Culture Shock? More like language shock.

Culture shock is a strange thing. I know I've written about it before, but I'll recap. Culture shock (at least for me) does not play out like in the movies. It isn't screaming and crying in a crowd while being overwhelmed by different sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. It's the insidious sapping of your morale and will to function. You notice it in small ways, like deciding to eat in (because it means not having to deal with a server at a restaurant) or an increase in how much Netflix or TV you watch. I never really ran into this living in Chennai, though I did run into some difficulty adjusting to the different work culture of the State Department (vs my previous jobs as a contractor to the Defense Department).

However, mere days after arriving in Buenos Aires, I hit a pretty hard language wall. The city of Buenos Aires is not unlike large cities in the US, however (unsurprisingly) everyone speaks Spanish. Surprisingly few people can or are willing to speak English in day-to-day life. Similarly, I've never been particularly adept at languages, even when studying abroad. This fact has been particularly poignant here. In retrospect, Chennai sidesteps this problem as practically every single person you meet speaks English AND as someone who doesn't look Indian, people would default to speaking to me in English. Other than my clothes (and general lack of fashion), I very easily blend in with the Argentines, so I am regularly confronted by my inability to communicate. Writing this many many months later, I can say I've reached an equilibrium with my discomfort and awkwardness.

I have, of course, been trying to learn Spanish, both for work and for my personal sanity outside work, but we also had a new baby shortly after arriving. Any parent knows that your time mysteriously disappears when children are involved, and you start to really cherish your free time (which makes me less likely to spend it on studying!). I've been pretty consistent with Duolingo, so I guess we'll see how effective that is. (Spoiler alert, not very!) I do 3 'lessons' or 30xp per day at a minimum, and I've maintained that streak for over 200 days. My goal is to keep it up for my entire tour or until I'm comfortable speaking Spanish... so yeah, my entire tour!

In the mean time, I leave you with the most valuable phrase to know when traveling in a Spanish-speaking country (if you don't speak Spanish):

Mi aerodeslizador esta lleno de anguilas : My hovercraft is full of eels.

You never know when you need to show someone just how completely you don't understand a word they are saying. Open with this and, trust me, they'll know.

DPO vs Pouch

Everybody loves mail! Living overseas is like going to summer camp. There's no better feeling than finding out you have mail to pick up. It sounds silly, but it's really true. Besides that, having (US) mail is one of the most enviable benefits of living overseas on government orders. The other expats I've met are immediately jealous, as their options for buying American products are mostly limited to... well... having someone bring it to them.

That being said, when it comes to mail there are two types of Posts. In Chennai, all of our mail came through the Diplomatic Pouch. The benefit to this is that shippers 'think' they're shipping to the US. The down side is that we were generally looking at 7 days minimum shipping time AFTER it's delivered to the pouch facility. Having a Diplomatic Post Office (the State Department version of an Army Post Office or APO), as we do in Buenos Aires, has its own positives and negatives. On the positive side, our mail can arrive in as few as 3 days after arriving at the DPO facility. However, some retailers, e.g. Amazon, know that APO/DPOs aren't in the US, so their standard shipping timing is thrown out the window. It took one item we ordered 25 days to SHIP from Amazon, not to mention travel time to the DPO.

Of course, in Chennai we received our mail once per week, so you really looked forward to mail day. Here mail arrives almost daily, so perhaps some of the morale-boosting rush of receiving mail will wear off. Oh well, I'll just have to order some tissues to wipe away my tears of woe. :-D

Consular Report of Birth Abroad

It's a boy! (ok ok, we've known that for months). We knew we'd be having the baby here and in fact we moved to Argentina the day before my wife's no-fly date. However, the baby was due in late June approximately a full month from now, but he decided to come (very) early. This was quite the surprise to us, as we'd packed all of our infant supplies in our UAB... which hasn't arrived yet (but should be here long before late June!) Fortunately, we got some loaners from another family who had a baby recently. Even more of a surprise was that my wife spent the last week hospitalized on bed rest. So... needless to say, we've had an interesting transition to living in Buenos Aires. This also partially explains my blog-silence. On the plus side, she did meet an OB that she liked several days before being hospitalized and the hospital is less than 2 blocks from our house.

Anyway, onward to the next big adventure in our lives. Buenos Aires didn't have a long run in terms of being our "current big adventure." We sure are glad to be living downtown though, where we can walk everywhere!

PS: Fun fact, when she leaves the hospital, my wife will have spent more than 50% of her time in this country... in that hospital room.

PPS: She does not have internet.

PPPS: Everyone speaks Spanish.

PPPPS: She does not speak Spanish.

PPPPPS: Everyone is healthy and happy!

PPPPPPS: Now comes the fun part of obtaining all the appropriate official documentation for our newest little American diplomat.

Preparing (Mentally) to Leave

I wonder if everyone has the same sense of excitement when learning their onward assignment. Since finding out where I'm going next, I've definitely had a shift in my perceptions of work and life in Chennai. I'd like to think I never went completely "FIGMO" (Forget It, Got My Orders), since I see my departure more as a deadline, than an excuse. However, the fact that there's a coined term for that (in the Foreign Service) means that it must be something people regularly struggle with. For me it was a more subtle change. I was more exasperated by the quirks of my office and coworkers, but that happens near the end of most jobs.

The biggest change I've noticed, at least in retrospect, was the lack of desire for Indian food. When we arrived in Chennai, I ate at the canteen (low end South Indian food) every day for two months. Following that, I ate my housekeepers cooking 4-5 nights per week. After R&R... we never really got back to eating Indian food. Sure, we still had Sangeetha Saturdays, but we noticed that we were eating out (at non-Indian restaurants) more often, and having our cook cook less frequently. It seems silly, but I think it was the end of my excitement peak for living in India. As my excitement waned (and my excitement for Buenos Aires waxed), I had less and less interest in integrating with my local environment. It's also a self-defense mechanism. The more I point out (to myself) the negatives of my current life, the easier it will be to uproot and leave.

HOME LEAVE NOTE: I wrote this post during home leave and post-dated it... I can now say that... during my last few months I focused on all the negatives, until I was pretty excited to be leaving. Literally as soon as I left, all I could think about was all the positives that I was now missing. Sorry for those that had to live through my last month in town. I'm sure I was a big ball of pessimism, but it was just the situation.

Household Staff

This is my longest-standing draft article from India, so it makes sense that it kick off the catch up series.

During orientation, I asked a fellow new hire (who had lived overseas for awhile) if it was strange to have a stranger in your house all the time. He responded with something along the lines, "Sure, but you get over it really quickly when you don't have to make your bed or fold your own laundry." Household staff are pretty ubiquitous in Chennai, both for expats and for the wealthier locals. Nearly every officer currently employs someone or has in the past.

When we arrived, we hired a driver and an "all-around-er" (nanny/cook/housekeeper). We ended up having to let the driver go a few months later, but our housekeeper has been a wonderful part of our tour. It's going to be a real hit to our quality of life when we have to go back to being responsible adults: cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry... Aside from that, it's a crazy thought that we're in a position to fully employ someone (in many families' cases, multiple people) using solely our disposable income. It's quite the reminder of our comparative wealth to the local Chennaites.

The pictures feature our housekeeper's preferred floor cleaners (we have a vacuum, but she rarely uses it) and homemade dosas for breakfast.

Great (Pay) Expectations

When I joined the Foreign Service, I expected to take a fairly substantial pay cut. I was making 6 figures at my last job and figured I would start as a low FS-5. That being said, I've been (pleasantly) surprised by my actual compensation. In my initial guesses, before getting hired, I really didn't understand how overseas pay was calculated. Here's a breakdown of my current pay modifiers:

All Foreign Service Officers, while overseas, get "Overseas Comparability Pay" (OCP) of 16.14%. In Chennai, I receive 15% "Hardship Differential." In addition, I get a 5-10% "Cost of Living Adjustment" (based on some wonky math, so it ends up being 4-8%).

This changes my original belief of making $43,378-$63,702 to $60,369-$91,881. That's a pretty substantial difference. In addition, I was also fortunate to qualify for a much higher step than I'd expected. Throw in free housing and utilities,  drastically lower expenses ($5/month for a cell phone plan(!), $20/month for high speed internet, et cetera) and things are much better than I'd expected.

Other's mileage may differ, certainly many countries have lower hardship differentials (or none) and are much more expensive than the US (Hi, London!). That being said, we've actually been saving more in Chennai than we ever did living in the DC/Baltimore corridor, despite the lower gross pay. I've heard more senior officers say that you save money while overseas to be able to afford going back to DC (where you don't get free housing, differential, or COLA). I could definitely believe that.

Of course there are a lot of "quality of life" differences as well, both good and bad, but I'll save those, and how my benefits have changed, for another post. (Hopefully? Soon).

Note: Why oh why did they discontinue these AMAZING one rupee coins? Eeeeeeeeeey!

Visitors

Visitors. Talk to any expat and they'll almost certainly tell you, "No one comes to visit you." It doesn't matter where you go, how cool it is, or how easy (or hard) to get to it is. The sad fact remains that far fewer people come to visit you than you (or they) think will come. When we got this job we heard a chorus of "We'll come visit you!" When we got assigned India, we heard a multitude of people say, "I've always wanted to go to India, I'll definitely come visit!" However, in the end... the showing tends to be poor. I like to think this isn't a reflection on us (I do bathe...) or the people involved. The reality is that people have limited funds, limited vacation time, or other obligations that tend to get in the way. Also, once you're gone, there's an out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality.

Of course, we're not actually a good example, we've been fortunate enough to have a bunch of visitors, both family and friends. We've had people come for a few days or up to several weeks. It's been a huge morale boost for us. Every time a new person comes, you get the sense of awe and wonder of living in a new place all over again. There's a certain joy in dragging your visitors around town to experience all of your favorite or most unexpected things. We've definitely seen an appreciable increase in our moods while we have visitors. Besides which, it motivates us to get out and do things (fighting the constant intertia to hang out at home).

The downside to being in Chennai, is that almost everything our visitors want to see... is in north India, several hours' plane flight away. It's like visiting a friend in Florida, having always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and Niagara Falls. Generally speaking our visitors just stop by on their way to see the more famous sights in India. Don't get me wrong, we still show people the local hot spots, and they certainly get a less touristy view of Chennai. We just feel bad every time we put someone on a plane to go see the Taj Mahal without us, because we're really not interested in seeing the same thing over-and-over when it includes 10+ hours of travel each way.

Text Messages in India

Junk calls and texts are a part of life here. It's a slow day if I only receive one advertisement or scam text. Wrong number calls are generally a weekly occurence. However, yesterday (and again today) I received this pleasant gem. I assume it's a Public Service Announcement and not some ornate hoax/scam. Either way, it made us chuckle! 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to text this guy back; apparently I can get a 12 lakh life insurance plan for just 50 rupees a month!

Sounds of Chennai

Living in India is definitely an experience for all of your senses. Everything is more colorful, there are active spice mills on side of the street (and other less savory smells, from time to time), the food has more flavor, and, of course, there are a lot of sounds. 

Our house is situated on the corner of a medium-sized intersection (busy, but no street light), and we have a constant barrage of sound 24 hours a day. Horns, calls from chaiwallas (tea sellers), and other passing bike-based vendors (think cardboard recyclers, vegetable carts, or tailors) comprise the bulk of the cacophony. Add in the random parades, political drive-bys such as the one in the video, and religious processions... and things can be quite noisy. Sometimes fireworks go off, because "Hey, we had some fireworks and [maybe even] something to celebrate."

Streaming Abroad

Consistently, the most important thing for incoming officers is immediate access to the internet. They say it's to check in with their family, so their spouse can keep up with her online-grad-school work, or any number of legitimate reasons, but let's face it. We all know it's because they want Facebook and Netflix. That's not an accusation, I was totally the same way.

Facebook works everyhwere, so that's not a problem, but Netflix has regional content blocking. Most of the people I talk to in the Foreign Service use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bounce all of their internet traffic off a US based host to get around this (we are Americans afterall, it makes sense that we have access to American content, right?). However, I've slowly been converting people from VPNs to a much more appropriate "Smart DNS" service provided by Unblock-Us. VPNs are difficult to configure and use, can only be used by one device at a time (or require expensive network gear), generally cost more, and in most cases, are scarily unsecure. Unblock-Us works by changing who your computer, phone, whatever asks when it attempts to find the actual IP address of the website you've requested. So when you type in a web address, such as www.google.com, it points you to servers in the US, rather than the regional servers for your location. For Netflix, this allows you to watch as if you were in the US, but is much faster than a VPN, since the data only has to travel from Netflix to you, rather than taking a stop at your intermediate VPN host first. In addition, Smart DNS service can be set up with literally any device or network gear, so you can use as many devices to watch Netflix on your home wireless connection as your bandwidth will allow.

Disclaimer: I've used Unblock-Us ever since moving overseas, and recommend it to pretty much everyone. After 11 months of suggesting it to people, I figured I might as well sign up as their affiliate, so everyone that signs up using my link above gives me a free month of service.

A Very Foreign Service Weekend

What a weekend! When some people think of being a diplomat, they think of swanky parties with high society and foreign policy makers. (Or maybe that's when they think of James Bond.) Either way, I never did. As a specialist, I've never expected to be rubbing elbows with big wigs... instead, I expected to be spending my time... well, much like I did this weekend.

Friday night started with a regular ol' uneventful Classified Pouch run. After grabbing a few hours of sleep, it was time to get ready for the next event. Saturday afternoon was dedicated to something I'd never heard of before: a "Progressive" or "Safari" dinner. This is a multi-course meal (in our case, 6!) with each course hosted by a different family, at a different house. The whole process took around 7 hours and was enormously entertaining. We had about 40 people shuffling between houses, chatting, eating, and generally having a good time. I very much hope we'll be able to organize these in the future, since it's a great way to spend a day and is very inclusive. The final event for the weekend was on Sunday morning, when I hosted a small class on baking bagels (and making cream cheese). Despite the bagel's unobtainable status in Chennai, they have yet to become a form of currency. They do however make coworkers very happy on Monday mornings. The class went well and also involved a lot of chatting while people mixed ingredients and kneaded dough. I'll probably try to host some more similar classes in the future, since I have a lot of random and useless (but interesting!) skills and enjoy hosting things.

Before I joined the Foreign Service, I anticipated events like these. Community building at post is a big deal, because we spend so little time in each place that it can be difficult to make local friends - they already have friends and know we'll be leaving. This probably leads us to making more and looser social bonds with each other. 

Menninger's Morale Curve

Whatever happened to the frequency of my posts on this blog? [For those not reading this blog in real time, I've since back-posted several articles.] Well, let me tell you a story about cultural readjustment and morale overseas. As it turns out, I'm not actually the first person in the world to move overseas. (I know, right? I was shocked too!) The PeaceCorps and Foreign Service have been doing this for awhile and they (and others) have studied the effects on their people. Both have found that morale forms a W over the course of a two year tour. The transplantee starts the W with a peak of high expectations and excitement for being in a new place. Their mood slowly worsens as the honeymoon ends and they fall into their first valley, commonly called culture shock. Things start to recover as they accept their situation and adjust their expectations. This is where the Foreign Service diverts from the graph. Our middle peak comes right around when we're learning where our next post will be. The realization that we're leaving causes people to "check-out" from their current position and start fantasizing about the onward assignment. Finally the last peak begins the honeymoon period of your next post.

So... when I was starting to have motivation issues approximately six months after I arrived, my more veteran colleagues quickly pointed out that it was "just my time." It's kind of depressing how cookie-cutter my symptoms were from the link above. I love Chennai (and that's not the middle peak speaking), but I think any major life change has its challenges and we pretty much changed every part of our life when we took this job.

Anyway, since February I've gotten over my hump and things are smooth sailing again. I've thought of a bunch of potential blog posts, so things should pick back up. I'll be curious to see how this curve compares in the future when I'm more acclimated to this lifestyle and experience other posts with higher or lower hardship ratings.

Shopping Misconceptions

I recently signed up for a new much cheaper and much faster internet company. However, the new company does not provide a router. I didn't think this was an issue, because I had one from the US. Unfortunately, the technician helpfully plugged my 110v router into our 220v outlet, and immediately unplugged it when it started smoking. I was then faced with a choice... buy one locally, or wait a couple weeks for one purchased online to arrive. I went with the former. Unfortunately, between work and not really knowing where any electronics stores are, I procrastinated for several weeks until it would have been faster to just order it. Oh well, I asked one of my local staff where to go to get a router. He gave me a store name, I followed up by asking if they had parking, since parking is the hardest part of driving in Chennai. He looked at me funny and said, "No, they don't have parking. I will just call them and they will bring your purchase here."

I guess that's what I get for internally assuming that the electronics store would be a big box place, like Best Buy. I've since driven past other stores of the same chain... they are open air counters facing the street with all the merchandise on shelves behind the counter. It's like buying your electronics from a pharmacy. Also, it costs the company so little to send an employee on a two-wheeler to drop off a purchase and accept payment... so why wouldn't they?

Note: We went from paying $48/month for 8mbps down and .5mbps up with a 95gb limit to paying $20/month for 40mbps down and 6mbps up with a 75gb limit. Insanity...

Jury Duty

I imagine it's pretty rare to be super excited when you get a summons to jury duty. Don't get me wrong, jury duty is an integral part of our legal system and it is a civic duty to participate. I mean, if I am ever on trial, I know I'd like to have people like me on the jury. That being said, it's super unexciting to get summoned while overseas. Supposedly you can file for exemption... which I did and was denied. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday and massive time difference between India and my home state, I got to spend several stress-filled days thinking I'd have to book super expensive flights home. Fortunately, my denial was just a misunderstanding and I ended up being released from the committment, at least as long as I'm living overseas. 

Chennai Holidays: Ganesh Chaturthi

One of the perks of working overseas for the government is that we get the day off for some (or all) of the host country's holidays! I figure what better way to show my appreciation than to learn a little more about what's being celebrated. I've already missed Indian independence day (though I mentioned it at the time) and Idu’l Fitr (Ramzan), but I'll catch them next year.

Today's holiday is for the festival Ganesh Chaturthi (also known as Vinayaka Chaturthi). It celebrates the elephant headed god of wisdom and beginnings, Ganesh. You can read the details in the wiki article, so I'll talk about the festival in Chennai.

The festival is biggest in the Mumbai area, but I'm told it is observed all over the country. Followers celebrate by creating and honoring clay idols of Ganesh. They are given offerings of fruits, herbs, and plants, and after 10 days they are paraded around the city before being thrown into the ocean. Our housekeeper told me that fruit and vegetables are very expensive today (due to the high demand), with prices averaging around 10 rupees above normal. She said the prices will stabilize again by Monday.

I actually volunteered to work today (to earn comp time for a future trip), so I wasn't able to walk around and see too many of the idols in our neighborhood. Fortunately they should be there for awhile, so I'll get another chance. I  did see  several stands selling them on the auto ride to and from work, as well as an increased number of vendors selling offering flowers.

The clay statues shown in the pictures above were around 10 rupees. Pretty crazy.

Two Years in India, Week 8: "Tourist Guilt"

Another day another rupee. Ok, that'd be a terrible wage... Nothing major to report this week other than learning the hard way this week that drinking tea with dinner will keep my son up all night. Consequentially, I zombied my way through a few days of work. My new boss is very enthusiastic about making improvements to our facilities and processes. He has good ideas and hopefully we can implement most or all of them, but it's been quite a change in the intensity of the work week since he arrived!

Since I don't have much to report on the work front, I do want to briefly talk about a new personal experience I'm going to term "tourist guilt." (Honestly, I stole the concept from a fantastic web series named Masa Off Grid, where he mentions builder's guilt. It's the feeling of guilt you get when you're enjoying something, but have a lot of work you 'should be doing,' in his case: building a house.) Anyway, living overseas for two years is very different than visiting a place on vacation. Deep down I know that, but I still feel like I have to make every day or week count. Maybe that is partially my own fault for tracking each week as one percent of my time here (8% or 1/12 of the way through!). Whatever the reason, the past few weekends we haven't made it out to do any real 'sightseeing' and I've felt kind of guilty - like I'm wasting time or missing an opportunity. It was particularly bad on the three day weekend. It's not completely my fault, since sightseeing with a two year old isn't the easiest thing in the world... but still, it's India! I don't want to leave in two years regretting that I didn't see or experience enough! We'll see how that pans out, maybe this week I'll finally stop and get food and/or tea at the street stalls near my house. They are insanely popular with drivers and as my neighbor said, "They can drive anywhere, so these must be good."

Note: The picture is the Ramakrishna Math Temple in Mylapore, taken during a morning walk a few weeks ago.

Useless Air Baggage (UAB)

Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is two full weeks after it arrived in India (five weeks total), our Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB) cleared customs and was delivered this week! The bad news is that we did a terrible job choosing what pack in it. In our defense, our pack-out was backwards. Rather than packing our UAB on the first day and our House Hold Effects (HHE) on the second day... we had to guess what would fit in our UAB because our HHE was packed and taken away first. This brings us to:

Mistake #1: Not using our full allowance.

• We were allotted 600 lbs of UAB. We used <250 lbs. Mainly because we're terrible at estimating weights and were terrified of being overweight.

Of course we also did what (we've heard) is common for first tour officers and that is:

Mistake #2: Terrible pre-packing planning.

• Call us cocky, call us naive, but in our minds we saw this as any other overseas expedition we've taken. More specifically, we didn't think we'd need anything outside of what was in our suitcases. We were even less concerned because we knew we'd have the "welcome kit" at post, which has all the necessities, right? And... they do sell stuff in India.

Mistake #3: The welcome kit is awesome, but it doesn't have everything.

I guess you live and you learn. We've started a spreadsheet of things to make sure we pack in our UAB for our next move. It's a long ways off, but this way we don't have to try to remember in two years what we miss now. What's on the list, you ask? Well, it's still in progress, but here's a teaser.

• Choice kitchen supplies (I miss you, fancy cookware)
• Extra toiletries (for those that you care about the brand - or softness, in the case of toiletpaper)
• TOYS (HOW DID WE NOT PACK TOYS IN OUR UAB?)
• (More) Cat food and litter
• (More) Diapers and wipes
• Pillows, sheets, and blankets (Sorry welcome kit, but we don't want 1ft thick pillows)
• Board games (you know, if you're into that)

What did we actually pack? 

• The 'rest' of my clothes
• Cat litter (but not enough to hold us over until our HHE arrives)
• Diapers (see above)
• A stroller (I guess this qualifies as a toy, since my son never sits in it, just pushes it)
• Extra shoes (...)
• The cover for the bread knife and one chopstick (kitchen items somehow left behind by the HHE packer)
• Toilet Paper (small victory)
• Aerosol Sunblock and Bug Spray (Deemed too dangerous to ship via boat, go figure)
• Candy
   

I will give a quick shout out to my social sponsor... we arrived at our house on our first night to two big boxes of loaner toys. That was pretty much the best thing that could happen, because without those I'm pretty sure my son (or wife) would have gone insane by now. (And something to note if you do become a sponsor, since every parent we talked to here would have LOVED if their sponsors had done the same!)

Our House

Welcome to a special "Foreign Service" edition of House Hunters International. In this episode, I was given one choice of places to live and after careful consideration, I picked it! On a more serious note, we filled out our housing survey a few months ago, a month ago received a text description of our house, but we were thrilled to finally see where we'd be spending the next two years. 

Our apartment is on the 2nd floor (that's the third floor for you folks back in the USA) and takes up the entire floor of the building. We're in a corner building on moderately busy streets. There is a decent amount of street noise (mostly polite honking, since people honk here instead of using blinkers... or brakes), but it is not very loud in the two bedrooms we're using. 

There are 4 bedrooms, 4 full bathrooms, 1 eastern style bathroom, two living rooms, a dining room, kitchen, pantry, and 5 small balconies in our apartment. It (in theory) takes 7 air conditioners to cool the entire house, but we generally only use 2 or 3 at a time. We also have 3 dehumidifiers that are running constantly to minimize the insane amounts of humidity in the air (we're trying to avoid getting mold in our less frequently used rooms). Every room has marble or tile floors and extra high ceilings.

The GSO-provided furniture is fantastic, much nicer than our previous furniture. We were also provided with a welcome kit which provides us with everything we need until our effects arrive. 

Enough talk already, here are the pictures!

Kitchen

Main Living Room

Auxillary Living Room

Dining Room

Dining Room's Balcony

Front Door + Fancy Bug Zapper

Guest Bedroom

Guest Balcony

Guest Bathroom

My Son's Room

Master Bedroom

Insane Amount of Storage
(that top cabinet goes back like 2 meters)

Master Bath

Fourth Bedroom / Office / Trampoline Room?

Fourth Bedroom's Balcony

Pantry, Giant Extra Freezer, Laundry

Eastern Bathroom

The Arrival

Post two of our traveling to India, not to be confused with the movie from the ‘90s involving aliens and global warming.

We were met at the baggage claim by someone from the GSO, after using the Diplomatic Visas and Airline Crew line in immigration. I guess we kind of stood out as the only people to have two cats… I have to say, I've never been met at an airport by anyone other than family, but in this case it was a huuuuuge relief. It pretty much marked the end of our stress, since we knew everything would be taken care of from then on. It ended up being even better than we expected, because we slowly realized (once all bags on our carousel had been taken), that the bag containing my son’s car seat hadn't made it.

I've had misplaced bags before in the US. I can’t stress enough how different a process putting in our claim was. In the US, my general experience had been that waiting in line was the ‘hard part.’ The line wasn't that big at MAA, but the process after that was an adventure. We spoke to 2 people at the Airport Assistance counter and filled out some paperwork. Then we were walked over to the immigration folks where we spoke to 3 more people, some more than once, and with slight changes and additions to the paperwork. Finally we headed back to the airport assistance counter where we spoke to another person, before finally settling things. Somehow, during this process we also ‘went through customs’ even though my wife and son were hanging out with all the bags near the carousel. The plus side was, all we had to do was walk out after that. No one in India (to my knowledge) asked about the cats, but my guide left me for a few minutes to talk to people, so it’s possible he just greased those wheels without me knowing.

Once outside the airport we met my social sponsor, hopped in a motor pool van, and headed into town. Originally we thought we’d be in temporary housing for a brief period, but the renovations on our housing had been completed, so we were actually headed ‘home.’ I really surprised our sponsor by recognizing a restaurant that I’d seen was very close to our apartment when checking the area out on the internet. I don’t think he was expecting me to say, “Oh, we must be nearly there” when heading to a place I’d never been!

At this point it was past 3am, but we couldn't contain our excitement and we immediately started checking out our ‘new digs.’ My son quickly noticed that we’d been loaned a box of toys and immediately got down to business pushing his ‘car’ all around. This place is way nicer than our old house was, but I’ll go into details in another post. I will say, it’s readily apparent that we’re not in the US. Ignoring any differences in architecture, electric plugs, or whatever… Chennai just smells different. Not bad, but there’s a noticeably different smell in the air. Also, the random sounds of the local animals and frequent quick bursts of car horn create an unfamiliar cacophony.

PS: We’re in INDIA!

Chennai Consulate Attack

(Photo from AP)

Midway through my current class, "Local Emergency and Evacuation," seems like a great time to talk a little about... well, emergencies. In one of our many crisis management briefings, the instructor noted that one in three Foreign Service Officers will be evacuated from a post over the course of their career. At first I thought this was an exaggeration, but the more I hear, the more I believe it. It's important to remember that the State Department's number one mission overseas is to keep Americans safe.

To that end, it isn't just major events like the Arab Spring or Fukushima that cause evacuations. Often, evacuations are preemptive and very temporary. Anyway, this point really hit home in one of our briefings when the instructor referenced the Chennai consulate attack in 2012. The event was barely (if at all) reported in the US, because of the more serious events taking place in Benghazi and Syria at the time, but I found a couple Indian papers that reported on it. Essentially, a mob formed to protest the release of a movie (made in the US) criticizing Islam. In Chennai, the consulate was surrounded, there was some minor vandalism, and a few hours later local riot police broke up the mob. The chancellery wasn't breached and no one was hurt, but I'm sure it was no picnic for everyone inside. I'm a pretty level headed guy... but I still think I'll pass on experiencing this first hand, you know, if at all possible.