A cold, a sick economy = rupee, rupee, who's got a rupee!

December 20, 2016

I have been in bed for three days now. My cold took a turn for the worse just as I was getting better. I had a bad night of sleep on Friday and now have some kind of infection. So I am on drugs and bed rest in hope of a quick recovery. Given how hard the beds are here I also am taking ibuprofen to help with back pain from being is bed so much. Yesterday I saw a doctor who prescribed three meds. The doctor visit was 100 rupees…that is $1.50…yes I do have the decimal in the right place. I couldn’t help but laugh when he told me. I told him it would be more like $100 in the US and he replied ‘Yes but India isn’t like the US’. HA! That’s an understatement.

We are nearing a panic mode over rupees here. I mentioned earlier that the government on Nov 8 demonetized 500 and 1000 rupee notes causing a real problem. It gets worse by the week. We found out last week that the banks are not replenishing the ATMS which is our only way to get cash here as we do not have an Indian bank account. The banks stopped refilling the ATMs because non customers could withdraw rupees and daily the ATMs ran out of cash. So the banks stopped refilling them but their customer could cash checks inside the bank to get cash. We are rupee-less as a result. We do not have enough to pay our staff at the end of the month.

Ron visited a bank with a foreign exchange office and was told they would NOT take US dollars in cash in exchange for rupees, only wire transfers. Incredible India.  We have lots of US dollars because we sold our car and asked for US dollars instead of rupees to avoid a major problem of converting hundreds of thousands of rupees before we left the country. We were shocked to discover how hard it is to exchange the dollars. There are multiple places besides banks that do foreign exchange but NONE of them have any rupees because the government did not print replacement currency before they implemented the new policy!!!!!!!!! I think you are beginning to see the picture here and how the government failed to see the problem with implementation when they did not preprint and supply new currency to replace the currency they demonetized. I feel badly for all the small businesses that are closing or larger companies that are laying off workers because no one has cash to be spending.

I am an optimist by nature and I would have to say I am naive sometimes but I am hopeful that by the end of December they have printed and distributed enough currency that this nightmare goes away. Ron scoffs at me for being so hopeful.

 December 21, 2016

 Happy Winter Solstice, one of my favorite days of the year. It means the days lengthen and there is more daylight. We are still enjoying temps in the mid to high 80’s and sun every single day. I absolutely love living in the Grayt NW of the US but the winters are so gray for so long. It never bothered me much until we lived in Sri Lanka which is five degrees above the equator and we had four cloudy days in 14 months! So now in the winter we often leave the NW for sunnier climes. Our days and evenings here are so much like the Portland summers: chilly mornings and comfortable days. We were told yesterday it gets cold here in January but who knows what that means. When we walk in the mornings around 6:30our neighbors who are walking are bundled up in sweaters, stocking hats, neck scarves, and jackets. We are in our t-shirts. I am not sure they know what cold is here but they make up for it by truly knowing hot!!!

Yesterday Rahul and Ron paid a visit to Rahul’s bank to talk to the manager as to what options we had for getting rupees. Today a foreign exchange agent is supposed to come to Ron’s office between 11-2 to exchange $1400 dollars for rupees which should get us through until time to leave. We have our fingers crossed. If this fails for any reason then we can wire money to Rahul’s account and use his account as our ATM.

The demonetization plan/implementation is taking some interesting turns. For starters the finance ministry keeps changing the rules and they are getting worse by the week. Now people cannot deposit more than 5,000 rupees of the old money without being interviewed by two bank employees asking why. Once they approve of the customer’s reason they will approve the deposit. Just think of the staff time involved in that transaction. OY! Originally the deadline was Dec 31^st to deposit or exchange any old notes but that was one of the rules that got changed. Today the minister said people should deposit all their old notes at once. Just a little problem with those two rules. The worse one now is you cannot withdraw more that 8,000 rupees from your own account. Yesterday a man filed a police report because he submitted a check for withdrawal of 24,000 rupees and was told to come back in the afternoon. When he returned he was told they could only let him withdrawal 8,000 at a time and to write three checks. I think you can see how arbitrary the rules are and they literally change bank to bank and day to day. All at the inconvenience of the depositors.  My favorite recent story came from a small village where the villagers ordered every employee out of the bank and they locked the door with their own lock because the bank had no money to meet their needs. It has been 41 days since this policy was implemented and we are just beginning to see people who had been patient long enough and are now protesting one way or the other.

  

As you would expect this has impacted tourism greatly. Booking are down 65% and foreign bookings are down 40-45%. I have no idea how a tourist can get rupees for traveling in India when ATMs are empty! It is totally nuts to me. So today I will pray to the two million Hindu gods and goddesses that our foreign exchange guy shows up with rupees in hand. Wish us luck.

Aha. It is done. We have rupees, close to enough to take us through our departure. Yippee!!!!

Back in the USA - A Whirlwind Trip

December 10, 2016 

We left Ahmedabad on Nov 28^th on a late evening flight to Abu Dhabi, about a three hour flight. We got to bed at the airport hotel around 12:30 and were up a bit before 5:00 to catch the next flight to LAX., a 16 hr trip. We get to go through customs in Abu Dhabi and the US Customs service here is fully automated so we never had to stand in line. We are asked to verify our bags on a computer screen and off we go. This is a huge time saver in LA.

We fly Etihad, a UAE carrier. They have been a good choice in terms of price, connections and service. On that first leg we were seated in a three person row and our seat mate was a young mother with a loud, squarely toddler. The attendant took one look at the situation and invited us to the row in front of her that was an exit row!!!!!!!!!!!! Yahoo! Those seats cost a few hundred dollars more.

On our trip to LAX the exit row in front of us was empty and Ron asked permission to sit there and it was granted. Since it cost more, often the request is denied. I think our age may be in our favor but who knows. We arrived in LA and after a 2.5 hr wait boarded for Portland. We arrived at our condo around 7:30, threw the bags on the floor in the living room and walked to the nearby grocery store to pick put our dinner from a deli case that is excellent. After dinner we unpacked the bags. We brought a lot of things home so we would not have overweight charges when we return in April. Then we packed some clothes for NY: dressy and other warm items were included. We fell into bed and slept for a few hours but our bodies were a bit confused since we were now literally half way around the world. Ron had an early doc appointment for a flu shot. I walked to a grocery store to get items Kamla had requested. I got 10 lbs of cooking chocolate, Ziploc bags and coffee filters that she uses to make paneer, an Indian cottage cheese. I got a flu shot at the store pharmacy. I took a bus back to the condo since the weight was a bit heavy for walking 20 blocks.

Ron realized he had forgotten to reinstate our car insurance and we decided to not drive the car. That limited any activity I had planned but nothing was critical. Mostly I had planned to visit two kitchen stores for Kamla. I could walk to one but not the other.

We met our best friends Rick and Ellen for lunch at a nearby deli which was within walking distance. We live in an excellent area where we can walk to grocery stores, restaurants, retails shops, post office and the library. We had a good visit and parted. The afternoon flew by and at a little after 5:00 our friend Wendy who just moved to Portland from the Bay area came over for a visit and dinner. We trucked down to the same store and each of us picked out our dinners. We all felt it would be easier to visit at the condo and the store offers enough selection that all of us were content with the choices.

I met Wendy when I administered her GED when she was 16 and I was in my mid 20’s. We have HISTORY!!!!!!!!! She and I became friends, she worked for me when she was a student at the college where I was working and we have never lost contact with each other. We are thrilled to have her in town. In the summer of 2015 when I had multiple surgeries she come over to the condo and helped Ron move us in and get settled. I was unable to do anything at the time so I feel indebted to her for your kindness. I regret I couldn’t reciprocate when she moved to Portland a month or so ago.

We fell into bed and had another inadequate night’s sleep before arising at 4:00 to catch a plane to NY. Our dear neighbor Pam volunteered to take us to the airport. I resisted but she insisted, saying she usually got up at 4:30. We arrived in Newark and took a cab to Manhattan where our Airbnb was. What luck, it was a block away from where David and Anne had recently bought a condo! We dropped our bags and headed out for a bite of lunch as it was late afternoon and we were hungry. Three blocks away and we found a great Mexican place near an Indian restaurant. We had decided not to eat Indian cuisine while in the US. We needed a change. Afterwards we went over to David and Anne’s place and got to visit. By 6:30 we were nodding off on the couch while he was showing us a montage of photos of Elizabeth. We went back to our place and fell into bed…again not able to sleep through the night. Jet lag is hell sometimes.

Friday is a blur but it was the beginning of Elizabeth’s Bat Mitzvah. We went over to the condo to help with preparations: food prep and venue prep. Around two we took a break for lunch. Much of our time was spent at the temple covering chairs with slip covers and tying them.  The event started at five and we were there dressed for photos at 4:00. There was a service followed by a seated dinner for a large crowd of 80 I think. The next morning we were there by 9:30 and stayed through lunch for about 130 or more.  We were thrilled to get in a visit with Ron’s uncle and aunt who live in Philadelphia. We promised to come see them in the summer. We think it would be great to do an east coast trip where we start in RI, then NY, Philadelphia, and SC to see family.

On Sunday we met with Sandi and Bill, their daughter Rachel and her son Reid. Sandi is Ron’s sister and the four of us love to travel and get together whenever we can arrange it. From Rachel’s condo we went to breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards we went to their bnb and visited until we needed to move on. Ron and I stopped by a kitchen store on the way home to get some extra large silicon spatulas for Kamla. That night we had leftover Bat Mitzvah fare for dinner at David and Anne’s.  Monday we met Sandi and Bill for a movie (we are starved for good movies) and saw Manchester by the Sea which was excellent. Afterwards David met us all for lunch at an excellent Italian restaurant that we all enjoyed. That night the NY Bergman’s needed to crash and I was developing a sore throat and only wanted soup for dinner. Ron called the Mexican restaurant and picked up a soup and we dined at our Airbnb. I never slept through a single night.

On Tuesday we went to see Moonlight with David and it was another great film. We felt sated in terms of our movie desires. I told Ron I would like to stay another week to catch up on good movies but alas we leave on Wednesday arriving in Ahmedabad on Thursday evening.

That night we took David and the kids out to dinner at an Italian place in the neighborhood. It started to rain today but we had our umbrellas so we were prepared. It has been cold the entire time we were in NY but we had taken warm coats from Portland so were not too uncomfortable although we both felt we had acclimated to India’s temps and never felt warm in NY when we were outside. After the movie we all went to our bnb and packed up our dressy clothes and warm clothes and gave the box to David to mail to our neighbor in Portland who looks after our condo for us. Jim and Barbara have been a godsend looking after needed duties like running the faucets, flushing the toilets and running the dishwasher once a month. Plumbing can dry out and the results are sewer gas and lose joints that can lead to flooding so we are most grateful to them for helping us out.

We left the bnb around 9:00 on Wednesday to JFK airport. Our host is an Uber driver so we were set. Our host is from the Rep of Georgia so we had lots to talk about since we had lived there for two years. He also is a neurosurgeon/scientist who is waiting on FDA approval for a medical device he developed with others that helps with aneurysms. He talked about how the device works on the way to the airport. We were intrigued. 

We were so grateful that the flight to Abu Dhabi was 12 hrs instead of 16 hrs. While waiting to board I asked a staff member is the flight was full. She said first and business class were full but there were a few empty swat in economy if I wanted to change seats. I said ‘NO way I am sitting next to the most handsome guy on the plane.’  We laughed and I went back in line. We were in the last group to board, group 6. As the last of group 3 were boarding she caught my eye and signaled for us to come over and she nodded to the ‘gatekeeper’ that it was okay. She let us board with group 4! She said something funny like ‘so you can enjoy sitting next to the most handsome man’.  We were thrilled. If we hadn’t gotten on with the earlier group we would have never had room for our carry on luggage. This plane held 600 passengers, an Air Bus 800, the biggest commercial jet. Some of them have apartments in them!! Oh those emirs…

The trip was doable although we were cramped in our seats and I was having muscle spasms in my back. A couple of ibuprofen took care of it. It was so much better than a 16 hr flight. We both slept on the plane after a week of poor rest. We arrived in Abu Dhabi and caught our next flight after a two to three hour layover. It was a quick three hr flight to Ahmedabad. Ron had asked the staff member if we got priority boarding since we now have ‘silver’ status with Etihad. He said yes. We got in line for our group 4 boarding and again we were signaled to front. This time we were upgraded to BUSINESS class!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could hardly wait to recline that chair to sleep position. I told Ron I wanted to enjoy the great food, recline and sleep all at once. I never got to sleep so I thought I would ask if we could just keep flying so I could get a nap in but decided against that idea.

It took over an hour to retrieve our luggage in Ahmedabad. I discovered that they do not have conveyor belts to off load luggage. It is done manually. I thought we would have to spend the night there. OY! Rahul was there to take us home. His new car was sitting in our driveway. He is fast becoming an Uber driver. He and Ron negotiated a deal where we would pay him almost twice as much to be our driver in his car and we would sell our car when we returned. By selling it in December instead of January, we avoid the depreciation related to the car being last years model. He is so excited.  We made scrambled eggs and toast for dinner and unpacked our bags. Ron and I never wait until the next day to unpack even though we were both tired. We fell into bed exhausted around 11:30. We were just starting to adjust to US time when we left so…it will be a few days of transition back to our time zone here.

                           

Friday

I took it easy today because between jet lag, lack of sleep for over a week and starting a cold, I didn’t feel like doing much. I did get a few groceries and then decided that was enough. I rested and slept some in the afternoon.

 Ron started work on selling the car, posting an ad on line and creating posters to put up on campus. The car should sell easily because we bought it new and it has low miles and it less than six months old. He has listed it at a reasonable price and is willing to negotiate. We know we can sell it to brokers and we got quote the day we left so we know what they will pay for it which helped Ron set the price.

I made a spaghetti super with salad and had made the sauce before I left so just needed to thaw it. Afterwards we went downstairs and watched Patton on the TV. We toddled off to bed at 12:30 and we slept until 8:00.

The on-line ad has generated a lot of interest in the car. Two people have come by and more are schedule for later . We feel sure we can sell it near our price and we are hoping we can get the money wired to our bank in the US to avoid any money issues since the banks are still overwhelmed with the demonetization that started about two weeks before we left.