.
R2I - CARS
Around the same time, i started the process of selling our cars. You cannot take cars from US to India (left hand and right hand drive difference) even if you are willing to pay the extra duty. Also cars is India are much more expensive than in US (and have much less features). However there no other alternative and so we had to sell our beloved cars. there is a delicate balance between selling things too soon (and having to deal with the subsequent inconvenience) and selling them too late (and having to deal with the stress and price reductions). Fortunately for cars, we were able to sell them at the right time. All thanks to autotrader.com. We had 2 cars - 2010 Prius and 2004 Honda Pilot. We wanted to sell Prius earlier since we needed the bigger car for running errands and getting things. Also we figured it would be easier to sell an older car than an almost brand new one. I put up Prius for sale on craiglist towards end of july. Selling cars valued more than 5K on craiglist is not very easy in my experience. I got a lot of responses (about 5 or so over 5 days), but almost everyone wanted to bargain a lot. Some of the requests for price reductions were really ridiculous. I wasted a lot of time on this. Next week we put up the ad on autotrader. com. I paid about $90 for a premium ad and got 1 response after 3 days. However i sold my car to that respondent without much bargaining (just came $500 below my asking price). The whole process was very smooth and stress free. This is because even buyers have to pay to get the details of cars on sale. This results in buyers who are very interested in purchasing the car rather than bargain hunters. Had a similar experience with our other car. I put up that car for sale just after mid aug confident that i would be able to sell it in a week. Again a similar experience on craiglist. I got a lot more responses and the best one was about 2K below my asking price (which was already lower than the KBB price since I wanted to sell soon). I then put it on auto trader and i got a response after 3 days. This time the buyer come over to take a look, test drove it and bought it without any price adjustment. It seemed too good to be true. The only hitch was that he was taking a loan from bank and the bank would be issuing us a check. After 1 anxious day, everything was cleared. This was the smoothest experience that we had with a car sale. Also we sold our car just 4 days before we left seattle. Although that was cutting it a bit too close, it served us well in the end. A word of advice here is to follow the tips on autotrader.com for creating the right ad, be truthful about the car condition and price it appropriately (i put it up for a few hundred dollars below the KBB price). Also be ready to bargain and go about 1K less than your asking price (especially if you want to sell it soon). Have carfax report with you and send it electronically to interested respondants. And blindly put it on autotrader.com (the extra $100 would be worth the extra effort and stress that you would avoid). For the last 4 days we rented a convertible and enjoyed the sunny weather of seattle summer. It felt amazing to drive a convertible for the last few days in seattle though a bit odd to have 2 car seats in the back seat.
R2I - TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE - CDS, BOOKS and ELECTRONICS
Since we didn't want to carry CDs with us, I undertook the mission of burning all of our CDs so that we would have a digital library of our music and i would be ways to import past of the library to different devices. We had about 150 english CDs and about 160 hindi and marathi CDs. Each CD took only about a minute to burn but the process was labor intensive since CDs needed to be ejected and new CDs put in. Also some of the CDSs were not original and so the song names were not imported automatically. I was doing this for more than a month but was extremely satisfied with my effort. I also created a backup in case the hard disk conked off.
We had more than 2 big bookcases full of books before we shifted to kindle. We took most of them with us. However I got rid of my entire national geographic collection. I had more than 15 yrs worth of national geographic and was very sad to let it go. When I dumped it at half price, I got something like $10 for the entire collection :-(
The advice that we got regarding electronics and appliances was to get things like desktops, laptops, tablets and cameras from US and get the rest from India. Basically anything that is not dual voltage and needs to be plugged in for a long time is better off being local. For others, getting them from US is cheaper and for the non dual voltage ones, one would have to use step down transformers to be able to use in india. Apparently continuous use of step-down transformer generates a lot of heat and is not good for the appliance. Also we were told to get the transformer of at least twice the wattage of the devices that were going to be plugged on to it. We got a few high wattage and a few low wattage transformers with us from amazon. We have shipped the following stuff from US
- LED TV. Apparently TATA SKY has a digital receiver and so you don't have to worry about NTSC/PAL formats.
- BOSE sound system. It only has standalone speakers.
- XBOX 360, Kinect, Wii
We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our entertainment system.
- Desktop, printers, LCD monitor and speakers. We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our home office.
- IPAD2
- Digital cameras + analog SLR camera that we had (don't know why we got it)
- Sonicare toothbrushes
- Handheld vacuum
- Hair dryer
- IPod docking stations with amp and alarm.
The rest we plan to buy in India. This includes things like fridge, washer, dryer, microwave, iron. toaster, ACs, DVD player, etc. More on the actual experience of buying these things in a later post.....
We had more than 2 big bookcases full of books before we shifted to kindle. We took most of them with us. However I got rid of my entire national geographic collection. I had more than 15 yrs worth of national geographic and was very sad to let it go. When I dumped it at half price, I got something like $10 for the entire collection :-(
The advice that we got regarding electronics and appliances was to get things like desktops, laptops, tablets and cameras from US and get the rest from India. Basically anything that is not dual voltage and needs to be plugged in for a long time is better off being local. For others, getting them from US is cheaper and for the non dual voltage ones, one would have to use step down transformers to be able to use in india. Apparently continuous use of step-down transformer generates a lot of heat and is not good for the appliance. Also we were told to get the transformer of at least twice the wattage of the devices that were going to be plugged on to it. We got a few high wattage and a few low wattage transformers with us from amazon. We have shipped the following stuff from US
- LED TV. Apparently TATA SKY has a digital receiver and so you don't have to worry about NTSC/PAL formats.
- BOSE sound system. It only has standalone speakers.
- XBOX 360, Kinect, Wii
We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our entertainment system.
- Desktop, printers, LCD monitor and speakers. We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our home office.
- IPAD2
- Digital cameras + analog SLR camera that we had (don't know why we got it)
- Sonicare toothbrushes
- Handheld vacuum
- Hair dryer
- IPod docking stations with amp and alarm.
The rest we plan to buy in India. This includes things like fridge, washer, dryer, microwave, iron. toaster, ACs, DVD player, etc. More on the actual experience of buying these things in a later post.....
R2I - TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE - FURNITURE
Based on what people told us we came up with a list of furniture to take with us. The advice that we got was along the following lines -
- There is less variety and thereby less choice for furniture in india. The stuff that you get from a furniture shop is not of solid wood and hence not good quality. The good quality furniture is much more expensive (than in US). So unless you plan to call a carpenter, babysit him and have him custom make your furniture, you are better off getting stuff from US (provided ofcourse you have space in container).
- Rooms and houses in India tend to have less space. So get furniture from US taking that into account. Basically get smaller and slimmer furniture. We were told that there have been cases in rental houses where big furniture has not been able to pass through the doorway and hence had to stay in storage. Now that I have looked at various "luxury" rental homes, I can definitely vouch for this advise. I am hoping that our furniture will fit in the house and wont look too imposing. I cannot emphasize this enuf - the rooms and houses are really small, so choose your furniture appropriately.
- Memory foam mattresses : Get from US since you don't get them easily in India. For Redmond folks, I would highly recommend "6 day" mattress store that is next to the Subway on Cleveland St. don't go by its appearance (very shady). Its a mom and pop shop, has great reviews, honest owner, good variety and great prices. So don't even think of going to the branded stores.
- Kids furniture : Get from US since a lot of pottery barn kind of stuff is not available in india.
- Beddings : Get from US since you don't get good quality cotton sheets (higher thread count) in india. Arti had read somewhere that the max thread count in india is around 150 (pathetic).
This was also a good time to recycle some of our furniture that we had for 7 yrs. So heeding to the sound advice, the next step was furniture shopping. I did the rounds for 3-4 furniture shops to scout for items that would work for us and that I liked. Then in the next trip Arti joined me to look at just the selected items. Since Arti was working and was also dealing with HR and a bunch of people associated with the move, her time was very valuable. We had to do furniture shopping early since it takes about 8 weeks to custom order something. Turned out that we couldn't custom order anything since the timings didn't match. So we had to do with the instore selections. Takeaway here is that if you are planning a move and have a container to ship then get most of furniture from US and give yourself more than 2 months to get custom ordered stuff. Finally after too many (to my liking) furniture store trips we bought majority of the things that we wanted to buy and had then scheduled for delivery in mid-aug. This was in early to mid july. The next step was to make space for the new furniture. I then created a list of items that we wanted to sell and put them on craiglist. This was a work in progress for several weeks and was very time consuming. A lot of time was spent responding to folks, fixing time to have then over, showing them stuff, dealing with bargaining, dealing with people dropping the ball at the last minute, etc. The items also took a long time to sell. We had about 5-6 big ticketed items (furniture) and 50+ small items. There was ample interest for the smaller items but the bigger items were harder to sell even after a number of price reductions. Also I had to deal with scamsters on craiglist. The way it works is that someone expresses interest in your items (mostly for a big ticketed item). After a few initial mail exchanges they say that they are satisfied with the quality of the item (without ever looking at it) and would like to purchase it. However they mention that they stay outside of your state and so would have a shipping company pick the items up. They then initiate a transaction for the sale price + shipping cost (around $200) and send a (fake) payment notification from paypal like gateway (fake address with paypal in the name). The notification says that the sellar should pay the shipping company the shipping cost. Once the shipping company notifies them, the payment maid by hte buyer will be released to the sellar. Till then the payment is in a frozen state. All this is fake with the intention of getting $200 from you. It is fairly well documented on craiglist but having to go through it the 1st time was quite an experience. After selling so many items on craiglist, i feel that i have become an expert on how to post an ad and give the initial responses to maximize the changes of closing the deal. However i really hated the whole process as i hate bargaining from the bottom of my heart. The only good part was the variety of people and experiences you encounter. Some the sales were very smooth. They would agree to buy stuff based on the craiglist ad photos and the asking price, setup a time and come prepared to pick it up (big pickup truck with some muscular guy(s)). Most of the transactions would be in cash payment. So at one point I had more than $2000 in cash at home. I have never had so much green physically with me before. Then there were others, who would bargain even for $3, not show up at the allocated time, drop the ball at the last minute after expressing strong interest over multiple emails. However almost all the people were very curteous in their interactions. This was slightly surprising given the amount of bargain hunters on craiglist. Thats a big difference between US and India. Imagine having to sell so many things in India and dealing with all the people and bargaining. Anyway we ended up selling most of the items that we had planned on selling. The last of our big furniture went the day the movers arrived. We either gave off or donated the remaining items. The last one week was a huuuuuuuuge slog. However that deserves its own post. More on that later.....
- There is less variety and thereby less choice for furniture in india. The stuff that you get from a furniture shop is not of solid wood and hence not good quality. The good quality furniture is much more expensive (than in US). So unless you plan to call a carpenter, babysit him and have him custom make your furniture, you are better off getting stuff from US (provided ofcourse you have space in container).
- Rooms and houses in India tend to have less space. So get furniture from US taking that into account. Basically get smaller and slimmer furniture. We were told that there have been cases in rental houses where big furniture has not been able to pass through the doorway and hence had to stay in storage. Now that I have looked at various "luxury" rental homes, I can definitely vouch for this advise. I am hoping that our furniture will fit in the house and wont look too imposing. I cannot emphasize this enuf - the rooms and houses are really small, so choose your furniture appropriately.
- Memory foam mattresses : Get from US since you don't get them easily in India. For Redmond folks, I would highly recommend "6 day" mattress store that is next to the Subway on Cleveland St. don't go by its appearance (very shady). Its a mom and pop shop, has great reviews, honest owner, good variety and great prices. So don't even think of going to the branded stores.
- Kids furniture : Get from US since a lot of pottery barn kind of stuff is not available in india.
- Beddings : Get from US since you don't get good quality cotton sheets (higher thread count) in india. Arti had read somewhere that the max thread count in india is around 150 (pathetic).
This was also a good time to recycle some of our furniture that we had for 7 yrs. So heeding to the sound advice, the next step was furniture shopping. I did the rounds for 3-4 furniture shops to scout for items that would work for us and that I liked. Then in the next trip Arti joined me to look at just the selected items. Since Arti was working and was also dealing with HR and a bunch of people associated with the move, her time was very valuable. We had to do furniture shopping early since it takes about 8 weeks to custom order something. Turned out that we couldn't custom order anything since the timings didn't match. So we had to do with the instore selections. Takeaway here is that if you are planning a move and have a container to ship then get most of furniture from US and give yourself more than 2 months to get custom ordered stuff. Finally after too many (to my liking) furniture store trips we bought majority of the things that we wanted to buy and had then scheduled for delivery in mid-aug. This was in early to mid july. The next step was to make space for the new furniture. I then created a list of items that we wanted to sell and put them on craiglist. This was a work in progress for several weeks and was very time consuming. A lot of time was spent responding to folks, fixing time to have then over, showing them stuff, dealing with bargaining, dealing with people dropping the ball at the last minute, etc. The items also took a long time to sell. We had about 5-6 big ticketed items (furniture) and 50+ small items. There was ample interest for the smaller items but the bigger items were harder to sell even after a number of price reductions. Also I had to deal with scamsters on craiglist. The way it works is that someone expresses interest in your items (mostly for a big ticketed item). After a few initial mail exchanges they say that they are satisfied with the quality of the item (without ever looking at it) and would like to purchase it. However they mention that they stay outside of your state and so would have a shipping company pick the items up. They then initiate a transaction for the sale price + shipping cost (around $200) and send a (fake) payment notification from paypal like gateway (fake address with paypal in the name). The notification says that the sellar should pay the shipping company the shipping cost. Once the shipping company notifies them, the payment maid by hte buyer will be released to the sellar. Till then the payment is in a frozen state. All this is fake with the intention of getting $200 from you. It is fairly well documented on craiglist but having to go through it the 1st time was quite an experience. After selling so many items on craiglist, i feel that i have become an expert on how to post an ad and give the initial responses to maximize the changes of closing the deal. However i really hated the whole process as i hate bargaining from the bottom of my heart. The only good part was the variety of people and experiences you encounter. Some the sales were very smooth. They would agree to buy stuff based on the craiglist ad photos and the asking price, setup a time and come prepared to pick it up (big pickup truck with some muscular guy(s)). Most of the transactions would be in cash payment. So at one point I had more than $2000 in cash at home. I have never had so much green physically with me before. Then there were others, who would bargain even for $3, not show up at the allocated time, drop the ball at the last minute after expressing strong interest over multiple emails. However almost all the people were very curteous in their interactions. This was slightly surprising given the amount of bargain hunters on craiglist. Thats a big difference between US and India. Imagine having to sell so many things in India and dealing with all the people and bargaining. Anyway we ended up selling most of the items that we had planned on selling. The last of our big furniture went the day the movers arrived. We either gave off or donated the remaining items. The last one week was a huuuuuuuuge slog. However that deserves its own post. More on that later.....
R2I - HOLY COW!! NOW WHAT???
Once the big part of mentally making the decision was done, things started shifting to higher gear. while a lot of uncertainty was resolved, there were many new questions and challenges ahead. however since this was a well treaded path, most of the questions should have already been solved, or so our thinking went. we first started making a list of things to do or rather the set of questions that needed to be answered. they were along the lines of :
- what to do with our house - rent or sell? once that decision is made what are the next set of things to take care of.
- what to do with US investments? transfer to india or keep it as is? If transfer, what is the best way, how to get money back in us if required, etc.
- what type of bank account do we set up in india?is there anything that we need to do from US to set things up?
- tax implication of indian income, etc.
- what to get from US as opposed to buying in india? furniture, appliances, electronics, clothes, toys, children books, etc
- how much stuff will fit in a 40ft container?
- places to rent in bangalore close to work
- school for M
- things to do to close shop in US. change of address at a bunch of places, account closures, irs, ins, etc.
bangalore is a new city for us and we hardly know anyone there. arti has 2 very close friends whom we had met when we had gone there in june. but other than that we didnt know anyone, nor did we know the city. so we 1st started by pinging our friends that had returned to india in the recent past. for most of the questions, we got very good answers. for others we had to do our own investigation and it was very confusing. As an example, which type of bank account to open in india and how to efficiently transfer money back and forth. most people were very unclear about this and in some cases they were indian citizens and so different set of rules applied to them (presumably). this took up a lot of my time and even now, after being in india for 3 weeks, i don't have all the answers. but the higher level question has been answered and some of the details are unknown. so they have been put on the back burner.
simultaneously we met with our realtor to get clarity on sell vs rent for our US house. We decided to go with the rent option and that meant less work right away. The work would start when we had clarity on our move date and when we could have our house in a shape for potential tenants to take a look.
we then got decent clarity on what to take from US and what not to take. soon we started taking an inventory of every room in our house and flagging each item in one of the following categories :
- sell
- donate/give away
- take to india via checked in luggage
- take to india via air shipment
- take to india via sea shipment
- tbd
in the 1st few days we did 2-3 rooms and really didn't progress much on this level of details for some of the other rooms.
In the meanwhile we were getting more clarity on arti's compensation package, move date, types of shipments, etc. Pretty soon it was clear that we would have to move within 2 months. the tentative move was set for end of august with arti joining amazon india on the 5th of sept. However there was one big hitch - OCI cards for arti and kids. I already had mine. The site mentioned that it would take about 8-10 weeks to get the OCI card as well as the lifelong visa on US passport. We had applied for Arti's OCI in april and the application was blocked for some reason. So Arti had to put the application on hold and rush to SFO to get a indian visa for our earlier trip to India. We didn't know what surprise lay in store for us this time. Since there was a bit of uncertainty in our departure date, we couldn't proceed on many things - when can tenants move into our house, when can the movers come, etc. There were many instances where we longed for a todo list where we could discard the ones that didnt apply for us and find out details about the ones that we cared about. However none of the forums that we scouted had anything comprehensive or detailed. Also most of the posts on the R2I forums are outdated and some of the things no longer apply. In the next few posts I will detail our experiences with some of the things that we had to spend significant amount of time/energy on.....
- what to do with our house - rent or sell? once that decision is made what are the next set of things to take care of.
- what to do with US investments? transfer to india or keep it as is? If transfer, what is the best way, how to get money back in us if required, etc.
- what type of bank account do we set up in india?is there anything that we need to do from US to set things up?
- tax implication of indian income, etc.
- what to get from US as opposed to buying in india? furniture, appliances, electronics, clothes, toys, children books, etc
- how much stuff will fit in a 40ft container?
- places to rent in bangalore close to work
- school for M
- things to do to close shop in US. change of address at a bunch of places, account closures, irs, ins, etc.
bangalore is a new city for us and we hardly know anyone there. arti has 2 very close friends whom we had met when we had gone there in june. but other than that we didnt know anyone, nor did we know the city. so we 1st started by pinging our friends that had returned to india in the recent past. for most of the questions, we got very good answers. for others we had to do our own investigation and it was very confusing. As an example, which type of bank account to open in india and how to efficiently transfer money back and forth. most people were very unclear about this and in some cases they were indian citizens and so different set of rules applied to them (presumably). this took up a lot of my time and even now, after being in india for 3 weeks, i don't have all the answers. but the higher level question has been answered and some of the details are unknown. so they have been put on the back burner.
simultaneously we met with our realtor to get clarity on sell vs rent for our US house. We decided to go with the rent option and that meant less work right away. The work would start when we had clarity on our move date and when we could have our house in a shape for potential tenants to take a look.
we then got decent clarity on what to take from US and what not to take. soon we started taking an inventory of every room in our house and flagging each item in one of the following categories :
- sell
- donate/give away
- take to india via checked in luggage
- take to india via air shipment
- take to india via sea shipment
- tbd
in the 1st few days we did 2-3 rooms and really didn't progress much on this level of details for some of the other rooms.
In the meanwhile we were getting more clarity on arti's compensation package, move date, types of shipments, etc. Pretty soon it was clear that we would have to move within 2 months. the tentative move was set for end of august with arti joining amazon india on the 5th of sept. However there was one big hitch - OCI cards for arti and kids. I already had mine. The site mentioned that it would take about 8-10 weeks to get the OCI card as well as the lifelong visa on US passport. We had applied for Arti's OCI in april and the application was blocked for some reason. So Arti had to put the application on hold and rush to SFO to get a indian visa for our earlier trip to India. We didn't know what surprise lay in store for us this time. Since there was a bit of uncertainty in our departure date, we couldn't proceed on many things - when can tenants move into our house, when can the movers come, etc. There were many instances where we longed for a todo list where we could discard the ones that didnt apply for us and find out details about the ones that we cared about. However none of the forums that we scouted had anything comprehensive or detailed. Also most of the posts on the R2I forums are outdated and some of the things no longer apply. In the next few posts I will detail our experiences with some of the things that we had to spend significant amount of time/energy on.....
R2I - WHY?
a lot of people have asked us to blog about our R2I (Return to India) experience. there are so many things to share, that it is an overwhelming undertaking. i will jot down a few things here, albeit randomly, and hopefully it will take some form.
THE WHY?
I'll start from the time when we (me and Arti) mentally decided that we are going to move to india. at that time Arti had an informal offer from Amazon India. We had a good discussion on the July 4th weekend and decided to go ahead with it. we hadnt done much research on the cost of living in india and in bangalore in particular. a lot of folks have asked us why and what prompted us to take this big decision. For a lot of folks that have R2Ied there has been a pressing reason - sick parents, better career opportunity to move to. That was not the case with us. so why did we move?A lot of things came together for us to make this decision. the main reason was that i was suffering from allergies in seattle for the last 5 years. every passing year the severity and duration of my allergies was increasing so much so that i was pretty much miserable 24x7 almost throughout the year. Finally in 2010 we decided to move out of seattle. The lure of dry and sunny weather was also a big pull to move out of seattle. the next question was if not seattle then where? we settled on 2 alternatives - bay area in california and somewhere in india. my elder brother stays in bay area. that was a BIG incentive for us to move there. in addition we had many many close friends over there and so we would continue to be socially active there. Plus we didnt mind the sunny weather :) as we started considering this option very seriously, one big con that came up was that bay area is very very expensive. a decent house (about 2400 sq ft and less than 20 yrs old) was around the million dollar mark. in addition private education for 2 kids is very expensive. going the public education route limited us to a few areas in bay area and then the house prices were even more expensive. all in all, this would have meant a hefty mortgage and both of us having to work in a more aggressive work culture to make ends meet for our standard of living and have some savings. however the pros were very attractive and so we seriously pursued this option. towards the end of 2010 and the start of 2011 both me and arti had a few interviews with different companies in bay area. however nothing worked out to our satisfaction. around march of 2011, my manager came to me to sell an opportunity of a bigger team. since i was anyway panning to leave work in a few months it didn't seem right to accept the opportunity. so i told my manager about my decision to leave microsoft. once i had that off my chest, i decided to leave microsoft earlier than planned and so 1st april was my last working day. the plan was to take a few weeks off, concentrate on alternative allergy treatments, workout and then start looking for jobs in bay area. however the time off turned out to be great. it is unimaginable the amount of stress one has (mostly subconsciously) when one goes to work. i started doing NAET (allergy treatment using acupuncture) and would go 2 hrs every alternate day. the rest of the time i spent being with the boys, working out, cooking, going to parks, etc. it was a very enjoyable period and i would highly recommend a break to anyone who hasn't had one in a long time. slowly my allergies also started improving and the thought of preparing for and then starting a new job didn't seem too appealing. i really wanted an extended break since this was a great time to have one and moving to california would not afford us that luxury.
in the meanwhile, arti was busy organizing a charity dinner event for CRY. After the event, one of the CRY volunteer was talking to his manager about how arti did a great job in organizing the event and that too with a bunch of volunteers. his manager mentioned that he would be interesting in talking to her. this was in amazon. he spoke to arti and they had openings in india. amazon has offices in bangalore, chennai and hyderabad. when arti told her manger about this development, her manager encouraged her to look at all india openings since this would be a big move. he put her in contact with appropriate people at higher levels and this expedited the process. within a few days she was in touch with 3-4 groups in india. around that time frame, we had planned a trip to india since it was arti's mom's 1st death anniversary. once we were in india, we went to bangalore for 3 days and arti got to chat further with 3 groups. once we came back to seattle, the groups doled out informal offers based on internal recommendations. she didn't have to go through any interviews and the whole process went very fast. come july, we had to make a decision whether to pursue this further. i always wanted to go back to india or at least give it a shot. not for any pressing reason, but i have always imagined myself being in india in the long term. there was a sense of not belonging or some sort of emptiness in US. don't get me wrong. life there was very enjoyable, comfortable and there was time to do things. however in the last few years it seemed increasingly meaningless, materialistic and i felt the need to connect more with people. it is something that is a bit difficult to put down. another factor contributing to the move to india was that we all had our US citizenship and OCI cards done and so there is always the option of coming back. Also the kids are young and barring health issues would find it easier to adjust to india.Once kids become older it adds to the complexity of the decision. As it is i was on a break and that also made the move to india easier since i would continue to be on a break and help settle the kids and family before starting my job hunt. financially me being on an extended break was less of a hit in india that in california. also we wanted to go there when there was no pressing need. we had always thought that whenever there was a pressing need we would head back to india. however when arti's mom was battling cancer for 2 yrs, we didnt end up relocating to india. one can argue that there were a bunch of very legitimate reasons for not doing that. instead what we ended up doing was go to india every 6 months. we weren't very proud of our decision after her demise and don't want to put ourselves in that situation again. also fit grandparents would be a huge help to ease the transition of us and especially our kids back to india. so all in all it was deemed worth to take the big step at this point of time.
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