So we went out to get a cup of chai from the street market after lunch…
…and there was no street market! Just billowing bits of tarp and bricks.
“There must be a raid today,” my co-workers explained plainly. “The street market is actually illegal,” they continued, “so the owners of the booths pay 6,000 rupees every month to the police to carry on and 4,000 to the municipal guy to warn them of raids.”
“I had no idea,” I said. “How often do they do these raids?”
“Whenever the city needs money for something, like equipment.”
This photo is hard to see clearly, but that large vehicle has an ice cream stand on it, that was illegal, and it carting it off to apparently be destroyed. The fact that it was probably someone’s livelihood was hard to overlook.
Anyway…
When I returned home from work, there were several sheets of paper rolled up on my door. On everyone’s door. I picked them up. Even though it is written in Hindi, it is not too hard to guess from the words interspersed in English (just like in spoken Hindi) what it means.
The words in English in the opening paragraph are: “Dear fellow residents”, “committee members”, “miss management”, “orange county”, “maintenance amount”.
Other than the misspelled phrase that made me imagine a society Miss Management Pageant where lady bosses strut their stuff, I figure some tenants are not happy about the way their pre-paid funds are being used.
Everyone pays a maintenance fee that covers electricity, backup electricity, water, backup water, the club house and gym, security guards, and the upkeep of the complex. So far, I’ve been paying around $130 – $160 a month. (The base fee plus usage.) Whether that is reasonable and whether that is being mismanaged is not something I have enough evidence to have an opinion about. (Since I cannot read the rest, I have no idea what the call to action is, and my neighbor who translates everything for me hasn’t been home since.) What I do have an opinion about about is the lack of consistency and warning surrounding this fee.
Because, within hours of your account running down to zero, they will shut off your electricity.
Like they did tonight.
Also when I came home from work, I heard the beep of my UPS as if the power was out. Then I kept hearing it. Then the UPS itself ran out of juice. Since that also knocked out my internet, I checked the balance of my maintenance fee from my phone. It was at -920.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that I was on top of it this time. I had been checking the balance every other day. Yesterday evening, it was at 1,200. So somehow, $40 worth of fees was used up in one day when the daily average should be closer to $5, if that. Ugh.
Construction dudes
Speaking of first world problems…
Why is it so hard to find large garbage bags in India? One of the supermarkets I frequent had the size I needed once. Once and never again. I keep going back different days of the week to check (and there is a difference depending on the day of the week) but they only sell the small bags used in toilet garbage bins. The other supermarket’s clerk found some large-but-not-quite-enough bags that will do in a pinch, but seriously.
My co-worker laughed at me when I asked him about this. He says, “Why would you buy something you are just going to throw away? Especially when you get grocery bags from the supermarket every time.”
I apparently like my bags to fit my bin absolutely perfectly.
I’m also slightly concerned because both supermarkets stopped carrying the brand of milk I buy (“Nestle”, believe it or not), the brand that does not require boiling.
(imagine a Guido photo)
Baby Guido’s back! Several weeks ago, I caught him scurrying out my front door and under the neighbor’s door. Since that neighbor is out of the country, I figured B.G. was in a happier place without some crazy giant human always starting conversations with him. But he’s back!
Though in my desperation to get a photo of him, I scared him right down the curtain and under the wardrobe. I got a very cute photo, though.
Then I discovered that I CAN delete every photo on my camera with one command.
Sigh. Luckily, I had just backed up everything; I only lost the Guido photo.