The autorickshaw drivers in my area went on strike!

This article says, “Commuters were left in the lurch as autorickshaw drivers went on a two-day strike from September 1 demanding a hike in fare and route enhancement.” Although it was mainly in Noida, my taxi driver said it extended up into my neighborhood as well.

There are no words for how much it would suck to not have an auto when you need one. (I experience panic if more than three minutes goes by without an empty auto passing.) Very glad I was not one of those, like the people mentioned in the article, who were in desperate need to get to work, etc. At least one person on our team was late over it (and said the few autos passing were charging exorbitantly of course.) Happy I decided to keep my taxi for now.

It occurred to me that such of thing might have confused tourists… except, there aren’t really tourists in Noida. The few attractions, if that, are along the metro. (Come to Noida and check out our… fine cinemas, malls, and office buildings. And a minimum of four, count ’em, Halidram’s locations!)

Two weeks ago was a festival in India called Raksha Bandhan. Meaning “bond of protection”, it is a day where sisters buy these special bracelets (that are suddenly on sale everywhere) and tie them around their brother’s (or other male family member like cousin’s) wrist. The brother promises to always protect the sister. And then it is traditional for him to gift her a sum of money.

I saw lots of telltale bracelets (and empty pockets, ha) of some of the fellows I knew this last week.

If you buy a men’s suit here, it is pretty much the same thing as a men’s suit in the U.S. But if you get a ladies suit, it is an entirely different animal. (For what I mean, google “ladies suit” and “womens suit” and compare the images, unless Google is refining my results based on my location…) Basically, a Ladies Suit in India refers to a salwar kameez. A Women’s Suit remains a western business suit.

You can buy ready-made “suits” at the mall. But, more commonly, what you do is buy a top (with the decorative front already in place with a length of material around it), the matching pants material, and the dupatta, the matching scarf. Then you take it to the tailor. I suppose this enables shops to keep quite a variety of colors, patterns, and styles without having to stock one for each size.

I did this. Well, actually my co-worker did. She took me to Atta Market, the street market near the Sector 18 metro station that gives me culture shock every time I walk through, and helped me pick out a suit and find a tailor. (This was in my July 23rd entry.)

So, when I returned from my road trip, she picked up the suits from the tailor for me and I tried them on. Then, like a good half to two-thirds of the women at my office already do, I wore it to work!

Me in a Suit

Although I like the suit, I was not all that impressed with the tailoring, to be honest. It cost over $10 for everything, which was cheap, but not as cheap as I was expecting.

I thought having anything custom tailored with all my measurements meant that it would fit really awesome. It did fit. That’s something. But it fit pretty much exactly the way the suit I bought at the mall fits. Chest too tight. Waist too loose. Tight pants too tight. Slit seemed kind of high. Maybe they just follow a Small-Medium-Large pattern and pick one based off the measurements? Or maybe this is the way they are supposed to fit…

They did not bother to thread the waist string, so I had to do it myself, which took some clever problem-solving on my part. (They actually forgot to give me a waist string on the other one, so I had to borrow one from another pair of pants.) I haven’t tried the looser pants yet – I got one of each – but they sure look poofy when I specifically asked that “they not be quite so poofy.” They probably misunderstood me.

So our office had another sporting event weekend. Last time, it was badminton. This time, it was volleyball!

The event took place at Indus Valley Public School which was luckily, near our work and easy to find on Google Maps and luckily, right next to a huge water tower that you couldn’t miss and luckily, nowhere near the acutal Indus river valley which I now know is several hours drive north of here. Since I was not in a hurry, I took a bicycle rickshaw. He determinedly went in a really roundabout direction despite my (granted, mild) pointing in the other direction and then he charged me more than triple what the autorickshaw rate would have been.

I was very fortunate that someone from work recognized me when I arrived. Because the guards at the school gate did not understand me and had no idea what I was talking about. Also, the organizers had told us that they would be there starting at noon, but they must have been misinformed because school was still going on at Saturday noon and they weren’t letting anyone in.

And this is where I learned that Indian students have to go to school on Saturday, just like Japanese kids used to. I’m so spoiled.

Techies Partcipating in a Physical Competition

So, a sports event company put the tournament on, as you can tell by the banner. They provided the net, the referee, a scorer, and best of all, snack boxes! It was an all-day event in the hot sun, and just getting chips and water from the concession stand would have been inadequate. The boxes had a pastry thing with a spicy sauce packet, mango juice, chips, and a cupcake. They also had chairs and a place in the shade to sit.

The games were fun. The bummer part was that there was only one net for about 14 teams. So hours of waiting for fifteen minutes of fun, basically. They did have balls to practice with on the basketball court or the field (trying to stay out of the way of the guys playing cricket as well as the ostriches), but most of them were so hard, it hurt to play with. And I wanted to save my forearms for the actual game. Also, it was hot.

Yes, you read that right

I asked someone why we couldn’t just use the one softer ball we had since, after all, this was just for fun. But then they informed me that we wouldn’t be following the proper rules then. This is not the first time that someone told me that the *reason* we were doing something was because it was a rule. To me, that is not a reason. I will follow almost any rule if I can understand a rationale behind it. (I’m actually quite complacent compared to a lot of people I know who won’t follow rules they aren’t forced to if they are inconvenient.) But I generally balk at following a rule that doesn’t make sense to me. For example, our company wants us to key in to the door, even when it is already open. Their reasoning was to “prevent tailgating” which I called shenanigans on as a: this is standard company BS, b: the stairs usually aren’t locked during the day, and c: the janitors who come in to clean at night are *known thieves* so what are you preventing again? Also, there are always at least two receptionists in the lobby watching you. Then later, I found out they could actually keep attendance that way (which I also did not believe, but then they proved it by showing me my spotty record.) So I started keying in. But what I will not do is key in to *both* the front door and the inner front door off the lobby which stands wide open most of the time. Because that makes no sense for any of the aforementioned reasons. However, just about every other employee does this, I’m serious. For a country that seems keen on bending rules, especially regarding money, I find the observation I’ve made strange.

Anyway, rant over. So most of the players on the team I was assigned to did not show. So we combined our team with another who had most of their team not show as well. But we did not play any additional games. (On one hand, I don’t blame people for not wanting to come. Most have about a 1-2 hour commute just to get to central Noida. On the other hand, why sign up, then?) We did not end up winning any of our games, but they were all close, which made it exciting. I didn’t know anyone, pretty much, but lots of them knew me.

To reach the tournament the next day, I just took an autorickshaw instead… who determinedly went a really roundabout way despite my (less mild) pointing in the other direction and then balked when I only paid him double the rate for going direct, insisting that me saying “Sector 62” about six times really sounded like “Sector 63.” Sigh. The going rate is a buck, though, so I can’t be too upset. Incidentally. I didn’t argue with the bicycle rickshaw either because I was in a good mood and I know those guys are pretty dirt poor (though he really rubbed it in by wiping off fake sweat a little too often during the ride.) But I didn’t pay the auto driver any extra for not listening to me. Just the normal (double!) rate.

At least they aren’t on strike anymore.

I learned that not only do they have sunscreen in India (I have met Indians who don’t know what SPF is and why would they need to), but someone brought some with them! This was good because, having assumed the volleyball was indoors in the same way that I assumed the badminton was outdoors, I did not bring any. That did not excuse the second day, though, where I still did not put any on and forgot to ask until a couple hours later by which time, it was too late to avoid a pink face.

In unrelated news, I love my bidet / health faucet. I’m just as surprised as anyone about this. How have I lived without one of these all this time? I mean, it took me weeks, months, to even get used to the idea of squirting water down there and try it out a few times. But now I’m going to look into installing one at home because I don’t want to go back to using a lot of toilet paper instead of knowing it’s enough the first wipe.

It is a bit wetter, I’ll grant you that. And, in some places, like a couple places on my road trip, you just have to deal with being wet because there ain’t no toilet paper. But there is always something to wash off with even if it is just a little bucket under a faucet.

News came from my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. This time of year, if I hear disaster news, it is usually a wildfire, not torrential rains. And funny about news like this, you hear it and you are stunned, but somehow it feels like it is over and now it is time to recover. Then it get even worse. More rain. More snow. Aftershocks. The fire spreading. I wonder if it is cinematic conditioning to feel as if there should be only a single climactic moment. Was I surprised when it just kept raining? And still keeps raining!

(from Daily Camera)

Flooding is on the news in general fairly regularly. It’s weird to actually see the footage and hear the stories and have them be from people and places I know. (It took over Facebook more than a Broncos game.) However, even though some people lost everything, many houses had ugly damage, and a few lost their lives, it is comparatively a small disaster casualty-wise compared to the horrendous Uttarakhand floods in June where the death toll is presumed to be well above 5,000. What was the difference? Was it the magnitude of the flood? The inaccessibility of the landscape? The number of people in affected areas? The emergency infrastructure? All of the above? It is difficult to compare and hard to comprehend at that scale.

(from New York Times)

Well, in any case, the 100-year-flood I remember hearing about in high school in Boulder on the 100th anniversary of the last 100-year flood finally happened. That graph says it all.

Three people from my office in India are visiting Boulder this month. They just arrived a week or so ago and had asked me about the weather beforehand. I said it never rains in Boulder. Especially in September…

…whoops.

I had never before worn a sari (also spelled saree but never sorry). But I’d seen one put on once, which was enough to know they usually come in three parts: a petticoat (a simple skirt that goes underneath), a blouse (a tight top that sits above the midriff), and the long scarf that wraps around like a skirt then up over a shoulder. With at least one and possibly more weddings coming up, and the fact I had recently learned about a lehenga style sari which is supposedly easier to put on, I impulsively decided to go for it.

I went to Shipra Mall by myself on Tuesday after work, wandered into the sari shop (next to the salwar kameez shop where my co-worker’s wife helped me pick out an outfit the first week I was here) and asked if they had this mysterious “lehenga” I had heard about.

And, more importantly, would they be able to stitch the blouse part to my size before Friday.

Turned out, the only hard part was trying to do this for under $200 (dude!). The two guys and one woman helping me (all with minimal, but enough English) put an elastic belt around my waist, found a lehenga sari, and did a quick visual of what it might look like for me, tucking the skirt part into the belt and wrapping the attached wide scarf around in the two different styles. At this point, I thought I would feel really awkward, but I did not at all for some reason. Even though I’m a total noob, it all felt perfectly fine. A pleasing contrast to the intimidation I felt my first week, even together with a local.

I liked the first one I tried on, but it was 10,000 ($200) to start with, before the cost of the custom stitching, which they, whew, said could be done by Thursday evening. I liked it and it became my backup plan. I asked if they had anything cheaper, even though they said that was the cheapest one. They took out one that had polka dots (ugh) and I tried it on anyway. I am just not a dot fan, even if it would save me two grand rupees. I was just going to go with the first one, when I decided to, on impulse, ask for the “next cheapest.” They had one on the counter already, a red and blue one and we put that on. I liked this one best and figured I’d just deal with the cost. Then he turned over the price tag and it was only $120, or 6,000. What?! I’ll take it! (Not that $120 is nothing mind you, but… a much better deal.)

The main guy started taking my measurements for the blouse and petticoat part, but the second guy was not taking very good notes. So he did all the measurements again, it eventually taking all three of them to get it written down properly. It was very cute.

So, only slightly anxious on Thursday (because if something went wrong with the stitching, I’d be out of luck) I returned. They had everything all ready to go. I went into the dressing room to try on the blouse.

But then I remembered that I have no idea how to wear a sari blouse.

Luckily, the lady employee was there and she stepped in at my request to help me determine which side was front (so it does hook in the front unlike, say, a bra) and where to actually hook the half-dozen hooks. It was really tight. I mean, it is supposed to be tight. But, wow. I can’t believe those hooks are not flying off.

Friday, after work, one of the other girls going offered to let me get ready at her place. I had originally just planned to put on the sari in the restroom at work. After all, I had just watched a YouTube video on how to do this. No problem, right? But someone’s place, especially someone who could check that I don’t screw it up, was preferable.

She took the sari out of the bag. Then she stated, “I have no idea how to tie this. You need to go to the parlor.”

???

I thought this was the “easy” one! But neither of my twentysomething female co-workers knew what to do with the thing. I was pretty sure I knew what to do, but then one of them said, “Well, if you don’t tuck it tight enough, it can fall loose when you are walking. All sorts of things can happen. Better to have it tied at the parlor.”

So I agreed to go to a professional. Luckily, there were two (local, non-commercialized) beauty parlors less than a block away. One charged $3 for the 10-minute job. But my co-worker seemed astonished at that price, so she found another woman for $2. The woman, with faltering but existent English, tied my sari on for me. This involved carefully tucking in the scarf part into my petticoat all the way around and then making an accordion out of the scarf part and pulling it around my back and over my shoulder She did it a lot like the YouTube video. But one thing she did that I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to do well on my own, is that she pinned up the scarf at my shoulder in a way that kept the shape, but did not show the pin. Had she not, I bet that would have fallen / unraveled all over the place. (In fact, I just left the pin in there that night when I finally took it off just in case I don’t have a parlor next time.)

So, here it is!

(I’m even wearing the bangles and a bindi from my July 23 entry. It was just a coincidence that they matched perfectly!)

I admit, one thing I don’t like is that the scarf was so long that it needed to go back up or it would have dragged on the ground. So she had to pin it up on my other shoulder. I don’t like the look of this, but this way was still better than the first style she showed me, which is also apparently popular, though doesn’t involve crossing it over one shoulder which, to me, is essential to a true sari look.

(Front and back)

So, we got there early (I think we were only about forty minutes after the invitation time) and mostly hung around, snacked on the decidedly NON-veg snacks coming around, and chatted. Yeah, this thing is impossible to walk in. They weren’t kidding. The scarf is wrapped so low makes it difficult to take a long stride. But even half my short strides wanted to catch the bottom. I started slide-walking, but that only seemed to sort of help since I still sometimes tugged the edge. And people dance in these things??

Venue: The Grand Plaza: Sapphire

The venue seemed pretty standard. A dance floor and several tables. The usual waiters coming up to you with drinks and snacks so often that you are full by the time dinner starts. (Better than no snacks at all because the buffets usually start at 9 or 10pm.) I was actually one of the better-dressed folk there this time… especially compared to the guys.

In unrelated news, ATMs are very funny about small change.

The Elusive 100-Rupee Note

I was running low and small bills (i.e. 10s, 50s, and 100s) and I need them to pay for autos. Autorickshaw drivers will sometimes make change. Or sometimes they will claim they don’t have it. (If you give them a 500, though, they might not!) Oddly, 50-rupee notes, which are about one dollar, are harder to come by than either 10s or 100s, and that is how much it costs to get to the metro station from here. About a month ago, the strangest thing happened. My usual ATM that was kindly giving me my last five hundred all in 100-rupee notes suddenly gave me all 5,000 in 100-rupee notes. I’ll see that as a one-time magic gift. Perhaps that machine was out of 500s and 1000s? Or perhaps it was a glitch that caused several banks to completely run out of 100-rupee notes…

The Really Elusive 50-Rupee Note

…because today, three ATMs (from three different banks) not only gave me no 100s with my regular withdrawal, but, when I asked for 400 to force the issue, *all three* displayed a similar unhelpful error message, “Please enter an amount in multiples of 100.”

Luckily, the fourth ATM allowed it and I got four 100-rupee notes. Now I have to find somewhere to break them.

Two days ago, I wore the other suit I bought to work and I also brought in a cake. I did not bring in a cake on my birthday several months back because I didn’t know at the time that it was a thing people did. (I still intend to take everyone out for lunch, which is also what people do. But organizing that is more complex.)

Unfortunately, despite my best attempts to bring it in on a day where no one was fasting, a lot of people were still absent for one reason or another. So, for the first time I can remember, a brought-in cake was not finished.

It was technically a “blueberry cheesecake”. It did have the requisite graham cracker crust. But it sort of tasted like most every other cake we get from Sir John’s bakery.

“Live bait Pastry Shop”
(I have no idea what that means)

I ended up giving the rest of the cake (almost 1/2) to the guard at my apartment gate. Though, d’oh, the knife was missing. No idea if anyone actually ate it (with their fingers) or if it just got thrown away or what. I hope I didn’t inconvenience him. But I didn’t want it at my apartment, cause I’d just eat it.

This is definitely my favorite suit. This one, more than any other, I could see myself wearing when I get back home. It goes really well with blue jeans, too, check it out:

Fashion Mix!

Yesterday, festive music was coming from the construction site next to the office. I was baffled why, and even peeked in curiously, since there were no holidays on the calendar that I noticed. Then a co-worker explained. It was Vishwakarma Day (or Puja) where people in the industrial field (mechanics, craftsmen, factory workers, architects) do no work, respect their tools and pray to Vishwakarma for a better future. (It appears our computers do not count as “tools”.) Hinduism does indeed have a lot of gods.

Construction site next to my work
(though taken a different day)

I wondered if the same festival was being celebrated next to my apartment. Sure enough, when I got home, there were no dudes working in and on the 16-story building like usual. And the workers (who live on the street below) were not in hard hats and looked to be relaxing. I suspect this may have been their first day off in a while…

So I’ve been here eight months. And I’ve been loving it, right? The last month in particular seemed blissful, pleasant, energetic, perhaps even euphoric.

Then came this month. I am Captain Grumpypants all over the place.

So, the four stages of culture shock, paraphrased from an article on Internations (yay Internations) are:

1. Honeymoon
2. Rejection / Alienation
3. Recovery
4. Adaptation

Either the last 8 months actually were the Honeymoon period? Or I skipped past number 2 a while back and then decided to re-visit…

In the last week, I’ve actually *scolded* people not lining up behind the cafeteria pay counter. I’ve often given them looks in the past or made it clear when it was my turn. But I went a little farther than usual…

Everyone was just coming up to an empty place at the counter, holding out their money, and saying their order. There is only one person taking the order and it doesn’t seem fair that someone who just walked up would get their order in before someone who had been waiting (i.e. me). They were vastly amused with me when I said, “Excuse me, I was here in front of you,” and “one at a time”, and then, later, “I guess I’ll just wait until all of you are finished then before I get my order, then.” And they totally let me complete my order. But that is only part of the point. It just would be SO MUCH BETTER if everyone stood in an organized line. I don’t know why, out of everything, this drives me crazy. Probably my OCD tendencies.

And just as a counter point, I’ve at least three times had both men and women let me go ahead of them, so it’s not like people are rude, I think it is just a habit. If I grew up in a place where if you didn’t elbow your way in, hold out your money and say your order, you didn’t get served, then I’d probably do the same. But it seems like people are causing the order-taker so much stress. He’s got to look in ten directions at once. It’s no wonder he messed up my order. (Actually, he messed up my order because I gave him 110 rupees for a 60-rupee meal and the thought that I wanted an elusive 50-rupee note back as change seemed less likely than that I was ordering two meals.)

I also swore at an auto driver on Friday. Granted, I probably wouldn’t have sworn if I thought he could actually understand me. But I guess it was pretty clear. He was actually super apologetic about taking a really roundabout way (and it was not just to increase price because we had already agreed on price), which I was surprised about. He just didn’t know his way around my neighborhood is all and for some reason, that irritated me. Though he is the third driver who, when I point back and to the right to show they are going the wrong way, just say something and keep going the direction they are going. That I think is what is annoying. They ignore me, then seem all confused later that they aren’t in the right place.

I’ve also now asked three co-workers to turn down their mobile phone rings. All three did so apologetically, surprised that they were loud. Though, I think I was pretty polite about it. (No swearing! 🙂 ) I think this is cosmic retribution for my first overseas job out of college where I had a loud, annoying song (not annoying to me of course) as my mobile phone ring. But mobile phone etiquette appears to not really be a thing here …unless you are in a meeting with your boss.

These things are bothering me way more than usual. Way more than they should. I’ve been in a grumpy mood in general at work and so forth, too. I thought it was lack of sleep, but it doesn’t seem to be. It seems to be random.

(And I wish I knew Hindi. And on one hand, that’s mostly my fault. On the other hand, the effort it would take to get to where I want to be is so huge and the in-between stage is not all that useful.)

So yeah, that along with a couple other things has stage 2 of Culture Shock written all over it. Just at a time when I was contemplating whether I want to try to stay longer or not…

Granted, it is almost worth it to stay at least until the rupee mostly recovers. At it’s worst, I would have effectively lost a quarter of my salary. Now it’s down to an 18-20% loss. Someone said early next year, after the elections, it’ll bounce back. Come on, go Rupee!