Life is a rollercoaster...
Don't worry. This is not about Ronan Keating crooning "Life is a rollercoaster" to a million teenage hearts and causing a warp in the space-time continuum.
Life in India is a rollercoaster seems to be the general feel from an American expat family in Bangalore...
".. the rhythm to being an American expat in India. The roller coaster analogy is probably the most helpful at illuminating the general feel of it in most things.
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But the roller coaster is about more than just cool adventures and minor (and some major) annoyances. There's just not much middle here - no gentle sloping part to this ride where you go peacefully around the corner and reflect on the rest of the park.
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Now, since I realize this sounds like me bitching about our pampered existence, I am bitching about a full-time staff of three people in a palm-tree lined resort. I know. There's times I just loose all patience.- I CAN DO MY OWN DAMN LAUNDRY AND DRIVE MY OWN DAMN CAR!!! Stop calling me "ma'am"! And... stop calling my 2 year old "sir".
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It took us 4 months to get a bank account opened and its been 8 months and we STILL dont have screens on our windows. But...you can call a party planner on a Wednesday and throw a full blown St Patricks day themed party 2 days later."
Check out the full post here.
All these maids and drivers seem such an inefficient allocation of labor to somebody coming from a high-labor-cost economy (aka DIY culture aka you-gonna-charge-100-bucks-an-hour-for-that-!!! culture). In this case, I think the problem is aggravated by the fact that one spouse in an expat family usually doesn't work. So there really is no need for so much domestic help. But I am sure many all-IT families would love to afford this.
Gave me a chuckle when I read the "stop calling my 2 year old 'sir'" part. We now have a part-time maid back home in India to help Mom in the morning so that everybody can leave on time. My li'l 7-year old sis positively demands the maid to call her "sir"!! And they usually do!
But the biggest problem any expat family will face is the total lack of privacy. Everybody brazenly wants to know everything about everybody. The whole notion of privacy is lost on many many people. I had touched on this in a previous post about paper email in India.
Yes India is a very chaotic place where everybody wants to take the shortcut. But what Frank Sinatra sang about New York can equally be applied to this chaos - "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere".
Life in India is a rollercoaster seems to be the general feel from an American expat family in Bangalore...
".. the rhythm to being an American expat in India. The roller coaster analogy is probably the most helpful at illuminating the general feel of it in most things.
...............................
...............................
But the roller coaster is about more than just cool adventures and minor (and some major) annoyances. There's just not much middle here - no gentle sloping part to this ride where you go peacefully around the corner and reflect on the rest of the park.
...............................
...............................
Now, since I realize this sounds like me bitching about our pampered existence, I am bitching about a full-time staff of three people in a palm-tree lined resort. I know. There's times I just loose all patience.- I CAN DO MY OWN DAMN LAUNDRY AND DRIVE MY OWN DAMN CAR!!! Stop calling me "ma'am"! And... stop calling my 2 year old "sir".
...............................
...............................
It took us 4 months to get a bank account opened and its been 8 months and we STILL dont have screens on our windows. But...you can call a party planner on a Wednesday and throw a full blown St Patricks day themed party 2 days later."
Check out the full post here.
All these maids and drivers seem such an inefficient allocation of labor to somebody coming from a high-labor-cost economy (aka DIY culture aka you-gonna-charge-100-bucks-an-hour-for-that-!!! culture). In this case, I think the problem is aggravated by the fact that one spouse in an expat family usually doesn't work. So there really is no need for so much domestic help. But I am sure many all-IT families would love to afford this.
Gave me a chuckle when I read the "stop calling my 2 year old 'sir'" part. We now have a part-time maid back home in India to help Mom in the morning so that everybody can leave on time. My li'l 7-year old sis positively demands the maid to call her "sir"!! And they usually do!
But the biggest problem any expat family will face is the total lack of privacy. Everybody brazenly wants to know everything about everybody. The whole notion of privacy is lost on many many people. I had touched on this in a previous post about paper email in India.
Yes India is a very chaotic place where everybody wants to take the shortcut. But what Frank Sinatra sang about New York can equally be applied to this chaos - "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere".
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