Stewart and Gill's further adventures

and so, I think the time has come now, for my last expat post. oh, the power just went off.

Back again. no it isn't. Yes it is. Internet connections' dodgy, but I'll just keep reconnecting.

So, where was I - oh yes, we're leaving in 3 days, so I'm writing this from our temporary accommodation, which we moved to when our lease ran out on 31st March. We didn't want to move house 5 days before leaving the country, but BAE thought it would be fun for us and I must admit, it certainly kept us occupied for a while.

This house is smaller than the last one, but it has to be said, in a lot of ways I prefer it. I'm not a fan of open plan and the other place never felt like home, but this house is a bit more western in design (I don't mean it has swinging saloon doors), and has a much cosier feel. It does have a very strange kitchen arrangement, with an enclosed outdoor area for the washing machine, and it's very surreal standing on your verandah in your dressing gown loading the washing in while passers by openly watch you and suggest stronger bleach.

We also have a less than scenic view from the front windows

But the walk up 4 flights of stairs to hang my washing out on the roof is good exercise, our bedroom has a nice balcony with jasmine growing over it, and we're closer to the shops, so we'll be fine. The house is detached, but like many detached houses here the neighbours house is a metre away, so the windows down one side of the house are useless and permanently curtained. If you open the curtains the only way you will get light in is if the neighbours have their living room light on, but it is handy for spying on them loading their washing machines on their verandah, in their dressing gowns.

So not much more to tell really. I wanted to post one last pic of Stewart and his team, the reason we came here in the first place

They gave him a really good send off, with food, garlands, singing and lots of photo taking, and he was quite touched (though not in a hurry to go back).

My new blog will be at a different address, no point having an expat blog when you're living 10 miles from where you were born. It's not populated yet so please don't rush there, you'd be disappointed and hate me, give me a few weeks - just note this address on your reader, and come back when I'm decent:

http://dunroamin-gill.blogspot.com/

Today I was lucky enough to be invited to Kavita's birthday lunch at the Oberoi hotel, and it was all just so lovely.

We had the obligatory faff for the first few minutes before Kavita arrived, and made the staff move the tables around a bit so that we could all sit in the shade, but still be in the grounds (oh they loved us, you could tell). Then the birthday girl herself arrived and we all sat down to a very nice lunch.

Followed by an even lovelier cake

and of course, the ceremony of the present opening. One of Kavita's gifts was this Tibetan ringing bowl type arrangement, a beautifully engraved metal bowl which you tapped / stroked (opinions varied) with an accompanying stick so that it made a gorgeous ringing sound. Well that was the theory, though no-one seemed able to make it work. But fate has a way of helping out sometimes, and just as we'd given up on it a conga line of buddhist monks appeared, on their way to some sort of convention. We found one that looked sober and asked him for a quick demonstration, and he gladly obliged.

We then let him put his party hat back on and run off to be with his chums, while we sat and wondered what he'd actually done because we still couldn't get it to work, but I'm sure Kavita will master this better without our interference.

Another lovely day, with sad goodbyes.

Well today I should have been posting another final pic, as it's my last day at the DSR. Except that didn't work out because when we turned up at the office the owner has done a bunk and it's all locked up, no-one's seen him for weeks. Maybe he's locked in behind the shutters. I don't know any more.

But anyway, if I had taken a pic, it would have looked like an office with a load of computers (not ours, we use Kerrie's own laptop), a lot of people waiting to be seen, sitting very patiently trying to catch the only bit of breeze coming from the open doorway, Kerrie, Patty and Jana wading their way through paperwork and me sitting staring at a blank screen, waiting out yet another power cut. So maybe I've saved you from a very unedifying experience.

I came home and bought a crochet hook to tide me over a boring week at the Oberoi the week after next, and some fresh carrot juice, because it was there. I suspect the carrot juice will turn out to be the highlight of the week.

18 days.

I think these last few weeks are really going to be a struggle, and for all the wrong reasons. We currently have a countdown clock on our desktop, but I think we'll be changing the date on that soon to a much more momentous one, the day that Stewart escapes BAE. But hey, onward and upward.

I went to a lovely surprise lunch last Friday at Shakira's - well, time to be honest here guys and admit it wasn't too much of a surprise, but it's so nice to know I keep company with a group of people who are so rubbish at covering things up. We had a lovely time, excellent company and wonderful surroundings, who could ask for more?

This particular group of people is the In & Out of Bangalore production team (some of you will remember how much I have whinged about how hard we've had to work on this guide over the last few weeks, but in my defence, they hadn't fed me a lovely Indian lunch at that stage). It's possibly not the most representative picture, Martina and Jana are missing and for some reason there are 2 West Highland terriers in there instead, who, now I think of it, didn't do a single bit of typing between them, but anyway, you get the general picture.

now, who can I pester for my next lunch...

And so, as our beloved company's repatriation process cranks itself up into maximum confusion and disinformation mode, I find myself having to start saying goodbye to people. It's proving very difficult, and not only because we never seem to be able to be sure of the date we're actually going.

Yesterday saw me at Rima's, for a final craft club get-together (the craft club itself isn't disbanding, in fact the last discussion I heard involved trips to Singapore, which is damned unfair). So yes, we all met up at Rima's and had lunch and a good old gossip, with some craft work loosely thrown in around the edges. I'm really going to miss these guys, and I'm not just saying that because they gave me chocolate and a glass of wine, but they have all been so friendly and supportive through all my various moods and I feel I've made some genuine friendships here, which will last long after we've gone. Of course, if our current confusing accommodation situation doesn't resolve itself and I find myself knocking on peoples doors for food parcels and camping equipment, things may become a bit more strained.

This is a conversation which has been happening on every BAE mobile phone, several times a day, for the last week:

Hello, this is Airtel, we’re calling regarding the payment of your phone bill.

Right, we’ve had this conversation before. You don’t ring me, you have a central point of contact where all the bills are paid from at the same time, you need to speak to that person.

Yes. Can you please pay your phone bill.

This is what I’m saying, we don’t pay these personally, the office pays them for us. The system is set up and has been working for several months, you have the details on file, you don’t need to ring us directly.

Yes. When will you pay your phone bill?

I DO NOT PAY MY OWN PHONE BILL, THE BAE OFFICE PAYS THE BILL. YOU HAVE THEIR CONTACT DETAILS ALREADY, PLEASE CONTACT THEM IF IT HAS NOT BEEN PAID. YOU DO NOT SPEAK TO ME ABOUT THIS.

Yes. We’re calling regarding the payment of your phone bill.

<<Basil Fawlty mode>>

LOOK. DON’T MAKE ME SAY THIS AGAIN. I DO NOT PAY MY OWN BILL. THIS SYSTEM HAS BEEN SET UP FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, THE BILL IS ALWAYS PAID ON TIME BY THE OFFICE, IT IS YOUR RECORDS THAT ARE AT FAULT. PLEASE ASK YOUR SUPERVISOR TO CHECK YOUR SYSTEM AND FIND OUT WHO YOU SHOULD BE CONTACTING, BECAUSE IT ISN’T ME. IF YOU RING ME AGAIN I SHALL HAVE TO KILL YOU.

Right. We need to know…   

<<sound of phone being thrown at wall>>.

Half an hour later….

Hello, this is Airtel, we’re calling regarding the payment of your phone bill…

The continuing spell of dry weather has resulted in an ant invasion, as they all desperately seek any source of moisture, anywhere they can find it. And I mean anywhere.

The typical process for preparing a meal now consists of boiling the kettle and wiping up the ants that come pouring out of the spout and lid, washing the kettle, putting it on to boil again, this time surrounded by a circle of baby talc (yes, this works). You then get the meat out of the fridge / oven / microwave or any other sealed area you've put it to thaw out, chop it up, and put it back into the fridge while you prepare the other ingredients. You then take the veg out of the fridge and put it on the counter, turn around to get the spices out of the cupboard, and go back to find that a single drop of condensation which came from the thawing meat is now full of ants with talcum covered feet.

So you put everything back into the fridge or wherever you got it from and clean all the surfaces again. At this stage you spot a long line of ants leading from the crack under the window to the fruit bowl. These ants are more determined, and are wearing breathing apparatus and rubber boots in order to wade through the various substances you've scattered / sprayed / cleaned with, and are carrying ropes with which to drag your mango across the floor. Must get a bigger fridge.

Meanwhile, at the office, Stewart has had to place an order for industrial strength ant spray to treat his infested laptop with (laptop computer, that is, I don't mean Stewart's lap is infested). The rather interesting list of ingredients on this spray include 0.7 % of one horrible chemical, 2.3% of something even worse, and lists the remaining ingredients as 97% 'other things'. The rather reassuring 'must read' safety leaflet is printed in Hindi and consists of the smallest text you've ever seen in your life - we're assuming this is for the ants to read, rather than us. Maybe it's a newspaper for them  (The Independant?) while you're busy running around spraying, wiping and generally providing a nice diversion for them while they digest your mango.

The only consolation in all this is that we're not reliant on electricity to get rid of them, though even they must get annoyed by the constant powercuts interrupting their favourite programmes on tv (fANTasy island, perhaps?). Only 30 days to go. I can do this.

I love this resemblance between a politician here and one of my favourite actors...

I know you're going to find this hard to believe, as you've obviously been taken in by this sunny positive disposition I assume for the sake of my blog, but sometimes I get a bit down. I know, incredible. But anyway, this is one of those times.

I think I had just envisaged my final few weeks in Bangalore as being a bit different to this. I had been so busy up to a few weeks ago, involved with various different things that kept me out of the house most days of the week, pretending to be sociable and interesting, that I thought things would be that way right up to the end. I think I expected crowds of distraught people seeing me off at the airport, maybe having just been given the key to the city. Who knows how my mind works. Whatever it was I expected, it wasn't the prospect of sitting round the house with nothing to do for 6 weeks, and for the first time since I came here I now wake up every morning and think "oh. that's taken care of the sleeping bit, what now then".

We've had to pack up all our personal stuff for the shipping company to come and do an assessment on (when I'm in a better mood I'll tell you how comical that process has been), so I'm down to my last few books on the bookshelf and zero craft stuff. I'm glad I've still got the domestic staff thing to do, as my input on the guide book has been pretty much nothing over the last couple of weeks, and I can't go out into the garden and pull weeds up because the gardeners would hassle me. And I've already told you about the TV.

What is it about birthdays that is so depressing? maybe it just brings into focus the number of people you've lost contact with, and the negligible contact you get from the people who do still put up with you. It's certainly not the age thing, I'm looking forward to having an excuse to be grumpy (er) and eccentric (er). So I don't know, maybe I'll just blame my hormones again (they don't mind, they're used to it). I'm going out for a birthday curry tonight, and NOT wearing my nice new pashmina as the combination of curry sauce and cashmere could just be the last straw.

I shall be fluffier tomorrow, I promise.

Well I'd written quite a long posting this morning, then Stewart rang me with what should have been a 3 minute phone call but by the time the signal had cut out 5 times, yes 5 times, expat-blog had timed me out, then proceeded to lose everything even though I asked it very nicely to restore what I'd written. Hey ho. Par for the course at the moment, with several power cuts a night, dodgy internet connection, horrendous phone connection and an interpretation of Palm Meadows' advertising blurb '24 hour water supply' that must use a different clock to the rest of us.

Although it has to be said, the intermittent power does save us on a regular basis from having to watch Indian TV. Think national geographic programmes you've seen several times before. Think series of Friends that get to the end then just start all over again the next week. Think advertising breaks that consist of the same 3 adverts, sometimes the same one twice in the same break. Think, and yes this is the worst, CSI (shudder).

But at least it's not snowing here - or rather it is, but it's snowing ash. The field at the back of the house has caught fire a few times, and regularly rains down ash and soot on what laundry hasn't been stolen by monkeys or infested by ants. Whether these fires are caused by the extremely dry conditions or started by the field's resident, Mr Nastikoff, we shall probably never know (that's not his real name, though it would be weird if it was, and so far as I know he's not Russian, it's just that his 5am expectorations have become a regular though not exactly welcome part of our day).

The packing continues... well, we're piling stuff up in a room, but it's nearly the same thing. We're also trying to fend off the landlord and BAE's idea that we should have a team of decorators in flinging around plaster and paint while our suitcases are lying around with all our smalls and not so smalls exposed. It's a brave man who gets anywhere near my pants without a written invitation, as Stewart will tell you.

logging off now, before the next power cut.

And so, with our visas now being 10 days out of date, it was once again time to visit the Foreigner Registration Office, so that we could be legal for our last few weeks here (and more to the point leave the country without hassle).

We're used to being very ably assisted by Sharoz during our visits. She looks after us, wipes up the tears (and worse), tells us when we have to go away, when we have to come back, and basically does all the work. But the office are getting tired of us now, and today was more of a 'hands on' approach. On arriving at the FRO we were met by Ravi, who told us to go to the commissioner's office to have our authorisation letter signed. The commissioner turned up 20 minutes later and we were ushered in, and we stood respectfully at his desk while he looked around for a pen.

"Sit down, why are you standing?"

(we smiled and sat down)

"I SAID WHY WERE  YOU STANDING?????"

We exchanged nervous glances, and looked for Ravi, who was hiding less than manfully behind the doorframe. We shuffled our feet a bit until the commissioner gave up on any sort of response, then scribbled all over our authorisation letter in green ink and threw us out.

Ravi then took us to the desk, and made me sit at the window until someone put down their lunch and came to see what we wanted. Ravi then hung back, along with Stewart and his 'glad it's not me' expression, while I sat and looked panicky. The passport guy looked at the covers of our passports for a couple of seconds, half opened our residency permits, then told us to come back an hour and a half later as he was really busy. Apparently this 'half looking / semi checking then changing your mind' type of procedure really causes quite a backlog of work. Who'd have thought it.

So we left, our passports and official documentation all laid out loosely over the front desk, while this guy went back to his lunch and all sorts of dodgy characters waited in line to take the next seat. If we don't make it back to the UK on 31st March, can someone pop in to the FRO to find us?     please?

The fragrance you have assigned to the air freshener block I just put in our downstairs bathroom should actually have been called 'cheap disinfectant and cockroach poison with an air of public toilet'.

'Jasmine mist' my bottom.

We've had such a nice, if hectic week, with Ellen visiting.

She took the arranged marriage with the Kerala restaurateur very well, I think the weather and seafood had a lot to do with that, and exercised great self control with the waiter who kept referring to her as 'Cheeky'. She was also almost tolerant of our growing frustration with everyday Indian life - we know we get very grumpy and negative with people and we honestly do try not to, but just sometimes.....

So anyway, she went back home at "tell me you're joking" o'clock this morning, and the roof terrace won't be the same without her. As I type this she will be somewhere half way between here and Heathrow, and hopefully having a better flight than the one back from Kerala, which involved a hyperactive child swinging off the back of her seat while the grandfather chatted up a couple of tourists.

We spent our last day exhausting Stewart's credit card on pashminas and chocolate fudge martinis at the lovely Olive Beach restaurant, where the waiter took this very nice though rather out of focus picture. I don't care though, I look better in soft focus.

oh what a gorgeous place Kerala is... I can only say that if we'd been based there rather than in Bangalore we would have been feeling much sadder about leaving.

We had the usual 'Indian experience' trip out there. The airport has now introduced a 'User Development Fee' for all domestic flights, which came in the day before we flew. This was always going to be bad news as it meant a lot of people didn't know about it yet, so the queues outside the airport were a tad problemmatic - now, not only do you have to show your passport and tickets to get into the airport itself, but also the receipt for your user development fee, which you have to queue at a kiosk for before you can do anything else. Things like this don't bring out the best in Stewart. Anyway, we went to queue to check in, and had several people step in front of us until Stewart put his most ferocious sergeant's face on and they stopped doing it. The rest of the wait was painless (apart from the smelly toilets - did they transport them from the old airport?).

The arrival process was very smooth, until we tried to check in at the hotel, who weren't happy that our visas have expired. We tried to explain that we weren't over the moon about it ourselves, and that they should try wrangling with the Bangalore FRO, but they were at least appeased when we showed them the acknowledgement for our extensions, which they duly went away and took 20 minutes to photocopy. On arriving at the room, the porter got a call saying the photocopies hadn't come out properly so could I give him my visa number, which I did. We only had one more phone call ten minutes later, asking for the same number, so that was actually quite successful.

But it was just so lovely there... we woke up in the morning to the sound of singing fishermen, bringing in the day's catch (this must have been what it was like to live near Hull docks at the height of the fishing industry!), and then spent the rest of the day trying to eat every single prawn they'd brought ashore.

The food was excellent, the bars were strange...  we went to the hotel bar and explained at length to the cocktail man how to mix a gin martini, only for a waiter to come out to us ten minutes later saying that he hadn't wanted to tell us at the time, but they didn't have any martini. Others restaurants told us they had wine, but then admitted it wasn't kept chilled as they didn't actually have a licence, then promptly served us beers, wrapped in newspaper so that no-one could tell we were drinking.

We finished the weekend with a lovely fish lunch, and married Ellen off to a local restaurateur who has his own house and everything, and who rather touchingly believed that the icey stare he received every time he patted her on the head was down to shyness.

I'm branching out into online movie reviews now - I know, it's amazing how I find the time isn't it?

Anyway, 'Out of Time' with Denzel Washington is a very confusing film, though you do get straight into the action. It has to be said you're never quite sure who is doing what or why they're doing it and you do get the feeling that a lot of information vital to the plot has been missed out. The weirdest part of it is that it's only 46 minutes long.

Alternatively, when viewing a film that is on 2 discs rather than 1, you could try watching disc 1 BEFORE disc 2.