A Rough Night for Some Guy

So, I went out a little before 8am this morning for my weekly trip to the grocery store.  I got down the steps and found this guy passed out in the vestibule between our apartment building's two doors.

I opened the inner door and called out, "hey, hey man!" and "can I get past you?" and stuff, but he didn't stir, not a twitch.  I managed to hop down and around his outstretched leg and out to the sidewalk.  The vestibule reeked of stale cigarette smoke.

While getting around him I saw clutched in one hand was a glass pipe with scorch marks at one end, probably a crack pipe (or some other kind of drug, I'm not expert).

When I got back fifteen minutes later he was sitting up.  I asked if I could slip past him and into the inner door and he shifted a bit to give me some more space.   He said a few things, but his voice was rough and raw and slurred, so I wasn't able to figure it out.

I sent a message to our building superintendent, including the above photo and his reply was "Omg".

A couple of hours later I had to make another trip out, and I got down the steps to find him propping himself up.  

Again on my way out I asked if I could get by him, and he didn't respond in any way I could detect, no movement, no words, nothing.  I managed to get by him and go out to take care of my errands.

On returning another neighbor was just exiting the building to take his dog for a walk.  We discussed the passed out guy, and the neighbor snapped a photo from the outside and sent it to the superintendent, then left to walk his dog around the neighborhood.

I got upstairs and thought maybe if the guy is dehydrated some water might help him feel better and get a move on.  Maybe he'd just had a rough night of overindulging and wasn't able to get home.  So I filled up a large metal mug with fresh, cool water from the tap (my wife and I only drink tap water, we don't keep bottled water around).  

When I got downstairs with the cup of water the guy appeared to have a hand inside his shorts and was moving it about, masturbating...

As soon as I opened the door he stopped.  I offered him the cup of water and he didn't react, didn't turn, didn't say anything, didn't move, nothing, like he was as passed out as he'd been earlier.

I made the offer about a dozen times, "hey, man, I brought you some water," and "I have a cup of water if you'd like," and so forth.  I tapped the cup against the tile walls a few times to see if I could make some noise to wake up, but no luck.

Going back inside, and being sure to close the inner door, I saw his hand get back to work inside his shorts, doing what he'd been doing before.  That just pissed me off, he wasn't passed out, he was ignoring me and I was trying to do the decent thing by offering him some water.

Fuck 'im...

I went back upstairs and dumped the water down the sink and messaged the building superintendent again.  Then got back to what I was doing on the computer...

The Old Man in the Garage

A poor, old man sleeping in the car port under our kitchen.

About a year before I left India to return to the U.S. some creepy old guy started living in our building's garage.  I didn't know much about him, but Leena said she thought he was a servant of one of our neighbors, although he never seemed to do any work, just sit or lay in bed, half dressed, and stare at us when we came and went in our car.

This week, while visiting Leena here, he actually waved and smiled at me as we were getting into the car, the first time he's acknowledged my presence.  So I commented about him to Leena and she said that over the last year, while I've been in the U.S. she's talked to him a little, and related some of his story to me.

He's an old, uneducated man.  He worked almost his whole adult life at low paying, menial jobs, but spent almost every rupee he ever earned to send his sons to school and college so they'd get educated and live better lives than him.

Only now that they're grown up, better educated and far wealthier than he ever was, they don't want anything to do with him because they think he's too far "beneath" them, and don't want to be associated with an uneducated laborer.  They don't want their acquaintances to know where they came from.

So, now he's too poor to have his own home.  Somehow he knows our neighbor who was kind enough to let him live in his parking spot under our building (and that's directly under Leena's and my kitchen).  He works as a night watchman at a bank ATM somewhere nearby.

In her conversations with him she's found out his favorite food is fish, so when she has some extra, or left over fish dishes she shares them with him.

Sounds like he's a nice enough guy, but life has dealt him a less than ideal hand...

Another view of our garage, with the old man at the back...

The End is Nigh!

Whew, finally...  I think I have just one more load of moving and I'm done.

I picked what was probably the most disorganized and inefficient way of moving from one apartment to another.  I schlepped a backpack and a tote bag of stuff on the subway, over and over and over...  A few times I left the tote bag and carried a box or a suitcase, when those had to be moved, but otherwise, nearly everything came in those two bags...

I knew at the start that I wasn't going to be organized enough to actually pack and have everything ready to be moved in one shot, or even a couple, despite a friend offering to drive down to New York City and help me (it wouldn't be fair to her to drive down and me not have anything ready...)

So, when I got the keys to the new apartment I started with what items I would need to spend a first night in the new apartment.  The next day I prioritized based on what I would need to spend a first work night in the apartment and get to work in the morning.  Then I had a surprise and had to change some priorities because the new apartment had no hot water at the time...

All subsequent weekends this month I've simply taken the subway back and forth between the two apartments.  Carrying the empty backpack and tote bag one way, full the other...  Fortunately both apartments are pretty close to stations on the R line.

The hardest part of each trip is getting out with full bags at the 9th Street station in Park Slope.  I have to walk up the stairs, then it's uphill for an avenue block, when I'm already winded...

Today I hired some movers to help with the furniture, the dining table, four chairs and bookcase, which were too much for me to haul on my own.  I suppose I could've taken the chairs and bookcase, one-by-one on the subway, but I decided not to.


Late in the morning I looked up movers on Craigslist to see what options there were.  I found one that had a reputable looking website where they also listed prices, so I called them.  It was $75 an hour for two guys with a van, which seemed reasonable.  That was the cheapest option listed that included transportation, others involved labor but no transportation, which was exactly the problem I have doing it myself...

I called them and the guy said to email him all the details and he'd call me back.  So, I did that, emailed the two addresses, the quantity of stuff to be moved, and that I'd like to get a ride with the movers.  A few minutes later he called and said they'd be there at the old apartment at 2:30pm and I confirmed the price with him.

Then I headed to the old apartment.  There's not so much left to pack at this point, but still garbage to throw out.  I didn't realize how many plastic bags I've accumulated in just six months.  Lots and lots!  I brought a pocket knife with me so I could cut the tape on various shipping boxes that were lying around so I could flatten those out.

I also left my Visa card and most of my cash in the new apartment, since I expected to get a ride with some strangers and didn't want to risk them stealing too much if it turned out to be a scam to get me alone and rob me.  Craigslist has a bad reputation for crooks using it to set up meetings with people who'll have cash, though I think that applies more to people offering stuff for sale for nontrivial amounts to get prospective buyers to meet them, carrying cash (e.g. I could use it to advertise a $1,000 computer and expect a prospective buyer to meet me somewhere with $1,000 cash, so I could then beat them up and steal the money) than it applies to services (one recommendation I read is if you want to buy something via Craigslist, arrange to meet the seller at a police station, if they're legitimate they won't have a problem with that...)

Around 2:10pm they called and said they'd be there at 2:30pm.  I continued doing my stuff and around 2:30pm I was taking a load of trash out when I saw a black, windowless van pull up and stop in front of the apartment.  A couple of minutes later they called and I asked if that was them in the black van and they confirmed, then one of them got out and introduced himself as Danny, and said the other was Tyrone.

Tyrone stayed with the van while I went up with Danny and we moved the chairs and bookcase down to the van.  Then I stayed with the van while they went up and got the table, the largest, heaviest item.

Once loaded in the van Danny sat in the back on the floor while Tyrone got in the driver's seat and I sat in the passenger seat.  Tyrone set the GPS thing to give directions, which gave weird ones that would work, but involved quite a few extra turns, so he just followed mine.

In front of the new apartment I put down the door stops so we could load all the stuff into the lobby, then Tyrone stayed with the van while me and Danny got things in the elevator and up into my apartment.  I didn't really want just the two of them in my apartment without me, so that's why I did half the work...

Once finished I paid Tyrone $75 since it took almost an hour from when they arrived till we finished.

I made another trip down to the old apartment and filled the bags, then realized, that there's not two bags worth of stuff left!  Whoo hooo!

But I'll use both, anyway, I think I'll haul the robot down tomorrow and let it run wild a bit.  It should like the wide open, empty apartment.


So, after I do the last load, I'll write a letter to my former landlords, stick the keys in an envelope and slip it under their door.

AND THE SUBSEQUENT WEEKENDS ARE MINE AGAIN!

Crazy Taxi Ride

Sunday night I flew back from Ft. Lauderdale to JFK here in New York City and had a bit of an adventure getting from the airport to my apartment...

I found the taxi stand outside the terminal, and the dispatcher gave me an official receipt with the driver's medallion number and I got in.  The driver was a sardar and I had a little trouble understanding exactly what he was asking me, directions to the address I gave him, I think, but he kept abbreviating highways I didn't know...

Then we pulled away from there and got into the road system of the gigantic airport and he suddenly slowed and pulled into the left lane, yelling "fuck, man!" and said he forgot something back at the taxi stand, but I couldn't tell if he said what...  He jumped out of the cab, turning it off, with the meter running and I yelled 'arrey, meter!" so he came back in and stopped it, leaving me sitting there...

After a few minutes I started thinking I'd just get out and go back to the stand myself and get another taxi, since this one wasn't actually taking me anywhere...  Then a tow truck pulled alongside and the driver indicated I should roll down the window.  I did and he asked "where's the driver?" and I said, "I think he said he forgot something back there," and the tow truck driver asked if the car itself was okay and I said "I guess so," and he drove off...

Then another taxi pulled up alongside and my driver got out of the passenger seat and ran around to his door of the cab and got in.  He had a cell phone in his hand that he didn't have exposed earlier, so maybe that's what he forgot, and he fiddled around to plug it into something...

He muttered, "shit, shit, shit..." and then raced away from there at high speed through all the roads in the airport, not slowing to a more normal speed until we were outside the airport.

Then I guess he got on the phone because between periods of silence he was mostly speaking Hindi, or maybe Punjabi (it didn't sound exactly like Hindi) and once in a while I'd hear another voice, probably from a headset in his left ear.

Once we got close to my neighborhood he again asked me something about BQE, which by then I'd figured out was the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, to which I replied in Hindi that I didn't know anything about it.  From there the conversation was simple enough that I answered him in Hindi.  He didn't mention anything about it, but did start calling me "boss".

Oh well, I guess the chaotic part was more amusing than troublesome, and since I had the official receipt from the dispatcher with the driver's medallion number, if anything turned bad I had enough information to report him.

And as one of my relatives commented about it, "only in New York..."

Incredibly Stupid - Very Lucky

Ok, so I did something very stupid today, and I got lucky.

Getting out of Customs Hall at the JFK airport terminal, I exited into the main waiting area where there were lots of people waiting to pick up passengers.  I obviously looked a bit confused, staring up at the overhead signs looking for taxis.

First one guy asked me if I needed a taxi and I said "yes" and he asked where I was going, but when I said Brooklyn he said he was going to Connecticut and they're not the same place.

Then after set my things down and put my passport into my handy-dandy document case in my backpack another guy asked "do you need a taxi?"  I said I did, to Brooklyn and he said "this way."

He led me to another guy, said something about Brooklyn to him, and the second guy said to come with him.  I followed and asked him "how much?" and he said $45, which okay, in the range of what I expected after checking online and finding there's no fixed formula and the taxis only have a fixed rate between the airports and Manhattan, not any other part of New York City.

He wasn't wearing a uniform or anything, and I didn't really think to ask for ID.  Once we got to his minivan he tossed my suitcases in the back, and said to go ahead and get in the front seat (not gruff, friendly, but it's hard to portray that in this...).  His car wasn't marked as a taxi in any obvious way.

I did, but there wasn't any obvious sign that it was a taxi, no radio, no meter, no stickers or anything...

I started to worry a little, but as he'd asked for the map Leena had me print out from Bing, I had it out and was keeping a careful eye on the roads we were taking and always he went in the expected direction.  And it was reassuring that he did not ask me to reimburse him $3 for the JFK parking lot.

We chit chatted a bit.  He seemed pretty friendly.  Part way through the drive we were talking about job security, after I mentioned that I didn't choose the job with the highest offer and joked "being competent and underpaid is the perfect job security".  He said he knew what I meant, he'd lost his previous job driving a company truck when they kept the lower paid drivers on, and he had no job now, except doing the unofficial taxi driving for a friend, but with that he never knew if he'd earn $2,000 a week, or as little as $100, and if anything happened to his car it was out of his pocket.

In the end, everything worked out, but if it hadn't, I would've only been able to blame myself for not thinking, not paying attention and not acting smart.

Travel

I carry a journal with me whenever I travel and write things down...  Here's what I have for the flight...

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Well, here I am at the airport in Mumbai waiting for my 12:45am nonstop flight to New York City.  At times I can't actually believe I'm doing this, it seems too unreal.  But I'm so happy to be heading back to the United States again.

We had lunch with Leena's family, said the good byes and then finished my packing back at our flat, while I gave her some last minute computer instructions.

Kalesh and the driver came about 4pm, loaded the suitcases and I was off on my way.  Traffic in Mumbai was heavy, but we planned for that, and no problems until we got to the road leading up to the airport.  My itinerary from the travel agent said Air India was in Terminal 2, but after some construction, there were signs for gates A, B, C & D, rather than 1 & 2, but it was marked clear enough that Air India was in A (although once inside I had to walk from A past the B entrance to get to Air India's check-in counters, so 2 or B would've been more accurate...)

I got to the airport too early and couldn't check in right away, so I had to stand around for about an hour with my bags.  Once I did check in there was no problem with my overweight bags, about 50.1 kg, over the maximum of two bags of not more than 23 kg each.  The agent at the counter didn't mention it, and neither did I (though I saw the readout on their scale).

The Immigration desk was another story...

The agent noticed that I'd been in India a while, that my last entry was stamped from February 2009 (my last business trip to the U.K. to learn about the BPM).  He asked me to confirm that I was traveling on the 10 year business visa in my passport, which I did, and again, when the last date I entered India was, and how long I was there, which was about a year and a half.  He asked what I was doing in India that long and I told him I was working for a software company, and he asked what company, so I told him it was Tieto, but that I'd quit the job last week and was going back to the U.S.

He asked for my FRRO registration form, but I told him I didn't have that.  He then reconfirmed all the previous details, and I confirmed them, and that I didn't have an FRRO registration because my visa is stamped with a funny stamp:

With that stamp, the FRRO refused to register me when I tried.  Everything online says that with a Business or Tourist visa valid for more than 6 months, then any foreigner has to register at the FRRO within 14 days of arrival, unless the visa is for "long term" when registration is not required if the visit is less than 180 days.  But the FRRO simply said that whatever is on the visa overrides what's on the website, and the stamp simply says that registration is not required, without conditions.

So, the agent grabbed all my papers and said "follow me."  I've had other agents in the past question this also, and make phone calls, but this is the first time one led me away from the main area and into the duty officer's cabin with the huge window where the thousands of people in the room could see me being led away...

The instant the duty officer looked at it he told the agent that it was perfectly legitimate and there was no problem.  They had further discussion in Hindi that I couldn't quite follow, and told me to sit down on the couch in the office.  The duty officer sent the agent to xerox all my papers while I waited there.  In the meantime another agent brought some other chap in with visa problems and I heard the duty officer grill him pretty bad (in that case it sounded like the guy stayed in India longer than his visa was valid and had no good explanation) before letting him go.

After the agent returned with copies of my papers they talked more, then both of them left for a few more minutes, with my papers, before returning and the agent said "follow me" and took me back to his counter, where he stamped my passport with the exit and reminded me that my visa expires in a few months, so if I return next year I need a new one.

Once he let me go, there was the main security check to get into the terminal.  Nothing unusual there, just the normal chaos, confusion and inefficiency.  I put my laptop and sweatshirt in a tray, and then several other people's trays got between that one and my backpack while I waited in line for the metal detector and the hand scan...  I think this was the first time I've ever been felt up to that degree by security...  And I have no idea why the hand scanner was beeping heavily near my left pants pocket, it was my right one that had a key and a ring, the left one was empty!

I tried to get a quick pizza at Pizza Hut in there departure terminal, but everyone else kept cutting in front of me in line, so I gave up and got a chocolate chip cookie instead from another restaurant.

I was on the phone with Leena when I noticed some activity going on at Gate 3, where I knew my flight was being handled.  It seemed early, but when I looked the signs all pointed to my flight, AI 141...  So I said good bye and dashed off...

It was yet another slow, inefficient security check, this one with us removing our shoes, getting our bags x-rayed again, and yet another hand pat down.  The family with children before me added to the chaos as they tried to hand the sleeping baby back and forth, and their trays with shoes and bags and jackets got all scattered amongst the trays from the rest of us.

Then one more security check, comparing our faces to our passports and another quick pat down and we were onto the plane.  And another family with children had things all confused, with one parent standing there, while security told the other to go back out to the terminal and get whatever they were missing and "leave the trolly here...".

On the plane I quickly found my seat, 18A, with two people already in the aisle and middle seat.  Both of them had to get up so I could squeeze my way in, next to the window (I always ask for window seats so I can look out).

After a while the fellow next to me asked me about my visit to India.  Turns out he's a software developer also, working from Connecticut, but was in India just for the long weekend for his brother's engagement in Punjab...

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Getting everyone on board and everyone's luggage stowed was a long process for the flight attendants.  And then getting everybody to sit down was harder.  Once the plane left the gate the flight attendants started the safety demo, but one elderly woman wouldn't sit down, so after finishing it in both English and Hindi they started all over again after a more senior flight attendant got the woman to sit down.

And then the plane started picking up speed, and then a senior flight attendant ran full speed up the aisle, and then we stopped.

The captain came on the intercom and apologized for the delay, but there was a technical problem with the airplane.  After some more waiting he brought the plane back to the gate where we started.

2am - Aw fuck!  We're still on the ground and they've just announced meal service.  That means there's no chance of leaving before that's all finished.

4am - We've just moved to another plane at the next gate.  Lots of police security to watch us walk through the terminal and keep everyone else out of our line.  Maybe this one will fly.

4:45am - The captain came on the intercom and said another twenty minutes or more, due to paperwork involved in changing planes and refiling everything with customs.

5:35am - We're finally about to leave.  Not bad for a 12:45am flight...

This plane isn't as comfortable as the previous one, the seat has a nasty, metal lump in it and the padding is worn out.  The entertainment console controller is all beat up and the arm of the chair that holds it is smashed, the vents near the floor look like they've been crushed and there's more stains all over.

I keep half expecting the captain to come on the intercom and say "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts," but hopefully not "I've made a lot of special modifications myself..."

2:20am New York Time (moved watch back 9.5 hours) - Oiy vey...  Not been a great flight so far.  Although the sun rose shortly after we took off, they structured the flight as "night" with the lights off and window shades closed.  Most slept, but kids screamed and yelled all "night."  Now it's "day" in the plane, and day outside.

And we ain't even halfway there!  Actually, we're in the neighborhood where most Tieto travelers are "almost there."

7:15am New York Time - Now we're at the point where we would have landed if everything had gone smoothly and we didn't have the five hour delay in Mumbai.

Some of the kids are sleeping, but at least one is in a super cranky mood.  Probably bored out of her skull, since we've been sitting in this plane (flying, or on the ground) for about 16 hours.  Can't they just give her a drink so she passes out and sleeps?

I've slept off and on for much of the flight.  But been woken up by screeching children.  Ashish Gupta, next to me, has slept a lot better than me, pulled the blanket over his head and seemed relatively oblivious.  I can't stay comfortable for more than a little while when I am awake, the seat's just miserable.

Apartment Building Monthly Dues

Our apartment building here has monthly maintenance fees that everyone pays into every month to handle the common, shared expenses.  The standard formula is one based on the size of the apartment, which at first glance might sound fair.  But it's not...

The architecture of the building is that the largest apartments are lower down and they taper to smaller sizes as the building gets higher, this way everyone gets an uncovered balcony.  That means, of course, those of us lower in the building have the highest monthly payments.

However, thinking about it differently, I can see one alternative formula that would most likely be more fair, basing the monthly payment on the floor of the apartment, the higher up you go, the more expensive.

Two of the major expenses are the elevator and pumping water.

Those of us lower down in the building, especially the family on the ground floor, benefit less from the elevator than those higher up.  Similarly, it costs more to pump the water higher up, so again, the distance the water has to go is based on giving water to the higher up apartments and doesn't do much for those of us lower in the building.  If the building was lower we wouldn't need to pump the water so high.

So, those higher up in the building get more benefits for less money, get better views, more quiet as they're farther away from the parking, and to top it all off (pun intended) they get to throw their trash down on our balconies.

Seen more of the world...

She's seen much more of the world than we have.

That's what my mother-in-law said about Mausi (which means "auntie"), the maid who cleans the common areas of our apartment building and Leena hires to clean our living room and balcony a few times a week.

We were complaining to Leena's mother about what a horrible, stupid, bitter old woman the maid is. How she never remembers simple things, like Leena's told her a million times by now not to knock on the door before 11am.

Mausi is basically stupid and incompetent and lies all the time. She's unreliable and incapable of doing the same job day-in, day-out without assistance. She gets confused about what bucket to use if they're stacked in a different order in the bathroom. And she can't open the sliding glass doors on her own, or even move the chairs away from the dining table and put them back in a neat order.

She used to work a 7 hour day at the apartment building and kept asking for a raise. But back then she was doing a bad job cleaning from about 9am to noon, then having lunch with other maids from nearby, then sleeping in our garage till 4pm and going home, and she skips many days because she's not well or relatives are sick or dying (I'd be more sympathetic, but honestly, I think she's lying more than her relatives are dying).

And no one ever stepped out of their apartments into the common areas and thought "wow, this place really shines."

There's some dirt spots that have been there for a long time, and I'm sure all they take is a bit of scrubbing, that she's not putting in. Not to mention when she's done cleaning for the day, she throws her own garbage all over the place.

I really don't think Mausi has seen more of the world than me, Leena or Leena's Mummy... We've all traveled, seen other parts of India, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and so forth.

What Mausi has seen more of, though, is a lot more of one itty-bitty, tiny, almost insignificant corner of the world.

Just the Fax

As part of the job hunt I recently had to print, sign and scan a document to either fax or email back to the potential employer. The woman who owns Pica Type, a computer dealer we're friendly with said "no problem" that she would be happy to do it for me.

But she also gave Leena a brochure of HP printers and scanners and things with a recommendation that if we want one, a low-end Deskjet with printing, scanning, faxing and copying would suit our home needs. It probably will, although we'd have to jump through some nasty hoops to get ISD in order to send faxes out-of-station...

But it got me remembering my first job at Maynard Rigby and Associates, back in 1992-1993. As the junior member, I was given responsibility for all the faxing the company did. The boss, to save money, didn't buy a fax machine. It was a spare computer with a scanner, modem and fax software. And a pain in the arse...

In order to send a fax I had to:

1. Print the document the sender gave me.
2. Scan each page, one-by-one, plus a handwritten cover sheet.
3. Convert each page, one-by-one from the scan software's format to the fax software's format using some utility that only did one document at a time.
4. Rename each page's file to the fax software's naming convention.
5. Create a fax job in the fax program, specifying the base filename of the set of image files.
6. Get everyone to not use that phone line.
7. Hit a "fax" button in the fax software.
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 until the blasted thing was successful.

Very inefficient. Then again, as the most junior, cheapest and most technically skilled person in the office, it was less inefficient for me to do it than anyone else.

At my second job we had a real fax machine, the first one I ever used and what a complete luxury that was!

Does Security Trump Safety?

Does security trump safety? We had the fire drill a few weeks ago in the offices in Pune and after taking 8 minutes to exit were berated by whoever organized it that if it was a real fire and we weren't out in 2 minutes we'd all be dead.

In the evenings I always walk down the stairs from the 8th floor instead of the elevator (I take the elevator so rarely that I feel dizzy when it's descending), and this evening on my way out was no different. Except I got to the door to the stairwell, one of the few emergency exits, and it was padlocked shut!

I pointed it out to the watchman and he dug around in the drawer behind the desk and took about two minutes to find the key and get the door open for me.

What if there'd been a real fire? And there'd been 100-200 people panicking, packing the lobby tight and trying to get through there and it took two minutes to find the key? Or would we simply rely on the standard, poor quality construction in India for the crowd to easily smash the door?

How to Talk to Girls

One thing I've noticed lately, especially on Facebook, where it's mostly in English, is young Indian men don't seem to know how to talk to young women...

I see women, like my coworkers, posting photos of themselves, and young men posting comments like:

• o so big
• u way a tun
• so ugly

One young lady posted a photo of her birthday cake with the candles 2 & 3 on it, with a guy commented "Btw, its "28" na???". And another posted a picture of two not-at-all fat or unattractive women on a sculpture of a turtle with a young man posting the comment "Poor tortoise!!!!".

A few years ago when a small group of us traveled on business and a young, single man shared an apartment with the lone woman in the group, telling her throughout the trip that she was getting fatter and fatter and he knew she needed to keep clothes shopping for bigger sizes (which by the way, was not true at all...).

So, what's the deal?

Are arranged marriages here in India so common because young men simply can't talk to young women and need their parents to get them through "the dating game" that they'd fail if it was up to them?

Or are they so rude and insulting because they know their parents are going to arrange their marriage anyway so it doesn't matter?

A Boring Day in 2005

The summer when I was 12 my parents told me that since they bought me a lot of toys and took me on a long vacation to visit friends and family across the country, that there was no reason I should ever be bored.  To make sure of that, they forbade me to be bored, and said if I ever uttered "I'm bored" again they'd teach me what boredom really is, locking me in my room 24 hours a day for the rest of the summer, except for bathroom breaks.

I've only uttered the phrase "I'm bored" once since then, one day late in August, 2005, shortly after returning to India from a trip abroad.

And, I sure had a boring day when I missed work that day.  Things went fine in the morning, till just after noon.

Leena left for the day to go run errands and visit her father in the hospital (heart troubles, he had a bypass surgery the next week (his second one)).  I finished my lunch and decided to take a quick shower before the van came to pick me up.

So far, so good...

Until I toweled off and turned the handle on the bathroom door and it didn't open.  I cursed and tried again and the door still wouldn't open.

I inspected the crack between the door and the doorjamb and it looked like the latch was moving all the way and not blocking anything, but the metal around there was slightly bent, though that didn't seem to be the issue.

Eventually I decided it was a screw sticking up from the metal plate attached to the doorjamb.  I tried converting some of the few things in the bathroom, the narrow end of a toothpaste tube, the heater elements of my steam inhaler, and a toothbrush into some sorts of tools to try and press it back into the doorjamb, but nothing worked, nothing was both thin enough and strong enough to do anything.  Similarly I tried to get the pins out of the hinges, but without anything strong enough to use as a hammer,  to pound from below, and nothing string enough to try and pry them out from above, that wasn't successful, either.

I yanked on the door in different directions hoping to pull it just enough somewhere to get around the screw, but no luck.  Most of those just ended up with me hurting my hand, the cheap, sharp metal of the door handle digging into the skin of my fingers.  I gave up with that since it seemed more likely I'd hurt myself instead of the door opening.

At various times I kept getting the brilliant idea of try and squeeze through the window and climb down the pipes, then remembering there's bars on the window for security.  And in any case, without any clothes or keys, that wouldn't be a much better situation to be in...

Around 1:30pm I heard the doorbell ringing and my cell phone ringing and figured it was the driver.  But the bathroom I was trapped in was so far from the front door they couldn't hear me.  Then when the ringing stopped I hoped I could yell out the window to get the watchman to bring the driver over to ask him to call Leena on his cell phone (I figured I could at least get the number across...).  But they couldn't hear me (the bathroom is on the side of the apartment away from where the driver parks to wait for me).  Once they were gone I felt lonely, not knowing when the next opportunity would come.

So, I spent the next eight hours in there all by myself.  I usually dress and undress in the bedroom outside the bathroom, so I was in there without any clothes, just a wet towel I'd used and two tiny, dry washcloths...  I spread the towel out to lay on it and keep me at least a little insulated from the cold tiles and used the washcloths as a pillow.  Other times I sat up, hung the towel from the rack to lean against it.  On the whole, it was pretty boring without much to do but periodically check the lengths of the shadows outside to see how far the sun had moved.

When the shadows were getting long both my cell phone and the apartment phone started ringing away.  Some I could tell were Leena, some weren't.  Lots of SMS's coming in, too, but what could I do?

Finally about 8pm Leena got home in a total panicked state, fearing the worst.  I heard her park and unlock the door so I yelled for her and she rushed to the bathroom door, asking "are you okay?" to which I answered, "I'm bored".  She tried to open the door from the outside but couldn't, it simply wouldn't budge.  She had a screwdriver but that didn't help, so she called Kalesh, the guy who does the building maintenance at her brother's shop and told him to come over, "abhi, jaldi an emergency…"  ("now, fast")

When Kalesh got there it took him nearly an hour with a hammer and chisel to break part of the door to get around that screw sticking up and get me out...  I wrapped myself in the towel first, though.  He had to smash up part of the door and it completely ripped apart the mechanical stuff for the handles, but no big deal, it got me out.

Leena was still shaken up and told me how her day went.  She said by 6:30pm she was worrying a little that she hadn't heard from me and I hadn't replied to her messages, but thought there was a chance I was in a long, long meeting or something.  By then, too, at work my close friends and colleagues Anuj, Renu and Cyndi were getting worried that I didn't show up, didn't answer the door when the driver rang the bell,  and didn't call or message to let anyone know I would be out of the office, which is very unlike me.  Anuj, though knew the situation with Leena's father and was reluctant to call in case I was just at the hospital with Leena's family or something and didn't want to be disturbed...

Eventually Cyndi talked him into calling Leena and when neither of them knew where I was and I wasn't where either of them thought then they started to panic, but unfortunately Anuj was at the office without his car and couldn't dash out to find me.  That's when Leena tried to rush home but got stuck in traffic, and what was usually a fifteen minute drive from her family's house took her two hours, of mostly waiting without any cars moving.

And all the while I was just bored laying on the bathroom floor.  I never panicked, figuring eventually she'd come home...  No worries...  Just boredom and daydreams...

Now I know my lesson, always bring a good book into the bathroom...  On the other hand, it could've been worse, I could've been stuck in a room unable to relieve myself without making a major mess...

Since then we've had several other bathroom door mechanisms break on us, twice while people were inside and unable to get out, but both of those times someone else was in the apartment to open the doors without difficulty.

Coincidence?

Last night, after I went to bed I was woken up around 11:30pm by Leena yelling...  I opened my eyes and saw she had the front door open and was yelling out into the stairwell at someone.  After she closed the door I groaned "HUH?" and she told me Mrs. R's servants were out there drilling and hammering something, so she yelled at them to not make noise like that so late at night when people are trying to sleep.

Then this morning when she went to go out running errands, one of her car tyres was completely flat.  One that was completely full yesterday evening when she and the watchman cleaned the car, after which the car didn't move an inch.

She got the car to her family's house, after lots and lots of people stopped her on the road to tell her not to drive it that way, and had one of her family's servants take the tyre to be repaired.  He came back with it fixed and a broken key that had been stuck into the tyre to its full length!

And this isn't the first such coincidence.  Most of the times if Leena asks any of the neighors' servants and workers to make less noise, at hours reasonable enough to ask them to make less noise, usually late at night or very early in the mornings, then there's usually new scratches on the car.

It's just one more reason I want to get away from here, someplace where this sort of thing doesn't happen, where neighbors, even if they don't like each other, at least have a bit more respect for one another.  And there aren't a bunch of uncouth assholes who take petty revenge against reasonable requests.

Walking to the A.T.M.

I did my usual trip to the ATM this morning. I've never liked standing in line at those machines and in the U.S. did my banking in the wee hours of the morning whenever I could (real convenient back when I walked past them on my way to to work at 3am).

Nowadays, it depends on how soon Leena needs the cash. If she needs it right away we'll go after work some evening, or on the way home from Saturday lunch at her parents.

If I have my way, I stay up all night on a Saturday and walk down there between 5am and 7am on Sunday morning. That way there's less traffic to scare me, a bit less heat and usually no line at the ATMs.

The worst aspect is the stench. From about the exit of my apartment building all the way to the ICICI branch in Kalyani Nagar, the whole place stinks of sewage. About the only part that doesn't is where there's so much rotting garbage that it overpowers the sewage smell. There isn't even a dumpster there anymore, it's been gone for a few weeks, but people still throw their trash there anyway.

And the sidewalks are always covered in dog crap everywhere, and frequently a lot of what looks and smells (even from a bit of a distance) like vomit. I have walk around it all, which often means stepping out into traffic on the street, since I don't want to track any back in my apartment. Ick.

One thing that makes me uncomfortable about walking to the ATM is the number of watchmen who watch me walk past their posts at each building, and probably guess that on my return I'll have a pocket full of cash. They don't make me feel particularly safe.

Sometimes, if I remember to carry small change, I'll get a nice, fresh nariyal pani from the seller if he's set up at the entrance to Joggers' Park.

A Small Building in Kalyani Nagar

Maybe part of why I'm having such a bad experience living in Kalyani Nagar is because of which part of it we live in... I don't live in one of those fancy, new complexes, like Fortaleza or Marigold (although before moving here, we booked a flat there, but then I started getting nervous about the idea of borrowing money from a bank and spending my future paycheques, paying interest and all that (but now that I've worked on mortgage software for a few years I do understand it a little better)).

Instead we live in a big flat in a relatively small building near the top of a sloped, dead-end side lane, one parallel to East Street that connects Nagar Road to the bridge to Koregoan Park.

Our building, Keshava Chotani Mansion, has just eight flats, owned by seven families (the one who owns two also owns a third in the next building). About half the people who own flats here didn't buy them here, they bought ones in a fancier building the builder was making a decade or so ago, but he ran out of money to finish that and gave them these flats as a "take this or lose all your investment" sort of deal. One flat was given to the plumber in exchange for him finishing up the plumbing in the building.

Unfortunately, the builder didn't have enough to finish all the legal paperwork for the place, so there are no completion certificates, no legal society, none of the usual stuff.

None of us flat owners can agree on how much to pay a month for maintenance (hardly any of us even speak to each other). Some want it to be a flat fee for everyone, others want it to be based on square footage, and everyone thinks a different amount either way is reasonable. The few times we do come to an agreement, though, half the flat-owners simply don't pay it at all, one says he'll only pay it if we agree to repaint the building (but he won't agree on an amount high enough to afford that!). Consequently, our building is crumbling, our water pump breaks frequently because we get the cheapest repair, the elevator can't be maintained, the building is filthy, we're in arrears with the electric company, and we can't afford an even borderline competent watchman.

On either side of us are two slightly bigger buildings, Madhusudan A and B, built around the same time by the same builder, with the same architectural style. Both are set back from the street a little further than ours, with a wider parking area at the front, so our bedrooms line up with the parking lots and balconies of of the first floor flats in those buildings.

Madhusudan A is slightly farther from us, so there's space in the middle for the driveway leading to Peacock Palace, behind us. And Peacock Palace about the size of all three of these first ones. It's much newer and blocks the view from the back apartments in our building of the famous Aga Khan Palace.

Across the street at the end of the lane is Siddharth Enclave, a big, blocky building in some sort of vague, fake neo-Roman architecture style. I think it's ugly and doesn't fit the area, and looks even worse after they knocked off the triangular bits at the top to make flat terraces, which fit the area but not the rest of the style of the building itself.

Maybe things would be better in one of the big societies. But since we own this outright, with no mortgage or anything, moving out isn't a trivial thing. And given how homesick I am at this point, that wouldn't really make me happy, just a little less unhappy...

Here's the front of Keshava Chotani Mansion, with Madhusudan A in the background. That's our flat on the first floor with the wide balcony. The nose of our former car is just barely visible near the right inside our parking spot.

And here's Peacock Palace behind and Madhusudan B to the left of us, and our watchman on the ladder cleaning the debris dropped on our air conditioner from renovation by our upstairs neighbors... Leena supervising and the stupid maid probably just doing anything to avoid her own work. The gulmohar tree is one of many planted up and down the street by my mother-in-law years ago, when she first bought this flat for an investment.

And here's Siddharth Enclave from our driveway... The metal wall is visible from East Street when the gates of the construction next to Bishop's School are open (usually for people to dump garbage in the open pit some construction crew dug for a foundation of a building that's not being built).

Mrs. R strikes again... Noise, noise, noise...

Ug. I'm on the verge of collapsing today, migraine and a loss of sleep... I can't even see the computer screen clearly, it's wavering in front of my face.

Unfortunately, it was our neighbor, the horrible, wicked, nasty, bitter Mrs. R. again...

The 12 days of mourning rites are still going on in her apartment for her recently deceased husband. Last night was some big event and in the afternoon the caterers came in one of the loudest Tempos I've ever heard. I tried to scream over its noise, but couldn't hear myself.

They made noise cooking till pretty late, or at least, later than I stayed up. I slept in the bedroom on the other side of the apartment, and closed all the windows so it wasn't too bad. The Tempo never came back again in the night, otherwise I don't doubt I would've woken up.

But then at 4am in the morning they started making noise in the stairwell, bringing the gas cylinder down to the elevator, banging it on every step outside our door (our elevator only goes to every other floor, since the front and back floors are staggered).

Then under our master bedroom the caterers and the guests' drivers started hollering, ordering, banging, clanging, scraping, pounding, grinding and almost any other cooking sound imaginable. A deafening racket with no escape on either side of the building.

A couple of times when they were yelling to each other I opened the window to "sssshhhh" them (which was a sign I was really pissed off, I'm normally too shy for that sort of thing) but either they never heard me or the one time one looked up, shook his fist at me and yelled a nasty vulgarity (one that one of my friends taught me before my first trip to India, which others said I'd better not use unless I was armed to defend myself...)

When I left for work and opened the bedroom door, Leena was wide awake and looked awful, not having had a wink of sleep for hours, due to all the noise, and not having gone to bed as early as I did...

Many other neighbors (or at least the ones we're on speaking terms with...) have complained to Leena about Mrs. R. and her guests taking over the building. People come out of their flats to find drivers and servants sleeping by their doors, in the lobby, in the parking area, on the roof, all over the place. The ones living below Mrs. R. mentioned that all night Mrs. R. and her guests, other family, probably, talk and shout and fight late into the night over Mr. R.'s will, everyone believing they're entitled to more and everyone else entitled to less...

Back when Mrs. R. ran the building society she called the police if other people's guests parked inside the premises and she hated anyone else's people making noise. Now that she doesn't, it's her staff that are some of the most obnoxious around. We sent her a note a couple of years ago politely asking her to ask her staff not to drink, smoke, play cards and talk loudly late into the night in her garage, which is right under our master bedroom. She didn't reply directly to us, we got a letter from her lawyer telling us if we persisted in false accusations she would sue us in court.

I'm tempted to ask her, if I see her, "who died and made you queen?". It's easy to riff on death-oriented jokes when you've been betrayed, offended and insulted by the widow, for whom you've lost all respect...

The week from hell in Kalyani Nagar (Nov 23-29...)

I had a crazy week. There are crazy ones, and then there are ones like this one, when it's all so clear, my neighborhood is simply an overflow center from the nearby mental hospital.

I guess things started getting bad around Tuesday night... Leena picked me up from work Tuesday and told me about a goat in our building that Mr. C. got as an Eid al-Adha sacrifice (he's a Muslim, despite having a very non-Muslim last name) and how the watchman was appointed goatherd for the week to deal with it.

Tuesday night around 3am or so some of the feral dogs on the street (yes, in Indian cities there's packs of feral dogs all over, probably thriving because it's tropical, no cold winter to kill them off, and Indians in general litter like crazy so there's plenty of food there for the dogs, and plenty of rats as well) attacked it, wherever it was nearby. Dogs barking and growling, a goat bleating and screaming, and eventually joined by men yelling while they tried to break the dogs away...

If only that was the worst, it wouldn't have been such a rotten week...

Tuesday there was a big, huge, pink festival sort of tent in the next building's parking lot, a sure sign of noise to come. The buildings are very close, so that's like right underneath our window. Tuesday night there was lots of banging and clanging as caterers were setting up folding chairs and dropping trays of silverware and all that kind of thing. (And I must be turning into one hell of a curmudgeon to be upset by happy events, like weddings...)

Wednesday night we heard crying pretty nonstop from Mrs. R.'s apartment, and lots of people coming and going with the door wide open. It was sad sort of crying, which is unusual since about the only time we hear her is when she's screaming in anger at servants, laborers, neighbors and police officers... We guessed, and later confirmed that Mr. R. died.

Thursday morning was by far the worst... My morning nap was interrupted early by Mrs. R.'s guests' drivers outside yelling and washing cars and making a lot of noise.

And then a little before dawn Mr. C. drunkenly roaring at the watchman to get his goat back here immediately. So, the goat came back, and I don't know if it was pain, cold, hunger, boredom or just wanted attention but it was screaming and bleating almost nonstop. Probably not hunger because it would stop occasionally to eat some leaves around, then scream some more, and probably not cold because it's not that cold for a furry animal. At one point even Leena woke up yelling "if that fucking thing doesn't shut up I'm gonna to kill it myself."

Oh, but even that got drowned out eventually, a little before 8am... That's when the band for the wedding under the pink tent started warming up. Like most bands in India that play at weddings and festivals, they have no skill, they're probably doing it because their father did it, and his father did it... It was just the trumpet players and the drummers getting warmed up, and none of them playing the same song at the same time or the same speed so it was just cacophonic noise, and deafeningly loud, echoing off all the buildings with not a quiet spot in the apart.

One Thanksgiving that I was thankful to go to work!

Even now Mrs. R.'s guests' drivers are still making noise all around the place, with nothing to do but talk, and for laborers, talk is never done in a quiet, conversational tone of voice, always yelled across the yard. At least as the weekend wore on it seemed to be wealthier and wealthier visitors, as Mercedes Benz cars don't make as much noise as Marutis...

The goat was screaming until Saturday afternoon, when after a few really, really painful ones it was quiet. Shortly after that I saw some guys loading what appeared to be wet butcher blocks onto their motorcycles and ride off, so I assume that was finished. The gossip amongst the servants is that Mr. C. did it far back in his yard, right under Mrs. R.'s apartment and called her name for her attention before slaughtering the goat, just to offend her, since by religious she's a strict vegetarian who doesn't kill things, and a freshly grieving widow...

While hardly anyone gets along in this building, the two of them have the most raging, long running feud going on that's left each of them slightly bloodied over the years from physically fighting. It's their feud that brings the police here more than any other.

I've been so stressed out this week that I've broken down and hit the chemicals... Potato chips, mainly. I was doing good for a few weeks at not eating any and getting slightly less chubby, but when it gets stressful resistance is just so much harder... I come home from work and just stuff my mouth with that junk and it's like an instant touch of relief with the crunch and the salt. But even a few days of that and I feel fatter and have more trouble breathing and pimples...

On the more ironic front, last week I began to read Hamlet for the first time. On Wednesday I read the scene in which Claudius tells Hamlet:

'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature Hamlet,

to give these mourning duties to your father:

But you must know, your father lost a father,

That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation, for some term

To do obsequious sorrow.

...

An understanding simple, and unschool'd:

For, what we know must be, and is as common

As any the most vulgar thing to sense...

And then a few hours later, the commonness showed, and a neighbor died.

Update on the Filthy Yard Across the Street

A couple of weeks ago I walked out and found that the yard has been cleaned up a bit. The rubble and the shrubs have all been removed and the area now looks flat. There's a gate in front with some watchmen there all the time.

And a sign at the entrance that says Dana Builders.

Builders... Uh oh... That means new construction, doesn't it? Leena's father, who keeps up with these things around town, says there's going to be a high rise apartment building going in there...

I wrote a haiku about it:

East, a new building

The end of the morning sun

No more rising moon

Made for India?

One of the problems we have over and over is with a couple of CD players manufactured by big, reputable companies and sold here in India. Clearly they intended them for India since they came directly from the manufacturers, sealed in the boxes with Indian power cords.

But what we've found is that simply having an Indian power cord does not make the component actually made for India.

The first one we got was a Sony 3 disc CD changer system. Which is okay, but the big problem is that if the power ever goes out while it's in the process of switching discs then it jams and has to be taken to the repair shop to get unjammed. While this sort of thing might be fine in another country where the power goes out once or twice a year, usually in the middle of the night when it's less likely to be used, here in India where the power goes out multiple times a day, this is clearly not made for India.

The other one is a Bose tabletop CD player. Again, we bought it from the Bose dealer in Mumbai. It's big problem is that the slot loader jams with almost every Indian manufactured CD we put in it. Whether it jams when try to put it in, taking a little extra force, or we have to use a knife to try and pry them out when we're done, almost every CD manufactured in India gives us problems (of course, the general quality of goods manufactured in India is a topic for another rant). Sure, the problem is that the Indian CDs themselves feel slightly lighter, or often slightly off-center and often have somewhat ragged edges, but if a CD player can't handle them, it is clearly not made for India.

But if a product is made for India, it should be designed with these sorts of factors in mind. The manufacturers should test with Indian conditions and Indian products.

The Maharashtra State Electric Board Sucks

That's another thing that's been increasingly frustrating, all the power failures here. The first year or so I thought it was kind of neat, a reminder I was living somewhere exotic and tropical, but over the last few years it's just gotten annoying. Maybe that's because the adventure has worn off, and maybe because I have Leena's frustration added to mine with it. It's worse for her because she really likes to watch TV and mostly likes food heated in the microwave.

And side effects of all the power failures fall on her... The MSEB is simply bloody incompetent. Last year was really bad, with the power out for seven scheduled hours a day for a good bit of the year, and this year was okay till a couple of months ago when the summer just wore on and on, when it's gotten unreliable with a lot of random outages.

I got upset when I found out that a portion of the power bill is fixed, so they continue to charge us that even when they don't provide service.

And we have other problems, unrelated to the power failures they rarely ever deliver a bill to us, the courier usually returns them because they can't find our address. Leena goes to the MSEB office almost monthly to get them to print a bill, but when the power's out they can't use their own branch office computers to look up our bill or print one.

But don't worry, their system that calculates late fees and interest has full UPS or generator backup!

Even if we get a bill one way or another, it's usually wrong. It turns out that if the power is out when the meter reader comes by to read the meter, then they give us an estimated bill, because they supplied us with a new, modern, fancy LCD digital meter, that doesn't display anything when the power's out...

And frequently the bill is wrong because somehow we keep shifting between residential and commercial status, which costs a lot more and a few times a year Leena has to make a few trips to their office (even more if the power's out) in order to get them to rectify that and recalculate it at residential rates.

Two years ago we got a gigantic bill, way out of proportion for the power we were using, like 30 times the normal bill. When Leena went to their office to inquire about it they said it was all late fees and interest because we hadn't been paying the full bills every month for several years, which of course surprised us mightily as we always paid the amount they billed us... With several trips there and hours and hours waiting, they figured out that the problem wasn't that we paid less than the bill, but that they were billing us less than they should've, but at least one computer was keeping track of the full amount the whole time. At first they told us we'd just have to pay it because we were late but Leena managed to fight it out with the managers and supervisors and point out that it was their fault we didn't get correct bills, we paid the amount they charged us in good faith.

And this is the power company supplying power to a major high-tech city in India?

And I come from a place where electricity has been more reliable than this for, oh, not long, maybe just a century. I miss the reliability, and the assumption that a bill is probably right, instead of probably wrong.

A lot the people at work have loud phone calls and then miss days or half days for similar work, with the MSEB, BSNL or their banks, all of which give them incorrect bills or statements, almost always to the institution's advantage. I guess part of what I'm tired of is that here in India, problems and failures like that are the norm, rather than the exception. And I miss a life where most things go smooth with only the occasional screw-up, and bills are probably right, instead of probably wrong.