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The day has arrived: the apartment is finally mine! Well, sort of….

Today the lease starts. I still need mattresses & utilities before I can move in, but I’m getting there. Oh and there were few things that the landlord didn’t quite finish that he still has to do. But I am going to take a moment just to appreciate getting this far today.

Here are a few photos of inside including the living room, a guest room (these are the balcony rooms) and the den.

I can’t believe I’ve been blogging this long and not shared some holy cow photos.

These cows found a quiet, shady spot away from most of the traffic; I spotted them on a side street C took to avoid a traffic jam:

Yeah! Thanks British Airways.

I visited the nursery here at the Lalbagh Gardens — and some others nearby — to get of sense of what plants are available to put on my balconies. I mean, this IS the Garden City after all!

I stopped short of purchasing today, because I want to measure the balconies first. I know I could easily go overboard with all these tropical plants!
But there are some plumeria and camellias for which I’ll be coming back….

I only WISH I were wired on that lovely South Indian Filter Coffee.  No, this is about international banking — which sounds so much more James Bond than my reality.  I had to wire funds from my US bank to my landlord’s Indian bank for my apartment deposit and 1st month rent. Doesn’t that sound easy?

I went to my US bank branch before I left.  I resigned myself to using my current bank (fees stink everywhere, unless you’re crazy rich, in which case all banks will waive fees — so through-the-looking-glass!).  Anyhow, I went into my bank in person to let them know I was moving, that I’d be banking on-line from India and that I’d be sending international wires.  I wanted to ensure things would go smoothly and I wouldn’t have any surprises.  I thought I was asking all the right questions and doing all the right things. But you never know what you don’t know. (Apparently, my branch doesn’t know either…)

Firstly, at every step of the on-line way, the bank kept requiring me to enter a super secret code that they could only text to my US cell. (Hello international text fees… cha-ching!)  I realize it’s for my own safety, but what an expensive and tedious step.  And since I TOLD them I was going to be doing all this, do they really need all that security?  Secondly, to my surprise, my wire kept getting rejected for “exceeding limits” — although no one at my branch mentioned anything about limits and I couldn’t find ANYTHING on the bank’s website about what the magical limits were.

Luckily, I spend most of my jet-lag-up-too-late  last night setting up Skype stuff, including a feature that lets me call the US  from my laptop, unlimited for what seemed like a reasonable annual fee.  In fact, I just saved more money on cell-calls -avoided than I spent on that annual fee. How? Because I had to call my bank in the US to straighten everything out with this wire transfer and no amount of “I’m calling from India, can we make this quick” expedited anything with the four (4) customer services reps to whom I was transferred. I was so glad I called via Skype.  I’m not paid to endorse Skype, but do so voluntarily. (My bank shall remain nameless as they are not getting any endorsement.)

Long story short, now I know the super secret wire limits and I was able to make the transfers.* Yes, plural.  Perhaps I’m jaded, but I suspect that the limits are simply ways for my bank to ensure that they get multiple wire transfer fees by forcing people to make multiple wires.  I know it’s feasible to send more by wire, because the bank reps told me that there are no limits on commercial accounts, only personal ones. (So business can save fees, but individuals can’t?  Must be the jet-lag because I am jaded about this….)

*Technically, one of the wires won’t go through until tomorrow.

You will find temples of all shapes and sizes in Bangalore and throughout India. Some times they make sense – like the Bull Temple on the top of a mountain. Some times they make you wonder, like the small truck size temple which seems to be located in the middle of a lane of traffic. (I presume the temple predates the road, but I’m not entirely sure…). And some time they surprise you. Like when your kid brother or sister hides somewhere then pops out unexpectedly to say “boo”! That seems like what the giant Ganesh was playing at when we spotted him in the middle of nowhere yesterday.

We were driving through a seemingly suburban neighborhood visiting nurseries when out the car window, i spotted the elephant-headed god himself, sitting above his own fancy swimming pool filled with lotus, and covered by a strong, permanent sun awning. We stumbled upon the secret and mysterious Ganesh Kalyani temple (although perhaps only secret and mysterious to me ).

C wasn’t nearly as excited as I was by the out-of-place temple, but he was born and raised here; I imagine he has seen it often. He did concede that more and more modern houses have been built around this area in the last 10 years, which makes Ganesh’s location seem a little incongruent today.

Apparently no one swims in the tank — the generic term for this pool and other man made water reservoirs. C mentioned the presence of locus blooms. I seem to recall that locus only blooms in dirty water, but I follow up on that.

At first I was taken aback that nurseries would park their trucks on the banks of the pool. It seemed to ruin the purity of the temples and its sight line . But you know, in part that may be helping to keep the secret.

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I keep reminding myself that (1) after 20-ish hours seated on airplanes, I should be grateful to stand in line and (2) things will not happen in a NY minute.

The bank was a bust: in accordance with the urban legend/rumor, I cannot open an account until I have my FRRO registration. (See the earlier post about FRRO.) In fact, the bank wouldn’t even exchange my currency without an account! Although I had to wait in a long line to learn that about the exchange situation (I have since forgiven the customer service rep who told me to stand in that line…). Cashing a US check requires an account, too (as one would suspect). Thus, it was off to the currency traders (why does that feel so black market?).

With help from C (my driver), I have a local cell phone – sort of. I got a phone, but it takes 2 days to activate a SIM (even a prepaid one). Moreover, I cannot get any SIM in my name until I get the infamous FRRO registration. Thus, I am using one of C’s SIM cards in my new phone until I can get one in my name & activated.

Oh, and for those of you who thought the lease drama was over – surprise. The realtor made an appointment for me to countersigned the original copy, but they were over an hour and a half late to the appointment.

The good news is that I have an appointment with FRRO in 8 days. (After that I can attempt to complete everything I tried to get done today.)

Also, as C helpfully pointed out, I did manage to pick up an adaptor. That’s literally the only thing I can completely cross off my to-do list for today!

I’ve checked into my temporary digs in a hotel around the corner from my soon-to-be apartment. I hope to only be here few days, maybe a week, while I get utilities in the apartment, a mattress delivered, etc. It seems nice — they use a lot of local art work and textiles. I’ve attached a photo .

Most of my luggage made the journey… One bag got mismanaged at Heathrow, but I have been assured by the very polite (and seriously overworked) British Airways baggage rep that it will be delivered to the hotel tomorrow. Fingers crossed. That said, when I finally got through all the lost bag paperwork and out into Bangalore, it was a lovely (early) morning – cool, breezy, flowers blooming, everything green and lush. Here’s a photo of the airport.

Today is errand day (bank acct; cell phone; car paperwork with “C”, my driver; etc). It feels very real now that I’m here….

Wow- did I have a lot of luggage! But I got everything checked in. They were super serious about the max weight, so all that packing & repacking paid off! The little luggage scale I bought on a whim was KEY to avoiding drama at check-in!

I made it to Heathrow/London. However, after border control for my connecting flight, I was stopped & required to check my (American size) carry-on roller bag. (Hold the jokes about Americans super-sizing everything; we know, we know…) I do have an “international” size carry-on, but it’s in the air crate (lesson learned). Don’t play when it comes to carry on luggage via Heathrow!

As I wait to board the plane and start my assignment this Mother’s Day, I think of my grandmother (who was an expat in India) and my mother (who was an expat in Iran — moving with the family when I was 3yo and my sister was just weeks old). They embraced their expat experiences and tried to appreciate the local cultures. I hope to make them proud.
Happy Mother’s to all my friends who are moms!!

Grandma Lyons & Mom with friends in Madras (now Chennai) late 1960s/early 1970s.