ChrisandCin

This is the electricians plug to his drill…. you would think the electrician would have a plug wouldnt you!

Well after moving in and getting settled in our new apartment we of course had more to deal with.  At about 2pm on Sunday the power went out and we changed over to DG (diesel generator), this is not unusual happens most days for at the most a couple of hours so we just have fans and some power points working.  It didnt come back on at all.  So we had an aircon free night.  This isnt so bad, one night you can deal with, the problem was out of 6 nights we only had full power for one, and the monsoon has pretty much passed through now so it has gotten very hot and sticky again, so we didn’t get much sleep last week.  Plus to add on top of that I ended up with a cold, have no idea how as I don’t come into contact with many people.   So it was a pretty crap week.  Of course no one knows why the power was out for 6 days.

We also got ‘high speed internet’ installed last week. Now the Indians version of High speed and the rest of the world is different. Much to the dismay of the salesman we purchased the top speed top of the line product.. unlimited 1mbps connection. He really couldnt understand what anyone would do with this connection as in his words, this is way too fast a product it serves of no use. I couldnt get him to understand  that my cell phone back in the USA downloads faster than this connection. But they came and installed it. Of course this is a drama. The install went ok, they turned up only 2 hrs later than planned… but they turned up with not just one person to do the job, but 5!

This is the breakdown of the workers and their jobs

1. Foreman, he wrote the contracts
2. Receipt man, he had the bag that held the receipt book (he didnt write the receipt of take the money, he just carried the book around)
3. Cable man, this guy had the job of connecting the plug in the box outside the apartment
4. Tuner man – his job it was to test the remote functions and make sure that the volume on the tv did work when put at its maximum (nice job tuner man…you asshole, its loud yes we know!)
5. Couch man, this guy just came in and sat on the couch, once the cable tv was working he sat and watched tv

Of course the install did take 2 hrs…but it was done and they left. They did tell us that it was the same product as tv stations we have on the satellite service.. take note…NEVER believe and Indian, I am sorry to offend.

So we sit down ready to enjoy our new digital tv service, oh what a disappointment. Most channels were so distorted you couldn’t ever watch them as the signal was obviously too week, it didn’t have the channels of the satellite system, it had a channel guide but they don’t bother to program it so its useless and you never have an idea whats on!, and to top it all off, the English channels were a crock of shit. You got to listen to it in English yes, but only in the left speaker, the right speaker was speaking in Hindi!! So I call and complain, and what they do is remotely turn off the Hindi speaker so now you have to listen to the faint English soundtrack out of just the left speaker. What a load of BS, now the fun begins.

Now Indians love to get but not to give, most people here are the cheapest of cheap, (not all there are some amazing people we have met here, so if we know you personally we aren’t talking about you here) . This is typical of services here in India, like this Ortel cable tv service we got installed, I called demanding the box be removed as we can hear the channels and the picture is crap of course now the promises begin to get the system removed and our satellite system reinstalled. Well 2 days and many calls later the salesman turns up to try and talk us out of it. But in the end he has to give us our money back…PS if you are a Ortel salesman …please note, turning the tv volume to full does not help me in deciding to keep your service, my ear drums are now blown thanks you fool! Then he cant reinstall the satellite so he must send the technicians. Many calls and promises later the techs arrive, lets call them the 3 stooges. As thats what they were, see we have 2 cables coming into the apartment and cables throughout the apartment, and these 3 stooges couldnt figure out nor did they want to figure out where the other end of the incoming cable was going to… Ortel please employ humans next time, not some monkeys who dont evem know what a tv coaxial cable looks like.

So here we wait for our tv to get reinstalled… oh the joys of India, but at least we have the super high speed internet.

I dont think thing so nice

If it wasnt for the fact we have had no power for most of the week, we now have a problem here again in that we cant post info, so working on it and blogging will recommend shortly

Sunday, moving day.  As you can imagine we werent expecting it to go smoothly, let alone happen at all.  Our first problem of the day, the keys.  We had met with the owner on Saturday night and he had told us we could c0llect  the keys from the Society Manager (building manager) on Sunday morning at 9am.  So Chris went down at 9am to find only an electrician here and told that the Manager doesnt get in until 10am on Sundays.  We asked if the electrician could open the place for us to start moving, but no, even though he had access to the keys this was not allowed, we had to wait for the Manager.  So about 10.15am we finally got the keys from the wanker Manager.

Now the next problem is we have no workers to move anything.  The organizer of the affair from Chris’s office has neglected to collect the workers  from the meeting point just two kilometres away and has instead told them to walk here, they of course turn around and go home pissed off.  So a call to the logistics manager from Chris’s office gets another driver to go to the homes of these workers to get them here.

So all at once at around 11.30am, two and half hours late, we have the workers in place and the airconditioner movers working and it begins at a frantically slow pace.  Of course Chris and myself being normal people have packed up 99% of the place and at the disgust of Chris’s fellow office workers  have started to move some stuff already.  There is two reasons we did this, we didnt want our personal items either smashed or stolen (apparently this is common), and we didnt want it to take 15 hours to complete.

So we have four older men of what appears to be the Dalit caste and serverly undernourished, moving our stuff.  But they worked hard, and need a lot of direction which was supposed to be given by Dipanker but unfortunately he wasnt much help.  We had matresses in the living room, couches in the bedroom and the poor people walking up stairs when they could have been using the elevator.  We then had a water issue.  We didnt have any in bottles and the workers requested some (not unusal as it was feekin hot), Dipanker then decided that he was the boss and that they wouldnt have any water until he said so, even though we asked him to go and gave him money and get some.

At 2pm we had a stop work as it was lunch time.  Chris gave Dipanker money and told him to get them lunch, we dont know what they got but think that Dipanker pocketed most of the money.

Then we had some more problems, this apartment being never lived in had some wiring issues, hardly surprising! We had switches on the walls that actually weren’t connected to anything, the outlets were live. This created much problemos for the people installing the air conditioners, they couldn’t grasp the fact that to stop the flow of electrons you simply turn off the circuit breaker! But we need not worry as the main power supply went out at about this time, and we switched to generator which means the aircon outlets power supply wont work anymore or until the main supply is restored (as of writing this (11am Tuesday) the main supply has been off now for 48 hrs!!)

So we have the furniture in the apartment, and the airconditioners installed… next problem is we have no gas, and no satellite tv. The Satellite Tv problem is easy to fix, its called money. With Rs350 ($7) the installer will come out on a sunday and do it ‘after hours’, ie today on a sunday on the sly without the company knowing. Otherwise we would have to wait 30 days for a normal apointment to move the system to the new apartment.  So within 20 minutes of making the call, the installer is here for the tv… great but what about the gas?

Gas is a bigger problem, even though we have a meter and a on/off tap, there is no flow of gas. The gas man did promise to turn it on today, but alas he has not appeared. This wouldnt be a problem normally except for the fact we have no electricity to even power the toaster, let alone the microwave. So its cheese sandwiches and beer for dinner!

Ahh, its 6pm they have all left, just us, mess, plastic bags, 40 degree heat, no electricity to run the airconditioners, but we do have generator power to run the fridge , ceiling fans and some lights so at least we have cold beer and hot air blowing around us!

Never again to we want to have to go through a house move in India! And this was only moving from the apartment building thats next door (they are actually joined these building too) . We miss hiring a Penske or Uhaul truck and the simply way of getting worker in the US (illegal immigrants from the street corner) to help you move.

We have made  a change moving into the larger apartment, we now have a sweep and swab lady that comes everyday.  For RS2000 a month ($US41) five days a week we have someone come in and clean the floors and bathrooms, I cant lie, I love not having to do it, in this heat the animals shed constantly so its always dirty, so its nice to have someone else do it.

The title of the post “Plus a little for me” ? Well this is from the gas man, on monday he came to connect the gas supply, and close off the other apartments supply( the gas suppply in these building we live is plumbed in like in the west, but what feeds is interesting. The building gas supply is fed by a shed full of small 20 kg gas bottles, there must be 200 of them in there, all connected by rubber hoses to the building gas main…not very safe me thinks). We had to pay him Rs50 ($1) for this service. He writes out the receipt I hand him the money. He then looks at me, as if I should be giving him something more…. what to do ? He then says the phrase “Plus a little for me” , so I hand over more…although a little too much… Rs200 ($4). Of course as in all things in India money buys friends, he now offers me his personal cell phone number and to call him directly if there is any problems he will come out any time. Sometimes you love India!

Some pics of our new place, hold your mouse over each pic for what it is, this apartment we now have it 2 story, with 3 bedrooms/4 bathrooms. The bedroom on the lower level is for the servant, and the upstairs are has a little garden.

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Some outdoor pics from our apartment

This is the mall and looking at the airport in the distance…

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This is the low cost housing behind our building

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Looking towards the city

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Kids the in apartment pool

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This is the 4th floor apartment we were going to rent, it too had a garden but not very private at all

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The top floors of these buildings have triplexes on them, with huge outdoor areas, this one is getting painted

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Some politicians get a little beat up and kicked out of a village (well they had to out run the villagers thru the rice paddies to get out!), so the government workers call for a strike and protests… which means we get confined to your houses!

At least its nice and quiet outside, the road is empty, its kinda surreal for it to be this quiet.

Sometimes its very easy to forget you are in India, the doors are closed and the aircon on, some (a lot) traffic noise, but that could be any city, anywhere, then you open the door and step outside and the smell of  curry cooking hits you, then you remember where you are, lucky we like curry!

The monsoon finally arrived last week, which means for us cooler temperatures.  So instead of having a heat index of 130F/55C its only in the 100F/37C range.

Life has been reasonably uncomplicated the last couple of weeks.  Looks like we will be moving into a larger apartment the week after next, but as with anything here you only believe it is happening when you have actually moved in.  We were encouraged today because whilst walking the dogs Chris saw workers in there putting up curtains and doing whatever else they do,  so maybe it will actually happen.  The only thing we will miss about our current apartment is watching the world go by, this is also why we want to move as the noise is 24/7,  our new place is in the middle of the complex, but it does have good views of the airport so I will be able to give Chris weather reports before he flies in.

We have been doing some experimenting with Indian cooking. I found a great recipe for a chicken curry, which would also be good with lamb.  But alas I have failed with Dal.  I need to get someone to teach me.  My attempt was awful, tasted as bad as it looked.  There are so many different types of lentils that have to be cooked at different times its very confusing, plus I am not great with a pressure cooker.

Chris has been to visit our local fruit and veg shop.

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The produce is a lot fresher and a lot cheaper than the supermarket.  Today he got some beans and carrots for RS20 which is just 40 cents!

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I think in a previous post Chris had said one of the good things here is the eggs, apparently we are protected from Bird Flu and they have a security hologram on them, why I don’t know.

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We have discovered in our supermarket frozen mutton, which says its lamb (instead of goat), it tastes pretty good and smells like lamb so we are assuming that’s what it is.  The other night we got some fresh hamburger buns and made lamb burgers, holy crap they were good.  We also got some cubed lamb that I am going to try in my new curry recipe.  We have been having some issues with the fresh chicken we have been buying, we have had to toss quite a bit of it as it wasnt edible.  The problem is you don’t know how long it sits out before its packaged and refrigerated.  We haven’t got the courage up to go to the local market and buy a true fresh chook, we don’t know how we will cope with seeing it killed, plucked and then sold to us.

Another example of how cheap things are here.  I had run out of allergy pills.  Whilst living in Chicago and Colorado I developed really bad allergies, and now have to take something everyday, especially here with the really bad pollution.  So we have discovered that you dont need a prescription for anything here, we found this out when getting medication for the dogs.  Last night we went shopping and our driver Dipenka took my pills to the local hospital pharmacy to see if he could get me some pills.  I take Zyrtec and its normally about $US25 for a 45 day supply, last night we got 49 pills (all they had) and it was only about $US3.50, exactly the same pills made by the same company just different packaging.  Apparently you can get almost anything, just not the really bad stuff, whatever that means.

I think the cat has decided that he doesnt particularly like India and is ready to go.  This photo is funny because George would never willingly get into his carrier.  In all the years that we have had him he has done a lot of travelling and hates it, normally he sees his carrier and disappears.

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Life here never seems to stop.  This pic is in front of our apartment today, could you imagine moving all these bricks by hand in the 100F heat, plus you know they already had to load them this morning.  I got the cow in the pic for fun, he was eating some fresh cut grass he found.

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I have booked a trip to Australia for August.  I am very excited, not just to get away from India but also to catch up with people.  Its been two years so its time.  Its funny when you read about and talk to expats living here in India, most travel every couple of months out of the country to keep sane, Chris and I can both relate to this.

Most people are against having full time servants living with them, but we have decided that maybe we should have someone that can look after the dogs for us so we can start doing some traveling. While I am away in August we are hoping to try someone.  When we lived in the guesthouse, Salim, the houseman, his son was working there and he got on very well with the dogs so we are hoping that  he might work out.

Chris is away again this week for three days, so another quiet one.

They wonder here why people get killed by buses that overturn and plunge down 100 ft onto the railway lines after a tire blow out, or why people die whilst walking on the side of the road for no apparent reason…other than the fact there is a large chunk of truck tire embedded in their skull.

Now people of India, its simple, your car and truck and bus tires are just downright dangerous!!!

Everywhere on the side of the road are these tire stores which are dark inside and hard to photograph but they have guys in them scraping the tread off with knives and then gluing by hand new tread on the tires. They also repair the sidewalls of the tires if there is a hole in them by filling the gaping hole with molten rubber !

Here are some of the tires on vehicles I took pics of last week:

On a truck…the hole in the retreaded retread is so big you can see sunlight through it…

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Or on the other side of thay same truck, it aint much better!

Here is a perfectly bald retreaded taxi tire… yep its going to be safe in the monsoon rains!

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