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Anyone who volunteers to help you move/pack is friend. Anyone who actually shows up to do so is a great friend. (Even if they con you into packing by saying that they’re coming over for a farewell cocktail…. And even if they bet money on whether or not you’ll need to purchase more luggage to fit all your stuff.) 99% packed. Thanks ladies!

PS- I didn’t need any additional luggage!

A lease! At long last!! One day before I board the plane. Better late than never….

Today’s lease update from the realtor, “The lease has been printed and sent to the landlord for signatures.”

Wow.

I thought that happened days ago. When they told me I’d have a fully executed lease “tomorrow” (which I’ve heard for over a week), I presumed that meant that the landlord had something in his possession to actually execute. I mean, how else can one sign a lease unless they actually HAVE it to sign? I thought by asking for a SIGNED lease I was being specific enough…

Two guys packed up everything* for the air crates. They were nice and friendly despite walking into some drama…

Their company belatedly told me no liquid household cleaners (goodbye stockpile of Mrs Meyers I’d already brought!), so I replaced what I could with cleaning wipes and powders as suggested by the company. The poor packer guys then informed me I could not take those either! I pointed out the issue (calmly) and just started making calls up the chain of command until I got the answer I wanted. Seriously I was not about to buy 2 years of organic household cleaners – twice!- for nothing!

*”Everything” does not include non-perishable foods. So the stuff I’d hope to bring over easily in my air crate (which is partially empty), now has to go as excess baggage with me on the plane (while the air crate sits with empty space). The logic of this still baffles me. I tried to appeal but lost to the Fates of Process.

I don’t know everything about international lease law, but in my observation, landlords expect to be paid in advance for the time you are spending in their premises. If your renting an apartment, say June 1, most landlords want that rent on or about June 1.

The penny just dropped for me: my Company’s housing allowance is paid to me bi-monthly in the month for which it is due. In other, the landlord wants $ June 1, but my company’s allowance for June won’t be fully paying to me (in the US), until the last day of June. i’m sure that once I’m settled I can use those “late” June funds to pay the July rent on time. But I am still vague about how this will work the first month(s), especially since my housing allowance does not start the day of the lease but rather the day I move in (another new fact). And even then, my housing allowance will start a month later. (So I will be luckily to start seeing housing allowance payments in mid June for the apart I hope to move into next week. I’d be happy to move in ASAP but electricity, water, mattresses seem like threshold matters that need to be addressed before that can happen.

I’m sure it will all work out. Somehow. The new HR relocation person has suggested some paperwork that would provide me 1 and 2 month rent upfront, but I must promise them my first born as collateral that I’ll pay back the company…whatever.

Oh, no sign of the lease yet today.

No, “FRRO” is not the latest frozen yogurt craze. It stands for the Indian “Foreigner Regional Registration Office”. Many visas, including my employment visa and my husband’s entry visa, require foreigners to register with FRRO within 14 days of arrival in India. Easy enough, right? Ha, you should know better by this point in the blog!

For overall context, I’m told it’s quite like visiting the DMV in the states: very bureaucratic (follow the procedures & have the right paperwork or be prepared to start all over again another day). The thing is, you need an appointment for the FRRO ( for the day, but not the time – I’m still fuzzy about when one is supposed to appear on their appointment day).

I like to plan things in advance, and I like to try to make appointments that don’t conflict with my office hours. I have 2 days in India before I start work, so that seems obvious: schedule the appointment for one of the free days before I start work. But (you knew this was coming) apparently, Bangalore has so many foreigners, that it’s hard to get an appointment. Moreover, you cannot even schedule an appointment without a lease. ( There’s that darn lease again!!!) So I am dead in the water without my lease, and my likelihood of getting an appointment before I start work slips further with each passing minute….

Note that most tourist visas don’t require FRRO registration, so don’t fret if you are planing to visit me!

This is the boring lease update post & there are no photos. If you want to skip the relocation process drama and wait for a more fun post, please feel free Dear Reader.

I received another draft of the infamous lease today. The good news is that it’s a good draft and that it addresses the issues I raised. (For the record, most of those issues were due to an imperfect import of new lease terms that conflicted with existing lease terms, making the last draft at odds with itself.)

The bad news is that it is a DRAFT… It is not complete (landlord’s pedigree information is still missing, as are certain details left as blanks — like the square footage) and, alas, it is still unsigned. If they’d fill in the blanks, I’d sign it — provided we can solve one wrinkle which (coincidentally) is caused by the delay in getting a executed lease.

So here is the wrinkle: getting the deposit. You see, B’lore landlords typically get 10-12 months rent as a deposit. Yeah, that’s about the price of a nice new car in the US (i.e., entry-level luxury car). “No one” waives or shortens this requirement to less than 10 months. Companies know this, so to facilitate relocating people, most companies front the deposit (and hold their employees personally liable to repay it, regardless of whether the landlord reimburses the employee/tenant).

However, my company has a process for everything and I am told that the deposit process takes at least 5 business days from when the company approves the fully executed lease. No one has been able to explain what it takes to get the executed lease approved (I suspect it’s just double checking that the lease has been duly signed, but I don’t really know). And, of course, the company will pay the deposit funds into my US bank account (w/in that magical 5 days), but then I have to wire the money to the landlord in India, which will take a least another business day.

Thus, by my calculation, I need AT LEAST 6 business days and a lot of luck from when I have a fully executed lease to get the landlord his deposit.

I’ve been concerned about this timing for weeks. I’ve spelled out this timing requirement to the realtor, who tells me she explained it clearly to the landlord and his realtor. I starting losing sleep mid April, when we didn’t have an executed lease in advance of the original May 1 lease commencement date. (The landlord originally insisted on 1st start day rather than my Company’s preferred mid-month start date, but he later changed his mind.) I made it clear then (and ever since) that the landlord won’t get his deposit until I get it from the Company and that I need sufficient runway to make that happen. The realtor assured me this would be no problem –especially now that we now had 2 weeks “extra” time to work it all out. I cautioned against waiting until the last minute….and yet here we are: 6 business days before the lease starts and no executed lease yet!

Oh, did I mention that the Company HR/relocation support person for my assignment –who would normally “process” this deposit — has mysteriously gone missing? Well, to be fair, I started getting bounce-back email notices that he was out of the office until next month and that I should contact his manager with any questions. But seriously, after months of working together, the week before I am scheduled to depart, he just falls of the face of the earth? I do hope everything is okay, because it seems so odd that I didn’t get any advance notice. But I am also concerned about changing horses mid-stream (not that I have any options).

Wish me luck!

Update: 8th May 2013. I just learned that my former Company HR/relocation support person has changed roles within the company. Good to know that his sudden disappearance wasn’t anything more dramatic. I did get an apology for the abrupt change in support, but I’m told his new position is “urgent”.  (Um,  thanks for the apologies.  Admittedly, my view of what’s “urgent” is pretty self-centered right now, as I have about four days before I’m on a plane…)

My company recognizes 2 types of rental properties: furnish or unfurnished. (My company’s relocation policies tend to be binary.) But for such a colorful land, India has many shades of grey … And at least one other type of rental: the semi furnished.

Semi-furnished appears to mean: what you see is what you get, but everything is open to negotiation. And that is where I’ve found myself. “My” apartment –in quotes because I still don’t have a lease ( I fear that may be running theme of this blog)– is MOSTLY furnished. It has couches, TV cabinets, chairs, tables, bed frames, bed side tables, oven, cooktop, hood, water purifier, etc. All brand new, very modern decor.

However, some key things are missing: mattresses for the beds (3), refrigerator, tv, washer & dryer for clothes. Yes, it’s customary to line dry as much as possible, and I’m all about conserving energy, but some days –like during monsoon season– a dryer is important.

I think I have an agreement that the landlord will procure the fridge, washer, dryer & a microwave and install them, in exchange for an increase to the rent which we’d initially agreed. I’ve lined up to buy a used TV, cable box, router, coffee machine, tea kettle and espresso maker from expats who are returning home in June. (Okay, I’ll concede that some of those appliances are outside the scope of typical “furnished apartments” – but still, pretty important creature comforts, no?)

That leaves the mattresses – which can range greatly from thin traditional coir mats to high-end imported western styles. Import duties on mattresses are insane, so I’m leaning towards a local manufacturer of western style mattresses used by many big hotel chains in India (Hyatt’s, Marriott’s, some of the Taj’s and formerly the Oberoi’s — I contacted the hotels directly to double check the mattress company’s marketing claims). If it’s good enough for the hotel guests, I figure It should be good enough for me & my guests for a couple of years. (I’ll place a pea under the guest mattresses and buy any visitor who can feel it a drink… )

I don’t have good photos of the interior furnishings. (I filmed a motion-sickness inducing video tour, but i will spare you my Blair Witch moment…) Hopefully, I’ll be able to share new photos in a week! In the meantime, here’s my husband in the entry way to “my” apartment (accessible from the winding stairs, or elevator):

2 “air crates” are included as part of the relocation package. They are smaller than “sea crates”, but they are supposed to arrive much faster — in 2-4 weeks (depending on how fast it takes to clear customs). I am not eligible for a sea crate, since my apartment is “furnished” (more on that in a future post). Now that I’ve got my sea crate contents sorted, I’m comfortable that the size is fair. Plus, it’s good to have limits — I was starting to feel like a hoarder as I was preparing stuff for shipment!

There are certain prohibitions on what can be included in an air crate (e.g., no alcohol, no liquid household cleaners – even organic ones, no jewels, no porn). And EVERY last thing has to be inventoried. Don’t think that one could cut corners on that because the shipping company inspects — they call it a “survey”. I have my survey tomorrow morning. Then the company packs everything themselves (I guess that’s their second inspection point), into the crates at my house. That’s scheduled for Thursday. Anything not in the crate Thursday comes in my luggage or stays home.

Despite instructions not to pack (which were shared with me rather belatedly), I needed to see what I was working with – and how much I could squeeze into the crates! I used tape to draw the dimensions of the crates in my basement (including twine around some vertical columns to keep me honest about the container height). Here’s what I got so far (special thanks to Maria who helped me enormously with the inventory!):

May 7 2013 Update: The on-site inspection went well & the contractor estimates that I have space for even more stuff. I’ll get some paper towels etc to fill the space, maybe pick out some hats from my closet to take along, revisit some things I had earmarked for my suitcases but which I can probably shift around since I don’t need them urgently…

Hopefully, this will soon be my apartment. The “first floor” (or second floor to my American readers), with both balconies.  It’s in the center of things, on “MG Road” (aka Mahatma Gandhi Road — sort of an India equivalent of Main Street, every city/town seems to have an MG Road).   I visited it the last week of March (twice) and it feels like we have been negotiating the lease ever since.  We’ve reached agreement on the rent, so I’m not sure what’s taking so long…