Part II of India Update #1

Disclaimer: “#1” does not necessarily mean that a number 2 will ever follow.

More or less a contination of our previous blog entry.

Dear friends and family,

Our air-freight also arrived that day (Mon, 13 Aug) – three huge boxes – so we had enough stuff to survive for a while; the idea was that if house-hunting would take long, we could last until December with it. That afternoon I went to the office for some introductions and paper work, and the first impression was very good. A lot of really young colleagues, who compensate their lack of experience with enthusiasm to learn and to have fun – and with the ability to keep you busy like crazy. And the best part is that they come to you with questions and problems because you know everything, have invented geophysics, know how the world works, are a genius, and are simply fantastic to listen to … I tell you – that’s an experience, worth working your butt off for. Just the dark and evil idea that within two weeks they’ll know better is a little depressing – but then I’ll cry on Mieke’s shoulder, who will then enjoy the idea “I know what is best, and how to keep a middle-aged man out of depression”.

So far I haven’t used the words noise (UFN – you figure it out), garbage (UFG – you probably got it by now, otherwise re-read part I), and I won’t do now. But you get the idea (the Yankees among you may require some more hints – feel free to ask). I mentioned the cows already, but some more on the theme. They are funny, and have guts; lying in the middle of a busy road, without food or whatever, just some garbage to nibble on, takes character, and an enormous amount of stupidity. Tim counted more of 40 of them on our way back from church last Sunday. Talking about animals, we had to get rabies shots (three each; they are funny shots – particularly kids and teens really like them; I easily won all sparring against Tim the days after he got them). And not for nothing … There are thousands of dogs roaming everywhere; almost all of them without a collar (Dutchies: that means they are wild), and without any fat. Normally when I see an animal, I always think of how many of them would be required to feed me. Normally, dogs – the bigger ones – score fairly well on my efficiency scale. Not the ones in B’lore, though – no give me the Texan ones any time of the year. They normally don’t attack people, I think; maybe only the little kids who throw stones – and then it is fair. Definitely not TaeKwon-Do black belts … I think. Anyway, I love those rabies shots. By the way, apparently those shots are particularly to protect against bites of bats, rather than dogs. This started making sense when we picked up our residence permit: In some large trees around the building where hundreds of bats hanging in the branches, making noise like a thousand teenage girls – and they where huge! Some of them where flying around, and I think that some had a wingspan of around 70 cm (US: 27.559055 in). I checked with Mieke because I tend to exaggerate for dramatic effect, but she agrees this time.

On Tuesday and Wednesday (14&15 August), Mieke and I went with a lady on house-hunting trips. The very first house she showed was a direct hit; the sub-division was superb – away from the noise, with great facilities in the (gated) community, called Palm Meadows (Google’able for those interested). We loved that first house, but went to other places as well, which was a good idea, because we changed our first love on the second day – that’s how shallow we are – for a somewhat larger house with some garden, also in Palm Meadows (#59 – you can Google it up). It fell within our (Shell) budget, and Mieke started looking happy already by only thinking about it. I liked it a lot as well, but on the house, Mieke would have the final and dominant say (on most things, anyway). Shell entertains me most days, Indus does the same for Tim, but she has to start a life from scratch, so a good house helps. Unfortunately, the negotiations with the landlord (not done by us) are not going smoothly, and it is far from sure that we’ll be able to secure the house. Shell has some conditions regarding the contract that some landlords don’t feel comfortable with (like a 4-year lease, and not shorter). Anyway, we hope and pray for the best. Mentioning landlords – they are bandits for the rents they ask (like 2.5 times the mortgage we paid in Houston); but international companies are willing to pay.

It is incredible what is being built here – B’lore is the second fastest growing city in the world! Lots of international companies are already here, or are coming in – and B’lore is called the Silicon Valley of India. This boosts prices for houses dramatically; I believe 20-fold in the last 5 years. Building those buildings is a very interesting process. On a large one, there are hundreds of construction workers (50 Rupees/day). Each one carries a pot to carry cement, stones, or whatever is needed and by a mass human labor effort the building will be completed. I have been told that apart from the supervisors, the workers cannot read or write. They are born in the laborers caste (class), and are doomed from birth to follow in their parents steps. Coming from the office, I see them coming out of the work place at 6pm – hundreds, men, women, teenager boys and girls, most with a yellow helmet that can also be used to carry stuff in and on. Walking back home, or wherever they stay. Many also stay with their families in small tents next to the construction sites, or in the sites themselves. I try to observe their faces, and even though I am an emotional zilch, it really hurts to see many among them showing in their expression and way of looking that they would possibly end up being doctors, teachers, and whatever if born at another place on the planet. It frustrates me when Radju tells me that these workers do not send their kids to school to get out of the ongoing circle, and that they as well as the government at large apparently accept the status quo.

This workers thing was one of the three things that appalled me so far. The second was the presence of men dressed in women’s clothes begging at certain corners of the street. These men were given to the priests and the temple after their birth, were castrated, and dedicated for a life-long service to the temple. Many Indians give them money, because they believe that those guys could otherwise put a spell over them. How can parents ever do a thing like that to their kids?! The third thing that shocked me was the presence of young girls (around 4-12 years old) who perform tricks – salto’ing, turning with hula-hoops, etc. – in the middle of large, very busy junctions when traffic has to wait for a traffic sign or cop. When the cars, scooters, and tuk-tuks start to accelerate again, they run to the side of the road for safety. Mieke had a girl the other day who was so small that she could not even look into the car when she knocked on the window asking for money. It suffices to say that we need to get our mind and behavior around this. Giving money is not a good idea – only motivates them and there masters / parents to do it even more – and giving sweets or something may get such a small girl in trouble at the end of the day.

So far my whining part. After two weeks in the Royal Orchid we moved to a neighboring apartment complex (“Diamond District”). This meant moving 3 huge boxes, 3 suitcases, 2 duffel bags, 3 back-packs, and some more stuff. Mieke organized this, since I was at work – and I would have loved to see this! She had asked the previous day if the hotel could provide help, and of course “Okay, no problem” (we should have known better, by now). So when Mieke, after some waiting, went down to the reception to ask about where everybody was, one guy finally turned up at our rooms with some sort of trolley. He managed on his own (normally you have at least 20 people helping, but not today) to load the crazily heavy boxes on his trolley, and bring all the stuff down to the lobby eventually. And there it remained. Imagine all that junk in the lobby of the 5-star hotel, and then … nothing. So Mieke asked “So what now, I had asked that you guys could transport the stuff to the Diamond apartments?”. Lot of talking back and forth; there was no large enough car – well, there was nothing. Finally, one of the senior staff members picked up her own car, and all that mess was stuffed into it and brought to the Diamond in a few rounds. All the time Mieke was standing there as the Iron Lady giving orders, checking that nothing was taken or opened, and at the same time for sheer life hanging on the back-pack with all the really important papers like passports, money and stuff. Oh, and many of the workers were not particularly English majors, thus making the giving orders bit pretty funny (from the perspective of the husband drinking coffee while sitting on his lazy chair in the office with young ex-college kids standing around him to suck in his wisdom).

Finally, all stuff was dumped into the lobby of the Diamond – here the lobby was completely full. Luckily, there where a lot of Chiefs, but even more Indians, and all luggage was eventually taken to our apartment on the second floor. Mieke’s only flaw was that she got confused a bit about giving the right amount of tips, so there will be a lot of celebration in some homes for the weeks ahead (not my home, though). On the Diamond, even I can be short. It’s okay, old, dirty (Mieke’s view), and a pretty good place to leave as soon as possible (Mieke & Tim’s view – I don’t see the dirt so much, like it took me 6 months periods as a student to see enough dirt that it encouraged me to vacuum clean my dorm room again). In my view the apartment is fairly large, has a television in each room, and has two beds, so Tim doesn’t have to sleep between my wife and I. So I’m good.

Man, this is getting long; and all typing done with two fingers. It’s probably as painful for me typing as for all y’all reading. There are so many impressions here – important for us, and boring as heck for most of you – so it’s hard to call it quits, and I’ll ramble on some more. After 2.5 weeks, Tim’s school goes okay. Still chaotic (e.g., he got his laptop after over two weeks, and he hasn’t received most of his books yet). He gets along well with the other kids, so our concern that he as minority white-face and only red head would have trouble mixing has not come true. In actual fact, we think they sort of like him as some sort of specialty. I’m already thinking about how much dowry I want to get in a few years. Mieke has joined a Women’s Bible study and the Overseas Women Club. And she goes already shopping on her own (with Radju) to all sorts of funny places – she will make it here. She is becoming good friends with a number of other ladies, and I’m not afraid that Radju and she will come too close; their communication and fellowship seems to stop at a fairly shallow level. So I’m good again. A few days back, an Indian friend from Oman, Kavitha, called us, and it was a lot of fun hearing a familiar voice after a long time again. She invited us for her wedding in December (in Chennai, on the East Coast), so that will be our first Indian wedding and likely a lot of fun (provided the food is enough and good, but I bet it will be). Last weekend we visited friends of friends of ours from Houston. Notwithstanding that they were Americans, the visit was really great, and we hope to stay in regular contact, although we’ll live in different parts of the town. That’s part of the attractiveness of being an expat – you meet a lot of very interesting people from all over the world. Imagine, meeting mostly Dutch people all your life; we Dutch ourselves could only handle that with difficulty, but for humans that must be horrible.

Some more stories – what the heck; those who continue reading this far have nothing better to do, or have deep faith that somewhere, near the end, it may become readable (that’s a lost case, my friends). The Hydes had their roof repaired by at least two men. After a period of four hours one of them went up (the house is huge, so it takes some action to do this) to have a look at the progress. The workers were all fast asleep on the roof. Almost as funny as in a recent Shell conference where in the back of a meeting room a colleague also fell asleep and started snoring (no, not me). Gerda Epping had two guys working to clean the newly build house. She ended up cleaning herself, while the fearless warriors were watching TV in her own house. Again a Hyde’s story – their maid nicely ironed all laundry in order to put it nicely back into the cupboards. Funny thing was that it was dirty laundry (you can imagine the smell coming from under the ironer). They also had two cobras in their garden – these are kinda deadly. That’s the kind of neighborhood where you ask rowdy neighbor kids to come play in your garden.

When you ask experts about B’lore, they say all more or less the same: “the traffic is horrible, and the climate is fantastic”. Both are true. Now it’s rainy season here (Jul-Oct), and it rains only a few days a week, and mostly at night, so that’s not bad at all. The temperature now is great – somewhere in the mid-20s deg C (70s deg F). Humidity is low, so it feels just good. Summer is not too warm, and winter is not cold. Year round temperatures are roughly between 20-34 deg C. B’lore is at a height of 3000ft/1000m, and that helps.

Today, 29 Aug, it’s Tim’s 16th birthday. As a present, I did nice to the kid for a whole day. And he got a really nice mobile phone – without a SIM card yet, so it’s only nice to look at. Well, he got some other stuff as well that already does work (like a book). Another two years and he’ll leave us and go to college (or whatever). I’m already working on damage control with Mieke, with the main tactic that two years is still fairly far away, and that after that she can always join me on trips irrespective of school holidays. And Tim may even go to Honolulu Institute of Higher Learning – and that happens to be a place that we still want to visit. Also today we heard that the house seems to work out after all. Until all is signed, everything can still go wrong, but so far we’ll sleep happy and dream about cobras in our own garden, workers sleeping on our own roof or watching TV while we are cleaning.

If you made it reading all the way down, you’re either family, a real friend, or in desperate need of counseling. In any case, warm thanks! For the rest of you who started reading here again, you’ll never know what you’ve missed and how enriched your life could have been. But I sympathize with you. We hope to meet all y’all again, and to stay in contact! And whoever of you happens to be in or near B’lore, chances are that you are the category that can stay in our house, if you wish.

God bless,

Bastian, on behalf of the pretty members of our gang

Last remark: Since 4 days our Hotmail account has been closed for some obscure reason. We are trying to get it resolved, but in the mean time bmtblonk@hotmail.com doesn't work.