Adventures in India

About six years ago, before Jason and I found out we were pregnant, we brought a couple of new little kitties to our new house. One was female, and a beautiful calico. The other was male, and was the biggest, fattest, red headed thing we'd ever seen. So of course we had to name him after another rotund redhead:

First, "Revert", as in "Kindly revert your response to this email." What!? Now, I can tell what they want me to do here. They want me to reply, but why not say reply? Or for that matter respond, return, get back to me? Revert means to return to a previous condition, so how am I supposed to "revert" an email, and seriously, how am I supposed to revert a response that I haven't even written yet?

Second, "Only". Now this is not used incorrectly every where, but it is used much to often, sometimes quite out of place. The one the interests me the most is its use in contracts. Now on our lease agreement, I love its use. It basically states that we will pay "x rupees only". Perfect. No confusion, no increase, no problem. However, it is also used in our employee agreements. At first glance I didn't think much of it, but it is interesting that the employee is basically signing that they will never make more than that amount. No bonuses, no reimbursements, no gifts. You signed it, punk! Now, I doubt I'll treat it as such and I don't think it is meaningful in this culture, but it amuses me. The last example I have of this was "Do not urinate on this wall only." I'll let you muse over that one.

Last, "Always" (or similar words) as in "Do not drink and drive always". The statement above with "only" was written is spray paint, probably by a disgusted owner, on a fence. However, "Do not drink and drive always" was a metal sign attached to a police posting. Once again, I can figure out what they are trying to get across, but why did they add the "always" at the end? Are they saying that it is ok to drink and drive sometimes? As long as you can prove that, at least once, you didn't?

Oh well, at least Lorenda will be comforted knowing that I have loved her always and only.

So this is actually my second time to India. The first time I was here, in January, I remember everything being dirty, smelly, and just plain gross. Now, I'm not sure that it has gotten better, but I "remember" it being so bad that this time seems much better. It rained before my arrival so when I stepped out of the airport, it didn't smell that bad. So far so good.

Also during the first trip, I made it to Bangalore, but my luggage did not. :( It took an extra day to get that squared away. But this time! My bags arrived with me. Thank goodness! And to top it off, the driver that was to take me to the service apartment was there, waiting for me. Yea!!!

So, my arrival was good and uneventful. I am staying at a place called The Bouvice and have attached pictures below, enjoy!

So...I consider myself a person of normal intelligence. I've even excelled at some things throughout my life. But tonight I'm stumped.

I've been spending my after-work hours stuffing our lives into storage boxes. Since we're renting the house out while we're gone, everything not going with us to India has to be stored off-site. Which means it has to be transported in a somewhat organized manner. We chose to buy a million and one plastic tubs of the same size, so they will be easily stacked.

We've made several trips to Jason's parents (where we are storing the majority - sorry about the huge orange box in your yard Gena!) but there's still a lot to be done. I decided to attack the living room this week. I managed just fine with the DVD's, random decorations, and most of the contents of the hardware drawer.

And then I find them.

A huge pile of cords and cables. Some of them are easy...the circles are cable, the tiny flat ones are phone cords, and I have a pretty good selection of USB component cables. But then I run in to the regular-sized USB. Or at least I think they are USB. I have a feeling HDMI cables are maybe mixed in this bunch, and considering how expensive they are, it's probably something I want to take with us.

For any of you technology savy people out there - pop quiz! HDMI or USB?

Just got a text from Jason....he's boarding the plane in Abu Dhabi. He should be in Bangalore in about 5 hours! Bon Voyage!

This is what the terminal at Chicago looks like when you are 8+ hours early for your flight and the airline in question has only one flight per day.



And here are a few pics from the plane Jason snapped during boarding.


From the window:

*I preface this post with the fact that we brought all of the issues mentioned below upon ourselves by being total cheapskates.*

Jason and I have a very awesome brother-in-law (actually we have two, but in this case I'm talking about the one married to Jason's sister) who works for American Airlines. As part of this benefit package, he gets a limited number of discounted flight coupons for family use. The only caveat? They are standby tickets only.

Jason wanted leave Sunday morning. So we had this grand idea that Jason would fly standby for his flight from Tulsa to New Dehli using brother-in-law's coupon. Brother-in-law kept a close eye on the number of real (read: non-standby) tickets sold and up until Saturday around noon, things were looking great for Jason to snag a business class seat for his cross-ocean trek. Jason went ahead and booked the final leg of his journey from New Dehli to Bangalore, and we went out for a final Olive Garden meal before starting to pack.

Well, brother-in-law broke the bad news at lunch....big flight was now oversold (with real tickets) by 4 or 5, plus several other actual American Airlines employees were on waiting list in front of him. Meaning Jason had a flight from Tulsa (TUL) to Chicago (ORD) and from New Dehli (DEL) to Bangalore (BLR), but was now missing that crucial 14 hour hop across the oceans.

We finished up lunch, went back home, and shopped for tickets. He found a flight from ORD straight to BLR for cheaper than he could find one ORD to DEL so he booked it and cancelled the DEL to BLR.

Once in Chicago the morning of the flight, the original ORD to DEL was no longer oversold, and Jason had an actual chance to get on this flight, as several of the real tickets had been cancelled, and many American employees had also fallen off the waiting list.

Jason opted to stay with his guaranteed flight and just pretend he didn't hear about the fancy business class seat he could have had.

Confused? I've drawn an illustration below:

I remember absolutely nothing about this post other than mentioning there was a ton of confusing paperwork involved in getting permission to move to India.

Sorry folks.

Well, Blogger went down, and it seems my blog was lost in the shuffle. I've tried contacting their support people, with no response, so I'm just retyping everything. Unfortunately, I happen to be one of those people who don't keep backups of things that other people (in this case Blogger) are keeping backups of.

So...since Blogger's backup is forever lost, I'm having to do this from memory. The below is what I remember this post being about:

Packing your entire life into tiny suitcases is really really hard.

For those of you who don't know us personally, my husband was offered a position in Bangalore, India to open a mobile application development office. He will be heading a team of around 15 mobile developers (iPhone, Android, Web, etc). Earlier this year, he made a trip over the ocean(s) to rent office space, buy computers, and move in a ton of office furniture.

Since the daily commute would be a killer, we will be moving to India for two years. Jason will be going over to get an apartment a month or two before I follow with the children in mid July.

Jason and I have lived in or around Oklahoma for our entire lives, and our boys, ages 5 and 3, were born and raised in Tulsa. Other than a few short trips to Canada and Mexico, we've never travelled abroad.

Looks like we're in for some fun!