Two Years in India, Weeks 9 and 10: Long Weekend

Weeks 9 and 10 sandwiched a four day weekend, so I might as well write about both at the same time. If that logic doesn't work for you... let's just say I was out of town last weekend and didn't get a chance to write a post.

Ten percent of the way through my first tour and things at work are starting to feel "normal." I'm still regularly asked if I'm "settling in" - it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. My bet is until the next arrival/departure season. I don't have a lot to report except my building excitement to visit Delhi in the near-ish future to meet my counter parts on the "mother ship." (As a consulate, all funding for Chennai goes through the Embassy in New Delhi.) We also had to let our driver go last week, when we learned he was on the RSO's DO NOT HIRE list. It was kind of a bummer, since we liked him, but he was very nice about the whole thing. I'll go into more details in another post; I'm due to write one about the pros and cons of employing household staff.

I did have another small victory at work this week. The State Department uses a system called iPost to continuously monitor the health of the computer networks of overseas posts. To make it more competitive (because, why not?), they tell you what rank you are out of all of the posts in the world and those in your region. When I arrived at post, our world-wide ranking for one of our networks was around 125th, and as of this week we're number 1! Although this doesn't win me any awards, further bilateral diplomatic relations with India, or anything like that... It was still a good feeling and it can't hurt my chances of getting tenured. It almost felt like cheating, since it wasn't that difficult and Chennai isn't a very busy post, so I had the time. I've been talking to the other IMSers from my orientation class and they sound way more busy. I guess that's one of the benefits to going to a consulate!

Side note: The day our HHE was supposed to arrive in Chennai (according to the shipping department) has come and gone and I haven't been contacted. Guess I'll fall back to expecting it when the company that shipped it from DC estimated it would arrive (October 10th).

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!