The new house is wonderful, though we will miss our old one.
Most everything's been unpacked and put into its rightful place, the children are happy with their new room that they share, and we all love the large garden! The neighborhood is neat too -- not many tress, but instead there's a real village-like feel to the area. And, though the place is
a lot more congested, there is less traffic on our street. We've moved into a more Indian neighborhood, but we're within one minute-walk for one of the THE boutique lined streets of Bangalore .... but back to our move.Us having been here for 1.5yrs., we thought the move would go smoothly. After all, we were moving into a house that was only 5 yrs. old, and one of the bathrooms even has a bathtub! How wrong we were. Here just a few unanticipated problems we encountered:
- no water, at all, because we had to turn the water pump on manually, which we didn't know
- no water, at all, because the number of power outages are phenomenal and obviously the water pump only works with electricity
- one toilet (the only one downstairs) that is blocked. Apparently it's a 'city' problem -- they say the city drains are blocked and hence there's no place for our sewage water to flow to, except back up the toilet. Can you imagine the FILTH! To top that, the city wasn't going to do anything about the blocked drains because it was local election time, and nothing gets done during elections, at all. Regardless, this was all a lot of crock anyway, (why else would our other toilets flush perfectly well), but it was the reason given to us by no less than 3 plumbers! I had to literally PROVE to them that their theory was wrong. Finally they came up with the ingenius idea of 'liquid plumber' (in powder form), which is sure to last us all of 3 flushes.
- the toilets all explode when you flush, sometimes. This is because when there's a power outage, air pockets form in the water pipes. When the power comes on again, the water basically explodes sporadically through the pipes and sometimes up the toilet as you are flushing. This is especially wonderful for our 3 year old Tina, who proudly flushes only to be sprayed with toilet water etc. and soil her brand new dress, which we now have to fight over to get her changed out of. Eventually, I got Tina to flush then immediately run away.
- it took 1 week for a telephone connection -- the phone number is the same.
But then again, these were just house problems, that fortunately, are (almost all) taken care of or somehow remedied.
Other recent annoyances:
- the past 5 days have been "dry" (i.e. no alcohol purchases or consumption in public places allowed), due to the aforementioned elections. The election itself is only taking place on Sat. Anyway, not that that really matters too much, but what with exploding toilets and all, a good ol' G&T would have been nice (we'd just run out of G).
- House walls are all made out of industrial grade 100% cement, which means that hanging pictures requires an electric drill, plastic drill bits, and the correct sized screws or things. A person who is able to perform this is also required. The tools and parts must be purchased and one must wait for the person to arrive. It's fun going from crummy hardware store to another, minding your step so that you don't fall into open sewerage drains that are being dug up in order to construct some sort of mass rail transport system. And asking for screws a million times for exchange of a straight "no", or a "yes, sure" = completely blank look of non-comprehension, and sometimes a flicker of comprehension and still the required exchange of "do you know where I can get it", "no", "are you sure, I mean, where would you buy it", "i don't know", "ok, if your daughter is moving into a new house and you want to hang a picture of a god in her pooja room, and you happened to have a drill, where would you go to get the drill bits and screws", "oh, I'd go down about 5 stores on the right. or I'd try Commercial St.".........arghhhhhhhhhh. THEN comes the measuring bit. You can imagine how much fun that is. People use both metric and inches, and don't notice when they switch from one to the other. That's if they measure. Of course, arguing happens when you know something is crooked and they say "no, I measured it", but it's still crooked, so you have to 'prove' it to them by taking the measure out and proving them wrong. Lovely way to spend a day. MEANWHILE, kids freak out because the sound of an electric drill going through a heavy cement wall and echoing through the house is not exactly gute-nacht-musik
- Custom-made curtains for 3 rooms (ok, they were silk embroidered, but still) cost USD3,000! Needless to say, our rooms are curtainless. Ready-mades would be fine, except our windows are not a standard size, of course.
- When buying a stove-oven, there's no selection to speak of. All of two models there are, of which one fit the space allocated in our kitchen. Hmmm. At least it was an easy decision.
- This one's my favorite: the electrical outlets in the walls come in 10,000 different sizes and shapes, and the same goes for cables. So off I go, buying a bunch of adaptors which theoretically fit the aforementioned 10,000 size/shapes, but don't. So you have to super-carefully plug the adapter in, then attach whatever device (your computer, phone charger, HiFi, etc.) ever so gently, then walk away quietly and hope for the best. This works until there's a power outage, and for some reason the adapter needs to be replugged. So you have to do the balancing act thing again, which is not so much fun when you have to crawl under your desk 3 times a day.
But that's about all the ranting I can do for one day. In case it should not be clear, I really do like living here. It's just that some days are not so cheery and 'exotic' in that paradisical sense.
