Pre-Departure Stress

It’s the day before we leave and all the stress of the move is coming to a head. Today was my last day at FSI and the Basic EMT class was pretty interesting. I went through the “departure from FSI checklist” and headed out to pick up my wife and son from the Smithsonian, where they’d spent the day. I dropped off one of my classmates at his apartment, and during the ride we noticed that the rental car’s AC had stopped working. Bummer, I thought, but I’ll be returning it tomorrow anyway. Turns out, I was wrong. A couple blocks after dropping him off, the car completely stopped responding to the gas petal. It would idle, but wouldn’t accelerate any more than that. Fortunately, since it was still moving, I was able to pull out of traffic to a side road. Unfortunately, it was insanely hot, and it took a little over an hour for the tow truck to come get me. Another hour later and I had a new (upgraded) car from Alamo and had somehow skipped out on paying for most of a tank of gas. Probably not worth the time in the sauna… but I guess it's good practice.

Anyway, my wife and son had made their way to a friend’s house on the metro, so I headed over there. We had a pleasant dinner talking about how excited we were to get to India, and how insanely nervous we were about not yet having the paperwork from the Government of India (GOI) regarding importing our cats. With one business day left to get it, we were certainly cutting things close.

I should mention here that the import paperwork is submitted (and generally taken care of) by one of the people in Shipping at the consulate. Without his hard work, this process would have been incredibly more difficult. It was definitely not his fault that things were coming down to the wire. Instead, I blame the USDA. The GOI requires 5 business days to process pet import applications. However, the USDA will not allow the pet to be certified for export until 10 calendar days before departure. Since you have to get your local vet to sign off, and then mail (FEDEX overnight) the paperwork to the USDA regional office (Richmond for us), the process is almost guaranteed to induce heartburn.

Oh well, 48 hours from now we’ll be in India!

Brand New Car... to me.

My new car. (I think.)

I bought a car! It's in India! I've never seen it... and before this week, I'd never even heard of the model, but whatever, don't rain on my parade. The information put out by the CLO and post literature in Chennai seem to consistently indicate two things:
1) Cars are essential in Chennai.
2) Buying a car takes several months.
The suggested solution to this is to start the buying process before arriving. The CLO published a mini classifieds for departing officers looking to sell their cars. I saw a good deal on a 2008 Hyundai Getz, so I made an offer! From here, we both sign some paperwork and the General Services Officer (GSO) at post will file the sale paperwork with the Indian government. They start it now, because it takes several months for the title change to be processed, so (in theory) we'll be able to exchange the money and car some time in July!

Next up, finding a driver. The previous owner of the car had a driver (which she hired on from the owner before her). It seems likely we will do the same, but we'll have plenty of time to work that out when we can actually meet him. I've never had a chauffeur before... It seems like it could be awkward, but with low wages and awful traffic, hiring a driver seems to be the prevailing practice for Foreign Service Officers (FSO) in Chennai... when in Rome!