Saturday morning, my bank is open from 9:30 to 1:30. (It actually posts its hours online! Posting business hours seems to be a rare phenomenon here.) It’s the only conceivable time for me to go and sort out getting a new debit card, so I went.

I’d never been inside a bank in India before. It was not as fancy as I expected. It resembled the registration office for getting a license plate back home. There were lots of desks with signs over them with different acronyms. One desk’s sign said “May I help you” as one of three options and lots of them referred to A/C. As the bank had no A/C, I think it means “account”. There were also some couches to wait on in the center. Along the back were two long lines – the sign just said “cash” – but otherwise, it did not seem packed, even though most every seat was taken. I walked around, conspicuously confused, reading all the signs, trying to guess which desk I should try. There did not seem to be any numbers to take. An un-uniformed guy helpfully pointed me to a desk I would not have guessed. When the person in front of me finished at that desk, I explained my situation. (“I’m a complete idiot…”)

The guy gave me an application to fill out for a new debit card (shouldn’t they have this information on file already?) and bring it to the May I Help You desk. After a bit of waiting, the woman behind that desk took my application and I found out it would take 7-10 days to get a new card. So I asked where I could get cash (as I am down to my last 1000 rupees and remembered too late that I received a new debit card in the States and so cannot actually get cash anymore!) She pointed me inevitably to the long line in the back.

The Amazing Flying Guido!

So I waited there. And waited. When I got to the front of the cash counter, the man said I could not withdraw cash from my account at the cash counter. (Seriously, what else is this line for?) He pointed me toward yet another desk where the sign said “Forex”. The same un-uniformed man told me to sit on the couch and wait (instead of standing in the area of the desk), but I did not want to lose my place ‘in line’ because how else would anyone know that I was next? Finally, I conceded and sat on the couch. The guy next to me said hello and I realized it was the young man who works at Needs who always says hello to me. (His shirt actually said Needs on it, so I guess clerks wear uniforms. Sometimes.) He asked me again if I was single. I asked him if he worked every single day. (Yes to both questions.) Then he went back to his cell phone.

I did get helped in order, somehow. There was some discussion between her and the woman at the desk next to her. And it also seemed like they helped other people in the meantime. Then again, I felt like I had been helped while other people were waiting, too, which leads me to believe Indians just work better when they are multitasking.

The woman finally said, “We can certainly find a way to get you cash but it would be much faster if you had your checkbook.”

Some people take photos of babies
Some people take photos of pets
I take photos of any reptiles that happen to wander into my apartment

My checkbook? Um, okay. So I walked back to my apartment (luckily, just across the street… granted, it is a challenging street to cross) through the increasingly hot and humid weather to dig through my Three Places I Put Important Crap to see if I could find my welcome envelope from the bank. Found it, whew, and found my checkbook that I had never opened, double whew. Ex, why, zee. So I walked back to the bank. And waited on the same couch. Then, the woman at the desk called me over and made out one of my checks to “Self”. I signed the front once and the back twice. A little while later, I got the text message that the amount I had asked for had been deducted from my account. I looked around, wondering where it had been deducted from. A few minutes later, someone walked over with a stack of bills.

I made a point of paying my maintenance bill before it snuck down below 0 again. (The man behind the desk seemed surprised the balance was positive this time. Hey I’m thinking ahead!)

Kathryn scored a driver from the Radisson (driving the most comfortable van ever) to take us into Delhi, though he seemed more interested in being our tour guide then taking us where we wanted to go. But we managed to, with a little persistence, get where we wanted.

We went to Jama Masjid (hereafter called the Money-Grubbing Mosque) where some guy started giving us a tour randomly. We both thought it was part of the Radisson driver’s deal until he wanted to charge us $10 at the end. I was sort of disappointed in the driver for not chasing him off (or paying him). What good is he otherwise? I finally gave the random dude $4. I mean, the information in the tour wasn’t bad, it was just unsolicited.

Incidentally, Ramadan starts soon. One of my Muslim co-workers will abstain from food or drink (i.e. lunch with the team) from dawn to dusk during the whole month. This impresses me enormously. Summertime Ramadan must be particularly brutal with long, hot days. (Next year, it will be in June, the worst, then in May the following year, also difficult.) I think the times I’ve gone without food for that long can be counted on one hand and most of that when I was ill or traveling. But I’ve never gone that long without water.

After our tour, the Radisson guide was eager to go, but we were not stopping before the best part! The minaret! It was more crowded than last time (more tight squeezes in the spiral stone stairway) but still a great view. And Kathryn got her picture taken by random strangers a lot. Welcome to India.

View of the Fort from the Minaret

View of the Square
(The white lines are lengths of cloth to walk on for those who did not buy the slippers.)

This time the stone was Very Hot, so the 100-rupee slippers were almost a necessity. (I still have the ones from last time, I use them in my apartment.) They made us wear the robe things again and it, again, covered up nothing that I was not already covering, but at least it matched my outfit this time! Though the robe guy actually wanted us to give him a tip when we got back! What for? For making us put on unnecessary clothing in hot weather? Does he expect me to believe he launders them or something?

Though, I have to admit, the required extra clothing is not (completely) sexist. The white dude in front of us wearing shorts had to put one around his waist too.

Looking back toward Noida
(we thought we could see Akshardham temple in the distance)

As we were exiting, some old guy wanted a tip for “watching our shoes” just like last time I was here. The driver started talking to him in Hindi, so I thought he would chase him off, but no, he wanted us to pay him (even though my shoes were not in the location I left them.) Radisson guy is definitely not on our side. However, he did help us get an extremely awesome bicycle rickshaw tour through Chandi Chowk. The dude was bicycling us uphill and everything through all the tiny little side streets of awesomeness. We saw the jewelry section, the sari and fabric area and a hint of the electronic zone. Loved it! (Though the Radisson guy was trying to take credit for us not getting pickpocketed because his presence was a deterrent. Uh, yeah.)

The bicycle rickshaw driver, who must have been exhausted in the heat and humidity still cracked a joke or two. When we drove by the Haldiram’s, he pointed and said, “Indian McDonald’s”, heh.

Despite that we were overcharged for the rickshaw tour, I still feel bad for the bicycle dudes in general, so I gave him the astonishing $30 he asked for. After that, the driver misunderstood our request for a place to eat that was “good and cheap” and took us to a “good and expensive” place instead near Connaught Place called “Ardor”. Still, good is good – a very yummy dinner of paneer makhni, dal, and garlic naan followed.

I went to bed early and was woken up by the doorbell, getting tangled up in my mosquito net trying to get up and answer it. It was the “doods”, as I call them, the guys who come around selling milk (milk in Hindi is dood). I have never bought milk from them before and probably never will because I’m way too lazy to boil, so DON’T RING MY BELL AT 8:00 ON A SUNDAY.

I got back into bed, but the doorbell rang again at 8:15am. It was my maid! My maid who doesn’t come on Sunday, has stopped coming on Saturday, and had not, in fact, come all week! Yet there she was. I gave up on going back to bed (especially as I had a stack of money sitting out from the bank) and just got up for the day instead. My doorbell rang again at 9:30am. It was the gas guy! I guess, after two and a half months, maybe they want to finally charge me for gas. With all the reputed focus on money, it is surprising to me how long it takes people (like the gas guy, my taxi driver, my landlord, my work) to ask me for the money I owe.

I finally had a “Thums Up”, India’s answer to Coke
It tastes like Coke with some Pepsi poured in, made with artificial flavoring instead of natural flavoring.

I have had “All Star” stuck in my head for a week. Catchy, that. Now you have it stuck in your head, too.