15
May

I don’t wanna

I  had this nagging little fear when we booked our trip home, a fear that it would disrupt the happy balance that we had finally achieved with the lils in India.  It took them a long time to settle in, much longer than I thought it would at the outset, so it took Willy and me a long time to settle in. Mostly, they were homesick and resistant to so much that was new to them.

This has changed in the last two months or so, and we both feel that they are really happy.  I no longer have Woo telling me, daily, that he wants to go home, nor do I have Goose declaring that she doesn’t like this or that, or pretty much everything new that we find in India. It’s been really nice.  Then we came home for a visit.

Things have been so simple for the lils here.  They’lI see their extended family and all of their friends.  There have been long visits and extended play dates, with more to come.  We are doing all of their favourite things, because it makes us all happy.  They just picked up where they left off.  They are content to play independently, given much more freedom, and they don’t fight.  Not with each other, and not with their friends.  We are four days into the visit and they are loving it.

They are loving it, until we talk about going back ‘home’ to India.  ”I don’t like India”, says Goose.  ”I’ll just stay here until you move back from India”, says Woo.  It’s tough to hear.  We know they are happy in India, but they are much happier here.    I worry that we reset, and start from scratch when we return, but we’re better equipped to work through it.

I hope I am wrong about this.  Today is dentist day.  Maybe that will convince them that India is not so bad after all?!

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14
May

Best in class

 

Allow me a moment to indulge in some shameless bragging about my lils.  Yes, I know that every parent knows that their child is the best and that is how it should be, but in this case, I have independent verification of the lils status. They are simply fabulous. 

When Willy first started talking about going to Las Vegas at the end of April, we both realized that it was really close to our trip to Canada.  So close that it would have meant he would have flown home to India and essentially  hopped back on a plane two days later to return to North America.  It would have been painful, and I could not ask him to try.  I told him to go to the conference in Vegas, then hang around, work where work wanted him, and meet us at home when we got there.  I told him this even though I knew it meant I would be home alone with the lils for two weeks, and that I would have to fly home alone with them when we returned to Canada.

As luck would have it, Goose came down with a cold the day that Willy left. This surprised me in no way, as the lils ALWAYS get sick when Willy goes away.  When Woo started sniffling two days later, I was somewhat relieved, thinking they were getting it over with long before our flights.  The sniffles persisted, and got slightly worse each day.  Then two nights before we were due to leave Woo casually mentioned that he could not hear. 

We headed off to the doctor, and were given Benadryl to help clear his congestion.  When he still could not hear the morning of our flight, we headed back to the doc and learned that he had an ear infection.  To this point I had been mildly worried about the almost thirty hour trip we were about to embark on, but this news ramped it up to plain scared.  Two sick lils, one with an ear infection?  I expected the worst. 

The opposite happened.  My best case scenario of having them maybe sleep on one of the flights, possibly fight just a little bit, and only have to repeat things two or three times completely underestimated how good they were.  They listened, they had fun, slept a lot, got along perfectly and were really quiet.  We had two minor meltdowns, one when Goose’s juice cup exploded all over her jammies and the other when Woo was being forced by the crowds down the ramp to customs in Ottawa.  

I was pretty convinced that they were great at this point, but was a little tickled by the number of people who came up to us following both flights and complimented the lils on how well behaved they were.  There was a steady stream of kudos coming from other passengers, and I got a wee bit prouder with each one!  While I don’t ever plan on making such a long trip with them solo, I’d gladly do it after this experience!!  

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9
May

Wordless Wednesday – excited and homeward bound

 

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4
May

It all comes down to the thugs

One of the things that we were frequently reminded of as we prepared for our move to Bangalore, was that the city is often referred to as the “high-tech” capital of India. With knowledge in hand, we figured that we would be able sign up for high speed internet pretty easily, but this did not prove to be the case.  There is one main provider that serves our community, and the top speed that they offer is 512kbps, which is v-e-r-y s-l-o-w, especially if you are trying to stream hockey games. We got hooked up, but started looking for other solutions.  We found that our villa was in range for a second provider, who offers 2mbps, at roughly four times the cost of the slow connection.  We asked to be hooked up, and three months later we were. It seemed lightning fast!

This spring brought the promise of a third provider, willing to come in to our community and offer fibre connections with speeds of up to 10mbps.  They needed a minimum number of sign-ups, and once the threshold was met, they gave us a tentative connection date of May. We were the third people to sign up, and very much looking forward to the start date.  As much as the connection we have is workable, we were actually still subscribing to both services.  We needed this, as both were frequently down, and if Willy needed to be on a skype call, I need to move to the slower connection to leave him enough bandwidth.

The last few weeks have really opened my eyes as to how business, on some level, is conducted in India.  It started with a posting on the internal message board:

“Community contact” wrote:

Dear Residents,
This is to inform you that Provider Three has pulled out from our community as of yesterday.

A couple of days ago their team was manhandled and threatened by some unknown persons near here while testing the cable. Yesterday our local cable T.V operator mystery fourth company (Manjunath & Jerry) met with me and informed me that – ONLY IF the residents of are willing to pay the rates (given in the attachment) to THEM will any other service provider be allowed to come into the community. The rates that they have offered are about 300% – 500% more than Provider Three’s rates.

… The truth of the matter is, the service offered by mystery fourth company is a monopoly, like the newspaper, the milk supply, etc and all these services are run by Manjunath who over charges us, huge rates on all services and is just not allowing any other service provider to come in………

This shocked both Willy and me.  We had read in the history of the message board about one provider sabotaging another to get a leg up, or blocking cables from being run, but the physical violence was unexpected. We didn’t know what to expect.

Members of the community were up in arms. There was talk of boycotts, of arranging meetings, of engaging law enforcement. One suggestion that did get some support was to have all of those who had signed up for the service pay a united visit to the “broadband monopoly”.  Further suggestions were that the owner of provider three should be informed, as he was “an old thug himself”, and would make “mincemeat of Manjunath and company” when he found out.  As I read this, I pictured the fights that used to occur in the village where my cottage is located. There were two large families that accounted for a large portion of the village’s 1000 residents.  When they disagreed (which happened pretty regularly, especially on a Saturday night after the bar closed), they would block the main street and fight it out with shovels, rocks, and sticks.

As it stands now, the community is trying to resolve this without resorting to violence, or encouraging violence by any party.  Members of the community have stated that they are watching, and have discussed the problem outside of the message group and have considered “a number of actions”. It’s definitely a sobering view of the growth of certain segments of the economy here. I’m a little afraid to see where this goes next. Until then, I hope that at least one of my connections stays up.

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1
May

Curiosity and that cat

If there is a phrase that I have said at least once a day, every day since we have been here, it is “Don’t drink the water”.  The tap water here is suspect at best, so we rely on a reverse osmosis purification system to ensure that there is safe water in the house.  It does a great job when the power fluctuations don’t kill this part or the other, but there is only one tap in the house, so you have to get your drinking water from the kitchen.  It’s been an adjustment from me, so I expect that it is for the lils too. We stay on top of it, and have been healthy and hydrated for the most part.

Over the last two weeks or so, I have noticed that Goose has been going out of her way to drink the water.  Well, any water that she shouldn’t be drinking, that is. She drinks in the pool when we are swimming; she sucks it from her facecloth as I wash her face; she drinks it in the tub when the lils are bathing; she even sucks it out of her hair when it is wet. She is well hydrated, and often has water or juice close by when she is drinking the wrong liquid. It’s beginning to drive me a little crazy.

Things came to a head on Saturday, when she was constantly trying to drink the pool water, despite my removing her from the pool as punishment on several occasions.  She continued that evening in the tub, until finally I gave her one final warning. When she drank again, I ended the tub fun and told her that she could not watch the drawing game, as has become our nightly ritual.  The tears, promises and begging were epic, but I stuck to my ground and she went to bed with cuddles and a story, but missed out on the fun.

As we were lying in bed, I once again explained to her that drinking the water could make her very sick, especially since she is a little girl.  I asked if she knew that it would give her an upset tummy, and what some of the consequences were. She said yes, so I asked why then.  “I wanted to see if it would happen” she answered. I am so glad that we have raised our little girl to be curious, but she needs to know that the cat that this curiosity might kill is me.

 

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16
April

When it comes to hockey, sleep is overrated

 

One of the hardest things for me personally, was giving up my Senators tickets for the year that we planned to live in India.  I LOVE hockey.  Always have, always will.  When Willy and I started dating, he barely had hockey on the radar, so I made him start watching with me. I wasn’t sure if I could be with someone who didn’t like hockey.  Happily, he took a shine to it, cheers for the same teams that I do and even started playing.  We have passed our love of hockey on to the lils, who are very happy to play hockey all day long if given the chance.  Though they get to play road hockey here every day, just yesterday they were talking about skating and playing hockey on ice next winter.  We all miss it.
There were two things that made me think that I could survive this drought. The first is that I made Willy PROMISE that I would be able to watch the games while we were here*.  Thankfully NHL’s Centre Ice package is now available in Asia, so this took a mere three months to set up. The lils and I have really loved having the hockey in the morning, when we can catch most of the third period. They actually get to see the conclusion of the games, and I start my day with hockey.  The second thing was that this was a rebuilding year for the Sens, so the hockey wasn’t going to be all that great…
Fast forward six months and Senators hockey is still going, when all but Woo (who predicted a Sens Stanley Cup in October) thought that we would be finished.  We’re pretty excited to still have hockey, and I have taken to getting up at 4:30AM to catch the start of the games.  Woo has been joining me for the third period, and we are loving it.  The problem with getting up at 4:30 to watch hockey games is that you are pretty tired most of the time between games.  My driver caught me in a particularly yawn-y moment and asked why I was so tired.  He knows all about our love of hockey, so I explained about it being the PLAYOFFS, and how this was my favourite part of the hockey season. He thought for a moment and asked “have you considered watching cricket?”
Cricket is something that I have wanted to learn about, but haven’t really gotten caught up in. I explained this to him, and he just smiled and said “well, it starts at 7:00… PM!”  I almost think he might be on to something. Almost.

 

*this was actually a deal breaker for me.  This and the no cockroaches rule – and we all know how that ended up – http://lilbunnyrabbitz.com/2012/03/26/my-defenses-are-down/

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12
April

Six months

Today marks the six month anniversary of our arrival as a family in India.  We are halfway through the year that we committed to, and a big part of me says I can’t believe that we have been here this long, and a much smaller part says that it can’t possibly have been just six months, it must have been so much longer! India, so far, has been a wonderful but chaotic experience, filled with many great experiences, learning many new things, meeting fabulous people and making truly great friends, but also a great deal of stress, many tears, and some pretty lonely times, especially for me.  That being said, I would not change a minute of it.  It has really been a great six months.

A little while after we arrived, a lady that Willy met told him that she would never recommend Bangalore as a first ex-pat posting, it’s too remote, too isolating, and too hard to settle in. He nodded and smiled and then relayed the comment to me later. I initially agreed, but then later came to realize that it’s not true in our case.  If we hadn’t come here first, we might never have come.  This might be our only posting abroad, and I would not have wanted to miss the last six months that we have enjoyed in India.

The people here are truly the nicest people that I have ever met.  We have learned so much about the mesh of cultures that make up this vast nation, yet we have only barely touched the surface.  We have travelled, together and apart, to places that most Indians never get to see, yet there are so many more places I want to get to.  The food here is enough of a draw, and I haven’t yet perfected the dishes that we knew we love, and have learned to love.  I have taken many photographs, yet I don’t feel that I have done the people and this beautiful country justice.

There are things that bother me about this city, life in India. The traffic, the pollution, the waste, the garbage everywhere, the poverty, and the fact that there seems to be little value placed on such a large segment of the population.   There are also annoyances that affect me personally, like the fact that is takes weeks to have a simple thing fixed, that nothing ever happens as it should, where it should or when it should, and little things that become symbolic and big, like the fact that I can’t get a bank account or credit card here.  We’ve tried several times, and failed at each turn, so we’ve given up.  It’s their loss really, given that I am the spender in the family.  I am also somewhat frustrated by what I have failed to accomplish in my time here.  I had big goals, and I have barely progressed on any of them.  This is partially a result of some of the struggles that we have had to face, but mostly because of the struggles that I have had with settling in.

I frequently get asked about what I miss the most from home.  For me, the answer is simple.  I miss the people that mean so much to us, our family and friends. We are very connected to them, yet we are almost as far away from home as we can get.  If there was just one thing that I could somehow bring with me, it would be them.  We have been so fortunate to have friends and family come to visit, and this has eased this ache quite a bit, but we now face six months with no planned visits, nothing concrete or booked. I know that is in all likelihood going to change, that we will have some visitors, but I can’t get my hopes up.  Sure, I also miss wine, cheese, Greek food, great breads and baked goods, stable electricity, clean water, diversity in climate and a few other things, but those I really can live without.

We are at a crossroads, and now is the time when we start to think seriously about what we do in October.  We can either ask to stay in Bangalore, or we can go home.  We’re both on the fence, but one of us is leaning towards Bangalore, and one is learning towards Ottawa.  I am feeling like home is where I want to go, and Willy can see us living here for a while longer.  We don’t have to make a decision today, but we really do have to make one soon.  Regardless of what that decision is, we have six more months to fill with learning and exploring.  We want to see more of Bangalore, more of India, and more of the south Pacific.  This is our focus for the next six months.

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11
April

Wordless wednesday – Every day

 

 

 

 

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19
March

The dew tree

We are quite happy that the lils have great imaginations.  They keep themselves entertained on long flights, long waits for toys to arrive from home, and many a long drive in and around Bangalore and beyond.  They also keep up entertained, which is an added bonus.

About a month after we moved here, I began to hear the lils talk about a number of new things, one of them being dew nuts.  I didn’t really ask, as I figured that they were either imaginary or a passing fad. They kept talking about them, and I got more curious, but they were never around when I asked.  Then one day Woo and Goose were making a concoction with odds and sods that they found in the park, and they called it “dew nut soup”.  I asked for some, mostly so I could see what it was.  They served my portion, and the main ingredient was this:
Dew nut

None of us knew where they came from, they were just lying on the ground.  They seemed to be pretty common, as they were in a few spots in the park, and near our house.

A few weeks ago I was admiring the beautiful flowering tree in our front yard:
Sunny day, bright flowers

Pretty purple flowers

When I looked passed the flowers and saw DEW NUTS!
Look past the flowers

Look past the flowers

Now we know where they come from, and the lils are excited to have a seemingly endless supply, to cook with, break apart and examine, and “feed” to the neighbourhood bugs and cats.  I still don’t know what they are called, but I am happy with my pretty tree and the joy it brings us all, for different reasons.

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15
March

Plan B

I am really lucky to have two great friends from home visiting this week and next.  We have been planning for their visit since about a week after Willy and I announced that we were moving to Bangalore, so this has been a LONG time coming.  I am really enjoying their company, and think they are coping pretty well with having to hang out with me!

The visit has forced me into the role of tour guide, which I am not entirely comfortable with.  Willy is an excellent tour guide.  He reads the blurbs, gets the audio guide, or has someone provide him with a guided tour, then REMEMBERS it all and passes it on to whomever he next shares the place with.  He also has an uncanny ability to know exactly where he is and how to get to where you want to be without needing maps, GPS`s, or quickly and quietly ascertaining which is his left or right hand*. Sadly, he has to work (hello, sugar daddy!) so I am that gal for this trip.

Thankfully, I had an ace up my sleeve for this trip, in that I have spent very little time exploring the city markets that are scattered about.  I was saving them for Tamara and Chris, as they too are photographers, and I knew they would be happy to walk around and shoot with me.  About four weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to take them to Russell Market, one of the oldest markets in Bangalore.  One week after that, a large fire broke out overnight and caused significant damage to the building.

I was sad to learn of that, but put the thought out of my mind until yesterday, when we were planning our week.  They were keen to market, so I asked around and was told that the market was expected to re-open this morning!  We though it was perfect timing and set off.  When we arrived, I was clear that the market was indeed operational, but few stalls were open, and about three quarters of the stalls were under repair.  I know I felt let down and could tell that Tamara and Chris were hoping for a little bit more.

Thinking, I stepped to the side and whipped out my phone to determine that one of the other major markets (K.R. Market) was reasonably close.  We headed to the car and verified that Subbu knew exactly where we wanted to go.  Upon arrival it was clear that we were not to be disappointed. The sights, the smells, the bustle and the sounds all amounted to a bit of sensory overload and a photographer’s paradise.  We happily watched and shot away the next hour or so.  Thank goodness I had been there before and was able to use it as a back-up plan!

KR Market
*yes, I am THAT directionally challenged. 

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