I have broadband!
My broadband setup
It only took the combined efforts of four of my coworkers talking to three different representatives of Airtel (one of the largest telecommunications companies in India), but I have it! And they were able to install it on a Saturday! One dude came for the phone line, another came for the router and software. It appears to be fairly speedy – it is supposed to be 8mbps – and how nice it is to not have to sit at an awkward angle, trying to aim my 3G data card out the window. I can sit anywhere in my apartment in any other not-good-for-my-back position I want!
However.
One noticeable drawback. When the power goes out… my router goes out too. And I lose internet. Before, with my 3G data card, the power going out was a non-issue. The main issue was just it randomly deciding it was not on 3G anymore and switching to 2G. Now, the power going out has replaced the reason I switched in the first place! The randomness is just as inconvenient. Next step: buy a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) which will keep my router on for a little while during the power blips. This is what we have at work. The Major just suggested I could get a Power Inverter which would do the same thing. Hmm. Need something, either way.
So, let’s talk about power outages.
Delhi National Capital Region
The above is the best map I found online to describe how everything fits together. The red-shaded part (if you are not colorblind) is Delhi. The little yellow circle in the middle is New Delhi which is within central Delhi. The blue cities surrounding it are part of Delhi NCR (the National Capital Region) but are technically in different states. I live in Ghaziabad just north of the border with Noida and a handful of metro stops from the border of Delhi.
Map with both city and state boundaries.
(that I also totally stole)
I was talking with my co-workers about all the power outages and water outages. (There was another 5-minute disappearance of water this morning, right as I was about to do my dishes. I decided Sunday is a non-maid day so I get to do my own dishes today. I both wanted to give my maid a day off and also have a whole day where no one comes to my apartment.) Anyway, so one of my co-workers looks at me and says, “we never have any power outages where I am.” Then he goes on to explain the hierarchy of power outages. In short: Delhi proper gets its power from everywhere else so rarely goes out (the politicians wouldn’t like it if the power went out all the time). The places around it go out according to their infrastructure weakness. In order of Most Outages, it goes about like this:
- Ghaziabad (me)
- Gurgaon
- Noida
- Delhi
Looking toward Ghaziabad from Noida
(in other words, home from work. My apartment is next to the buildings with cranes)
A word about the bureaucracy. India has the reputation of having Very Slow Government Services. Most of the paperwork I’ve filled out for various things (my PAN card, FRRO, and for private corporate things like my phone, bank account, and internet) so far is a lot, but seems reasonable for a place that has to diligently protect against fraud. Granted, I’ve said before that I’m lucky with the FRRO because I live in Ghaziabad. For those living in Delhi, getting a foreign registration card is like…
The Postal System of Doom
So I went to the post office yesterday for the first time since I’ve been here. The one other time I have sent non-courier mail, Chris went in my stead, so I did not hear much about it, other then it is hard to find. And it is hard to find. You have to know it is there (which I knew, thanks to my neighbor) because the logo above you can only see behind a closed gate if you look at just the right angle.
No hours are posted anywhere except for within the post office itself where it describes (in Hindi only) what services are available when. I got there at 8:50am on Saturday. There was a pretty big crowd outside the gate. Someone helpfully pointed out the letter box, but I can’t put letters in the box without a stamp (and if there is a place to buy stamps here except at the post office, I do not know about it.) Luckily, one dude spoke English and explained that the post office opened at 9am, but I may or may not be able to actually get a stamp until 10am. Ick. I waited in the shade (me, a bunch of guys, and one other woman.) When the gates opened at 9am, everyone poured in, but the English-speaking guy told me that the great majority of people there were buying train tickets (or something) and the post office part of it was mostly empty. He kindly pointed me in the right direction.
The post office building was a small, concrete building with no air conditioning and four ceiling fans. The one above where I needed to stand was the only one not working, and not for lack of trying. They kept flipping the switch on the fuse board, but it kept shorting out.
There were two men in front of me and two people behind the desk. But no one was being helped. At about 9:10, four more postal employees (I assume) appeared behind the desk. Five minutes later, one of the men in front of me was finally helped. Then, gradually, the other. And I waited. Then two more customers came in. An old guy walked right up to the desk (instead of standing in line) and I was like “hey, I was here first.” He said something that, by the tone, sounded like, “but I’m only here for xyz” and I said, “I’m only here for stamps.” He backed off, but the person behind the desk handed him something anyway.
Around 9:25, it felt like one of the six people behind the desk took pity on me, poor confused foreigner sweating up a storm, and told me to walk over to his side, asking what I wanted in okay English. I gave him my letters and postcards. There was still a little confusion – maybe people don’t send many postcards here – and one of the other customers, trying to help me, asked, “Sprekenzie Deutch?” Unfortunately, I can’t sprekenzie that.
It took another ten minutes and the assistance of three other employees, but they finally stamped them and charged me. Okay, sure, in the end 35 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to wait in the post office. But in the States, I see individual employees helping individual people and things moving along in an orderly fashion, slow or not. I would not call this chaos, as there was at equal number of employees as people who needed to be helped. I just had no idea what the heck everyone was doing back there and what was taking so long and why, when someone finally did help me, it felt like pity.
Also, very notably, I have been sent four pieces of mail (including three packages) from the States by regular mail. I have received one. ONE.
Moral of the story: don’t have anything sent to you in India by regular mail. Shell out the freaking *fortune* to send it by courier instead. Courier is very reliable. Indians so rarely use regular mail here that if you say the word “mail” people immediately assume you mean “e-mail”, which has caused two brief misunderstandings for me already. The letters I sent with Chris all did make it promptly to their destinations and I’m expecting these to as well, so I guess sending letters/postcards from here is doable, as long as you are willing to spend the time. I heard packages can be a different story, though, especially if they contain valuables.
On an unrelated note, I’ve decided to not go on the plane trip to Leh, instead shoot for my original dream trip, the road trip up the Himalayan passes to Leh.