Settling In-dia

I am desperate for things to go well today with our settling in process in India. We have a laundry list of things to get done today (not limited to getting our car, securing a driver to drive the car, picking up an oven, ordering a TV, collecting the rest of the keys for our new place, sending my passport off to collect our air shipment, getting mattresses delivered, etc.)...not to mention actually getting some work done for my day job. As promised, moving to India has been a frustrating experience. Some things they do better, and some things they don't do well at all here...for the good example: many places have escalators that will not turn on until someone is approaching, which keeps it from running wastefully all day...for the not good example: managing customer expectations. It seems the retail culture here is to provide every customer the instant gratification of the words “yes, that is possible” regardless of the actual level of impossibility. You are met with one empty promise after another and it seems many times you have to get very serious/mean before people follow through on such promises. Speaking very generally, it seems they have not yet realized that if they gave an honest answer on when things will be delivered/installed and what is actually available (rather than what they think the customer wants to hear) they would avoid the unhappy customer scenario all together...which is supposed to be the goal, isn't it? Despite my best efforts, I have been forced to waste large amounts of time waiting around for deliveries that were never really going to happen and events that were never really going to occur. I have been working with a relocation team, but again, it seems they weren't serious about getting things done until they realized I am not really that nice, especially when my time and money is at stake.

Let me be clear here, I have been misled by many U.S. retailers in my life, but at least in the U.S. I am comfortable with my recourse options. In India when the going gets tough the person on the other end of the phone line usually only really speaks Hindi, not American English. So I have to rely on others to get things straightened out for me...which creates a desperate and sort of hopeless feeling. It is a difficult transition to go from a super independent New York working girl to a super dependent Expat in India. I am approaching week 3 of our adventure, I have been told it takes about 2 months to get settled...as you have already figured out, I have 5 more weeks of frustrating days. Even still, I am confident I will triumph and will emerge on the other end better equipped to take on this 2 year adventure. At a minimum T.J. will be here by the end of the week, so I will be able to leverage off of his schedule to sort out some of our chaos. I was able to take a break from it all to celebrate a birthday and spend time with some friends in Goa this weekend. I just went for a night, but it was great to get away.



We do at least have a place to live, even if we do not have a single piece of furniture. Our place:

One upside to not living in New York is actually having some extra living space!! I will work on fixing the furniture problem today!

Lots of Love!
-H