Completed second year of R2I ...

Here we go - completed second year of R2I and onto 3rd year !!!! :-)

Big thanks to all the readers - this blog has crossed the 20K page visits mark and very happy to see that this has been useful to many people. Hope this continues. Please drop a comment if you want to hear about something specific on R2I in the blog...

I had reflected about R2I experience after the first year, here:
http://r2idiaries.blogspot.in/2012/06/reflecting-year-of-r2i.html

Not surprisingly, nothing much had changed - good things have remained and have improved. Kids know lot more about family, have gotten used to much more Indian food and have started eating stomach full in ceremonies like Weddings etc. They had a blast during the 2 months of summer vacation - visiting places, playing with cousins etc.

Bad and ugly things have remained the same - roads continue to be bad, there is much more uncontrolled construction, thanks to rain gods - it has been raining good. Otherwise, water situation would have been terrible. Unfortunately, these things change over time and are under government control. Only major change I have seen is the Outer Ring Road, which now flys all the way to Hebbal, without much obstruction of service roads. However, whenever we get on the road, it feels like we are driving on the war zone - random traffic, pot holes etc never stop!

Bangalore is the best city to live in India - really???

For those of who haven't seen this article, this was a result of the recent survey 'Quality of Living Survey - Worldwide Rankings, 2011' done by the global HR (human resources) consultancy major Mercer.

Read the article here:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-11-29/bangalore/30453876_1_global-list-living-survey-cities

I can say only this - there might be some truth to this (when compared to other Indian cities) in-terms of climate, high-tech job opportunities, highly educated, mild tempered people etc but infrastructure-wise, Bangalore would loose all of the points. Roads are getting worse day by day with no fixes in sight, no footpaths, uncontrolled housing development etc. If you take all of those into account, Bangalore wouldn't fare much. Also, the 'quality' part can be really debatable - if you haven't seen cities outside of India, may be you can call this some quality but for most of us who have seen what quality is, this is a far cry!!!

Also, if Bangalore is called the 'best place to live', imagine the plight of other cities :-(

In summary ...

To summarize the overall feeling and the million rupees question (yes, it is now in rupees, not in $$ anymore) - would you consider going back to US' - the answer is a definite NO! We would simply loose too much by going back. However, agree that it is too early to say. It has been just 4 months and everything looks new as of now - the family reach, food, weather etc etc and may not feel that good after few years. However, the sentiment about things like family reach etc has remained the same - it is simply too 'far' being in US to have a close attachment with the family. We can already see that we can get involved with several things like family health issues, kids education and lot of other things on a day-to-day basis, which was not possible being there.


So, as of now, all eforts are towards settling down here, with housing being a major long term consideration. There is no simple answer for this one - the places close to work are quite expensive, eventhough affordable, doesn't seem to justify the price. Places relatively far are bit cheaper but school commute, water etc become a concern. Hope time will resolve these things...


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How the concerns got addressed: Internet ...

Getting internet was pretty easy - we went with airtel since got good feedbacks about consistent bandwidth and reliability. Got in-touch with the local number for airtel and they were able to enable the connection in 2-3 days. A person had to arrive to home to enable the wiring and provide the DSL modem (which they sell these days instead of renting). He showed bandwidth of 2MBPs for download but I doubt that is consistent. However, so far the speed has been reliable and pretty usable. All that was needed was address proof, which was the rental agreement.
           
Cost: Rs. 999 for 10GB of download/month. So far, even after working from home for few days, haven't seen the full capacity being used. But, have to say, kids haven't gotten into game sites consistently! School work keeps them busy during week days and week-ends are pretty much gone with family visits. I am sure they can eat a lot of bandwidth given a chance.


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How the concerns got addressed: Car ...

Fortunately, options are many here and also the suggestions you get are many as well - biggest challenge for a NRI is deciding between an Automatic versus manual. Two wheeler is out of the question, don't even think about riding a bike to work - it could save you some time and Rs, Rs but within the span of 3 months, I have seen at least 3 cases of bikes falling down, bike rider getting bruised etc. Given the amount of dust, smoke and car population (which has increased many folds, especially in routes heading to tech parks), it is not worth the savings.
           
Factors favoring an Automatic:
- It is a quick transition from US to here, at least as far as the car goes. The automatic ones are much smaller here and after few months, the cars like civic, corolla look quite big on Indian roads! These cars looked so much smaller on US roads but it is so surprising to see them looking so much bigger here, when they are put in a large pool of smaller cars.
- If you plan to drive in a short time, automatic is a good choice since you don't have multiple things to deal with - learning the stick shift, dealing with crazy, random traffic, people running across the road in unexpected places etc.
- I would say quality and finish of cars available are very much comparable to US and all of the basic things are available. I was surprised to see one of my friend's got a multi-feature car deck fitted to the car - which had navigation, rear camera, stereo with video display etc. A/C is very common these days and helps avoid good amount of pollution exposure.
- Drive fatigue: This was a surprising factor - people driving a manual are experiencing leg pain and hand pain, due to constant use of hands to change gears and the use of clutch. With the constant stop & go traffic, it is not surprising to hear that.
           
Factors favoring a manual:
- Mileage: Automatic can give anywhere from 9-15 kms/liter where as manual can consistently give above 15kms in the city. With the petrol prices at Rs. 75/liter, this can make a significant difference in petrol bills.
- Most of the cars are manual here. So, why not get used to driving one? If you have a need to use one of your friend's car, the skill of driving manual car can come in handy. If you don't get a manual, the chances are that you will not start to learn driving one.
- Some people said driving a manual has the advantage of better power when it comes to overtaking or pulling ahead in signal but I haven't seen that to be a real advantage. With so much of traffic, there is only so much space for you to pull ahead of everybody else. When it comes to driving over highways, these days things have improved and vehicles do move much faster on the highways.
           
This was the speal given by the car salesman when we bought our car, I think which made sense - if you are driving long distances often, buy an manual since the fuel cost can be a significant difference. If you are using the car for shorter office commute, buy an auto since the distance is not very large and the convenience can easily beat the cost difference.
           
Eventually, we ended up buying an automatic, Hyundai i10, which is a favorite NRIs car here in Bangalore. It has been working very well so far - gives a mileage of 10+kms average and is pretty smooth. Feel I can drive this baby in few days since it is easy to handle. 

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How the concerns got addressed: House maid ...

This was needs a bit of trial and error approach, I would say. 

We thought this could be a bigger issue but has been going ok so far - again, getting into an apartment setup helped here as well. You have access to larger pool of these folks and they are looking for work all the time. Dropped a work with security and maintenance and they were able to send across few who work in other units. (later on, came to know from current maid that security collects Rs. 200 for such referral - talk about the 'system' here!!)

What we found works best was - getting them in the evening so that you are not waiting on them to finish and get to work. Needless to say, you can't expect them to be that punctual and also asking for day offs here and there. With weekends getting busy visiting relatives, friends and family, they do end up getting good amount of day offs anyway.

Other thing that is helpful is - registering with the apartmentadda.com - a site that is commonly used by most of the apartments here in Bangalore. The building secretary has to approve the registration and you get all of the postings from within the community, which includes 'cook available/looking', 'driver available/looking' type of postings.

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How the concerns got addressed: Water supply ...

Already covered in the previous entry about drinking water. All of the apartments have borewells and there is 24 hour water supply for other purpose. 

Water heating is thru' in-house water heaters(also called geysers here), which I wouldn't say are very efficient. But, given that weather itself is warmer in India, there isn't a lot of need of very hot water, including for baths. Fortunately, with the apartment we took, water supply was from within the complex and there was no tanker water being supplied. I have heard that many of the apartments in ITPL, whitefield area get tanker water, whose source is unknown and that makes you bit uncomfortable.

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How the concerns got addressed - Gas connection...

This one became easier than we thought - the apartment had built-in gas supply. Yes, apartments in India do have pre-wired gas connection - this is not from the gas companies but apartments have a 'Gas Bank' where a row of larger cylinders are kept and gas is piped to each unit with individual gas meters.

Not very common in all apartments but this one ended up having, which was a big convenience. Without a ration card, PAN card or electricity bill, it would have been harder to get a gas cylinder and private supply costs double. With the supply at the apartment, all we needed to do was - get a gas stove and hook it up. So far, cost seems to be minimal - we paid Rs 350 or so for a supply of 3 months.

But, eventually there is no escaping from applying for a tank and dealing with all of the headaches that come along with that! 

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Day after arriving ...

Took it easy the next day. Kids met their cousins and were glad to play with each other. Opened the suitcases and re-arranged things so that what we need was easily accessible.
       
Also, called the agent to apply for PAN card. Wifey had already applied when she was here few months back and card was ready. It was a simple procedure to apply for the card. Internet was pretty much disconnected. So, there was no diversion to look at e-mails.

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Day before the move ...

This was a 'fun' day ! If we didn't have one of our close friends working with us on that day, we wouldn't have gotten a minute of sleep. Fortunately, they agreed to come and work with us for clean-up, which was great help. There was so many items that they could take away and we didn't feel like throwing. There were last minute furniture to get dumped (we should have dumped this at least a week ago but didn't happen as I mentioned in the earlier entry).
       
The challenge after that was to pack as much as possible - we had done our home work before - did a mock run of fitting the bedsheets, sleeping bags etc in the suite cases and see how much can fit. However, only when you get the last day, you really know how much stuff is left out and you have to decide to keep versus dump based on the suite case weight. Needless to say, that takes a few tries before you get an ideal filled suite case! We ended dumping lots of food items like Jams, pickle bottles etc but not a big deal.

By 1am, we called it a day and went to bed. Since the flight out was at 1pm, we had a bit of time in the morning as well to pack up and throw the 'last minute' items like left over milk, bread etc.

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