The India Chronicles (Day 94)

Another week has gone by. I guess time flies when...there.....really isn't much going on other than work........

At least now we're in vacation planning mode!! We've pretty much decided on the venue and activity. Scuba Diving on the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns, Australia. Yup! Gonna learn to scuba dive, get my Open Water and Advanced Diving certificates and see what happens. The trick now is finding out how to get there. Expedia.com says it doesn't know how to get me to Cairns. Ditto for Travelocity. The Australian agent said to fly into Brisbane or Sydney and she could handle the connections if necessary, so I load up Cochin to Brisbane. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Ok then...Sydney! Cochin to Bangalore to Singapore to Sydney. Ok - why can't they get me that last leg from Sydney to Cairns??? I guess 4 flights one way is more than they can handle.

The learn to dive is about $500 USD and involves the classes, the gear and then 4 days / 3 nights on a dive boat trolling over the reef and all meals while on the boat. Airfare!!??? Something like $1800 USD just to Sydney and back. Ouch!

And in case you didn't know, I have decided Australia is on another planet. That place isn't convenient to get to from ANYWHERE! The itinerary to Sydney involves 3 planes and involved 22 hours of travel time!!!! Holy crap! For that reason I am going for the 6 day dive adventure.

Should I fail the dive medical I can at least snorkel and play golf and drink beer.

Tentatively scheduled for the 20th through the 28th of August. We'll keep ya posted.

So I was educated about, heck, I don't even remember how this one started....

Anyway, Hindu tradition allows, heck it expects, the eldest son to marry their Mothers, Oldest Brother's Daughter. I guess the Southern US isn't the only place that has heard of "kissing cousins". They tell me that this is not as common now, but who knows? The rational is to jeep the family wealth within the family. But this seems to put the wealth into the mother's family, but what do I know, I am just an ignorant American!

But wait! There's more!

In the Indian state of Tamil (the state where Chennai is), it is still common for a derivative of this practice to occur, but this takes it to a whole new level of, um, well, you figure this out.

The eldest son is supposed to marry, ya ready for this??? his sister's daughter.

And no, I am not making this up and I wasn't drinking when I was told this (and I am not drinking now).

Keeping it in the family, I guess! Supposedly that only works when there is a LARGE age difference between the sister and the brother, but something just ain't makin' sense!

So that's a taste of Hinduism. And you people say I'm not multi-cultural, shame on you!

Friday and Saturday were the two big stages of the Tour de France. The days when either Armstrong would stomp all over everyone again, or the days we'd learn his reign may be over. Well, I couldn't watch it because I had no cable anymore. Plain static. Dead air. Nothing.

So we're investigating - Saturday they say they're sending someone out, the never do. Then they tell me that I haven't paid my bill. I asked "how am I supposed to pay a bill I have never received?". Seriously - if I haven't seen the bill then my Company MUST be paying it, right?

Wrong. You see? They don't send out bills. Seems they don't believe in them. To much work you see. To which I say "what kinda frickin' business are they running??" Subscription based services are great. Guaranteed (less the provision of deadbeats) cash every month! You don't get this cash though unless you demand it from the subscribers. Like they're just gonna fork over money to you out of charity. I seem to owe 600 Rupees for 4 months service. That's about $13 USD. For 4 months. Cable has commercials so cable can be cheap for the masses. You get what you pay for, I guess....

So to pay my bill I told them to send me a bill and I will pay them. I was told I pay them then they give me receipt OR I could pay the housing people here and they would get the receipt for me. Yeah right. I gave Manu the Rs600 and he'll pay the cable people tomorrow.

I still haven't seen my Phone Bill yet. They called me about 2 weeks ago and told me there was a Rs700 error on my bill, in my favor, that was fixed, but not on my latest statement. I thanked them. I still haven't seen THAT bill; I haven't seen ANY bill. That one scares me a bit. International phone calls and all my Internet.....cha-CHING for Reliance Mobile, I guess.

FCI got the doctor bill for the general physician I went to see about my eye. Rs575 or so was sent to FCI. The accountant guy asked if I wanted to pay or if they should pay. I said "what do you think?" His response "I think it's best if we pay like the normal medical reimbursements we do". Um..ok. If you change your mind, get me a receipt so I can get reimbursed my $12 or so from me FSA.

Still haven't seen the bill from the eye doctor. Speaking of which I go back tomorrow. Still bandaging the eye every night, and it hasn't hurt since the incident 4 weeks ago, but it is still a little blurry. The best way to describe it is at night, with my glasses, while looking at a street light I see silly shaped diffraction rings. If you had a telescope that would make sense to you . The light is the center and there are alternating light and dark rings around it. I've seen them before but they usually would go away after a day. Well these started out with me seeing only the bottom half of the pattern and now I can see the whole thing, so things MUST be improving, right??

Today starts this strange Malayalam month. I can't pronounce it, so don't even ask me to spell it. Actually it started on the 16th. It's like, the month from Hell (according to the Hindus). Supposedly everyone gets sick, has bad luck, bad karma, bad mojo, etc. So they started offering this pasty, beany substance at afternoon tea (instead of tea!) which is made of medicinal herbs, spices, etc. If you're sick, it is supposed to make you well. If you're well it's supposed to protect and rejuvenate you. It looked like something that was in a pastry-tart thing I tried a few weeks back. That thing tasted like slightly minted refried beens. Needless to say I didn't try it. All I wanted was my tea.....

Anyway so during this month, like, nothing happens. No weddings, no changing jobs, no major purchases, nothing. The new guy started on the 12th. If only I had known maybe the start date could have been delayed......nah, just wishful thinking.

Hopefully things will pick up for him in the coming weeks.

Continuing with the new things theme, Friday I was asked by the Finance guy for, you guessed it! The 2005 budget! Now I thoroughly understand why the budgets are all screwed up; they wait for the last minute (he needed it on Monday) and you just make a lot of assumptions. I told him I was going to be putting in for a budget of $2.8 Billion USD. If you know finance guys, you can imagine the look as his jaw hit the floor!!!! Ahhhh, one of my finer moments. This seems silly until you realize I processed a forecast from one of our groups forecasting one item to generate $272 MILLION in sales in April 2005. I'm rich!

Oh yeah - my dog. Seems I hadn't properly settled up with the Indian government on that one (even though I got him at the end of April). You got the basic rundown in the last update.

Anyway the Penalties and Fines were due to my not having the proper paperwork and documentation in order to import Riley into India. So they hit me for Rs3,000 in fines. The final Rs2,000 was "an expense incurred during the normal course of the business of clearing freight and dealing with Customs". Subsequent follow-ups with the Indians around me confirm that bribery is perfectly acceptable....for politicians only. All other it is frowned up, but it is still prevalent.

I asked Manu about Baby's house. It part of a small row of, um, shacks (some better than others) on the road behind their High Court. I asked him if they own their home, rent it or what. Seems it's neither. They are living on land owned by the Corporation of Cochin. I think that means the city owns it. Technically they are not supposed to be there at all, but that never stopped anyone before and the government, right now, has other things to worry about.

So they have TV (and CABLE!), although I am not sure if the cable is paid for. I did ask if those houses have running water because I see in the morning and evening people filling up HUGE water jugs at a water spout on the side of the road. Some people do, some people don't. I then asked about electricity. Some have it, some don't. The people that have it probably ran the line themselves from the main transformer.

TALK ABOUT FRICKIN' CRAZY!! One wrong step, you're dead and a couple f city blocks go dark!

Anyway, should the government decide they need that land, they will kick them off. Most likely they will give them someplace else to locate on and pay them for their troubles; even though they have no right to the property. That assumes that the people don't fight it in court, in which case it could be tied up for a decade or more.

Which gets me to something else strange. Say I hire you and let you live on a piece of my land (I'm a nice guy and you're working my crops). After several years we have a falling out or I retire / whatever and we sever ties. I tell you to get off my property. You say no! And you will win in court! Why? Because "you've grown accustomed to that piece of property" This seems to happen only in cases over 12 months (some long term property law), which is why almost all leases here are for 11 months. And even if the person refuses to pay the rent, if the agreement had been in place for longer than 12 months, then it would take YEARS to evict them.

Remind me not to go into the property management business here!!

Wow this update was long!

So that's that. We have now officially completed 3 months in India. 10 more to go. I am now almost halfway to my sister's wedding (96 days and counting). If she thought I was "silly" at my friend's wedding in Rochester in 1999, she's got another thing coming!!!! ;-)

Maybe....

Scott