Road Construction from Hell

My office is located in an office park that sits just above a junction where the roads from Agra, Faridabad and Noida merge to head into Delhi.  Usually, this is an advantage, as it feeds into the city on a long, straight four-lane road (in reality 6 lanes) that moves relatively expeditiously on normal days.  I have been relatively oblivious to the issues created by this as the chaos from merging these major arteries is usually sorted into the controlled havoc that I have come to recognize as “normal” by the time the traffic reaches my area. 

Apparently, a few years ago, they decided to “fix” the junction by creating overpasses and underpasses to facility a smooth transition.  This construction has been going on since I arrived, but until now, has not impacted my route.  That all changed last week.

The usually route I take is now blocked, so we must join the hoard of displaced motorist on an access road that runs parallel to the construction headed in the opposite direction in order to make a U-turn to come back through the construction and get on the long, straight road home.  If it sounds complicated, it is. 

As typical with India, there was no forethought into how to deviate the thousands of cars that use this route every day; there was no thought when they closed the main road as to what impact diverting 100,000 cars onto a dirt road in the middle of the rainy season would have; and there was absolutely no thought given in how half of those cars would make the U-turn.  It is the most assed-up road construction solution I have ever seen.

It begins with 3 rows of cars on a single lane access road, packed bumper to bumper, jockeying for position for the 2 inches that the car in front just gave up.  This lurching movement is not unusual in India.  What makes this one extra fun is the car caught on the outside runs the risk getting bogged down in the mud and jacking up what little forward progress the group is experiencing.  If it does head off into the mud, the odds of getting it unstuck within the current day are nil. 

Any progress, though, is controlled by the cars trying to make the U-turn a half a mile ahead.  In India, no one has the ability to anticipate needs, so as the mass of cars inch past the turn off point, one car in the left lane will realize that, in fact, he needs to make the right turn.  He will then inch forward blocking all forward movement until he can get across and out though the small opening in the construction barrier.  Just to make things interesting, the motorist in the right lane, seizing the opportunity to move forward will lunge into the open spot in front of the opening and block the car moving from left to right essential ensuring that no one moves for the next 20 minutes.  Lastly, since the opening can accommodate roughly one vehicle at a time, the opening will now be filled with cars coming through in the opposite direction trying to join the flow. All the while, everyone is blowing their horns as if the sound waves alone were going to free up this mangled mess.  It is absolutely maddening!

It now takes me over an hour to simply get through the ¼ mile labyrinth of cars, mud and barriers before getting on the long, straight road home.  A once serene 20-minute commute has turned into an epic, endless gladiator battle with chariots of steel. 

I have learned to simply put in my headphones, open a book and let the driver handle the traffic.  Less Indians die this way!

HSBC - The World's Most Incompetent Bank! - Part II

Upon arriving in India, my Director of Finance told me that we, as a company, bank with HSBC and he could help me set up an HSBC account through the Indian branch here in Delhi.  This would give me all the benefits of HSBC’s global network and when I returned to the states, the account would follow me home – a kind of end around of the incompetency of the US branch.  Sounded reasonable.  

He called the bank and they sent a Vice President to my office to fill out the application and collect the documents.  They, then, followed me home to get the signatures of my wife and copies of her documents.  This is service, I thought … naively having only been in India a few months!

Now that I have been in India for over a year, I now understand that Indians would crawl through a mile of human waste to get your business, but would not walk across the office to keep it.  This was no exception.  From the moment the account was open, the illusion of customer service disappeared and was replaced by a level of incompetence typically only seen with politicians.  As much as I would love to lay the blame at the feet of typical Indian incompetence and laziness, I think this is one of those mystical occurrences when a poorly run organization mixes with a culture that embraces all its shortcomings. The result is an experience that so absurd, it defies logic.

It began with the cash transfer into the account.  The gentlemen that were so helpful in coming to the office and the house to open the account may have left out one critical detail concerning how their bank handles transfers - they take a significant chunk for themselves.  I was furious.  I was not angry at the fee, as I am reasonable enough to understand that the bank needs to make money, but I was pissed that they did not disclosed the fee.  I made my usual calls to the bank explaining to the VP that it was not a question of “if” the fees would be refunded, but “when.” “The real question”,” I explained, “was if he would be around to see it!”

Anyone who knows me, knows I have a sense of “justice” that runs deep –especially when I think I am in the right (which is almost always).  I believe this justice needs to be pursued with every ounce of strength I can summon – the more casualties the better!  I am not saying this is right, I am just stating a fact. 

I began an email campaign at HSBC India that started with the local branch and finally fell on the ear of the Regional Vice President of the Bank.  I outlined how trust is essential in a banking relationship and once a bank gets a reputation of unethical behavior, especially in an expat community as tight as the one in Delhi, customers began to flee from the bank like Obama from accountability (too soon?).  It could really damage the careers of all associated with said financial institution.  3 hours after the email was received, I had confirmation that the charges were reversed and the offending banking officer had been terminated.  You can’t say I didn’t warn him.

Over the next 12 months, things continued to get worse.  80% of my checks were declined for signature match.  Seriously, signature match? What year is this?  In India, every check is manually compared to the signature on file and any deviation, no matter how slight, causes a rejection.  Can anyone remember the last check you had rejected for signature match? In addition, my ATM card stopped working . . . in December; checks I ordered were never delivered; and bank never returned my calls.  A few weeks ago, I reached my limit and went down to the branch to address these issues in person.

The type of account I have has an individual assigned to it called a Relationship Manager.  My Relationship Manager was a 20 something Indian woman that knew less about banking and the working of HSBC than I did.  After sitting in the lobby for 10 minutes while she chatted happily on her mobile, I was finally asked to come in to her office.  We went through the list of issues and her proposed solutions.

• Signature Match:  Her solution was to complete another signature card and, in her mind, that would cure the issue.  I tried to explain that all signatures have slight deviations from signing to signing and if I filled out another card, my next signing would deviate from that.  There is no exact repeatability in signatures; there is only reasonable match.  This stumped her, so I let it go hoping to use my political clout on another, more solvable issue.

• ATM Card: In her system, my ATM card was fine even though when we walked down to the ATM machine it was rejected.  This confused her, but did not inspire her to solve the issue.  I asked for the card to be reset and a new PIN sent to my home.  Reluctantly, she agreed.

It was at this point, that she realized that my address had been blocked.  This, obviously, accounted for why the first group of checks had not been sent and why all correspondence from the bank had never reached my house.  Apparently, they had tried to send something in February and it was returned, so they blocked the address for security purposes.  In all fairness, my mail is a little unreliable due to my refusal to pay a bribe to the postman last November during the Diwali season (it is like Christmas).

I asked her to change the address to my work address, but this was a major issue.  She needed me to provide a utility bill from my work address with my name on it.  Now, I am not sure where you work, but where I work, the company typically does not put its water and electricity into the employee’s names.  I explained this to her using a pithy combination of fact and sarcasm – it was not appreciated.  In the end, she agreed to unblock the address, reorder the checks and send both the checks and the PIN to the home address.  I skeptically agreed and left the bank with no hope of ever seeing the posted items again. 

I few weeks later, I get a call from a woman from HSBC informing me that my cook was attempting to cash a check and inquiring if I wrote said check.  I said that I had.  She then explained that the account had been frozen, yes frozen, due to me not updating the account with my new visa information.  “My what?” I retorted.  She explained that all foreign accounts needed a current visa on file or the account would be frozen.  I explained to her, in my best Denis Leary voice, that I had no idea and this is the type of information of which one might want to inform their account holders – you know, since the result is a frozen account!  This time, my pithy combination replaced fact with a flurry of explicatives – the sarcasm remained the constant (needless to say).  This was rapidly followed by my explaining to her that she needed to figure out a way to pay my cook or “I will get in my car and come down there and bring a shit storm upon you of such magnitude that people in the bank will talk about long after you have been fired!”  I remember this quote because upon uttering it, I looked up to see my secretary in my doorway with her jaw completely dropped. She often reminds me of this.    

The cook was paid! 

At this point, I had had enough.  My secretary and I set about to find out who the top dog was at HSBC in India.  Once we found her name, we then set about deciphering the HSBC email suffix system.  Once we cracked this, I wrote an email to the President of HSBC India outlining all the above issues sans the sarcasm and cursing.

Within 2 hours, my account was reopened, my address changed, a third checkbook ordered and, along with my new PIN number, sent to my work address.  When the call came, you could tell that there was general sense of “give this man anything he wants.”  I should have asked for a higher interest rate on my accounts!

In the end, the bank is now on its very best behavior with me.  The original Relationship Manager is seeking other career opportunities; I have written two checks that have not been rejected; and my ATM card is working like a champ. I received a follow up call a few days later asking if all my issues had been resolved.  I told the person that they had for now, but that I will not soon lose the email address of the President. 

In India, it is good to know the boss!

HSBC - The World's Most Incompetent Bank!

When you live in a foreign country, banking is always a concern that must be dealt with upon arrival.  You have several choices and your choice typically depends on how advanced the financial system is in your chosen country.  For instance, if you were moving to Europe which has a very advanced and competent financial system, you would get yourself a good credit card that does not charge a fee for foreign transactions and live through your plastic.  If, though, you were sent to say India where the 40% - 50% of the economy is transacted through the black market, cash becomes the primary currency.

This leaves you with two options.  Option 1 is to use you ATM card to withdrawal your cash.  The upside to this is that you have all the mechanisms already in place to execute it.  You have a US bank, an ATM card and best of all, since you are still paid directly into your US bank account, you have a reserve of money on which to draw.  The downside is that your bank may want a fee or worse yet, a percentage of each withdrawal.  This can get expensive very quickly.

Option 2 is that you set up a bank account in your new country.  This is incredibly cumbersome in highly regulated countries like India and requires more paperwork than downgrading a sovereign nation’s bond rating.  There are now, though, banks that have networks in many different countries that allow you to set up an account in your home country and effortlessly transfer money around the world for your discretionary use … or so they say. 

When I was “selected” to go to India, I reached out to one such bank, HSBC.  I have seen their ATM machines ion every country from Vietnam to Turkey, so I figured it must be a competent global bank.  I figured wrong.   

The odyssey began in June of 2010.  I thought I would get ahead of the curve and open an HSBC account in the US.  I went on line and filled out all the forms, but near the end of the process, the website crashed and the application could not be completed or submitted.  I logged out and began again.  When I tried to submit it this time, the website told me it was a duplicate application.  Hum?  I called their crack customer service folks in Buffalo, NY, but they were about as helpful as Nancy Pelosi in a deficit reduction workshop.  In the end, they told me to wait a few days and resubmit the application on-line.  The next day I left for India. 

While in India, I was able to get in touch with someone in Buffalo who actually knew what to do.  She put me in touch with a “Relationship Manager” who took all my information, submitted the application and said that a packet would be mailed to my house with all the account information and passwords to initiate the account.  A month later, when I arrived back in Minneapolis, it had not arrived.

I called my “Relationship Manager” and he told me that it showed mailed and therefore it must be an error on my side.  I did not take his assessment of the situation as quietly as he would have liked.  We eventually agreed that HSBC should mail it again.  I explained that I would be vacating he address in two weeks, so I need it post haste.  Two weeks later, as I turned out the lights for the final time in the house, it still had not arrived. I gave up as I had more pressing issues at hand … like moving to India.

Three months later, I returned to the US for business. I, again, called my “Relationship Manager” to explain that I had not received the package.  He told me he would once again mail it out.  I explained that I no longer resided at that address and he would need to main it to a different address.  He said that he could not do that.  He would have to mail it to the address on the account.  If I would go on-line and change the address, then he could mail it anywhere I wanted.  I, choosing my words carefully, explained that the account password is in the package and without it, I cannot log on to change the address to which the package with the password should be mailed.  Are you freak’n kidding me?  He retorted that there was nothing he could do.  I, then, asked for him to close the account.  In order to close the account, he would need to send me a form and get my signature, but he could, once again, only send said form to the address on the account.  I cannot fully account for the next ten minutes, but it would suffice to say that I invented a new category of rage – Bank Rage!

In the end, I worked my way up through the bank hierarchy and eventually found someone to close the account.  And that is where the HSBC story should have ended, but it did not…

The American Citizens Support Association

Throughout the last year, you have heard me make reference to the American Citizens Support Association or ACSA.  I have referred to it as the “American Embassy Club” or simply “The Club.”  I think it warrants further explanation as it plays a significant role in the life of an American Ex-patriot in New Delhi.

ACSA is an arm of the US Embassy here in New Delhi and is located on embassy property adjacent to the embassy residence compound.  It is a fairly large campus consisting of a main building, a pool, a baseball diamond and a few out buildings. Anyone who has ever been on a military base will recognize the feel of the place.  Everything is whitewashed, well marked with clinical signs and very little overall personality.  In the main building, there is a bowling alley, a gym, a bookstore, a coffee shop and usually a local vendor hawking their wares.  The centerpiece to the main building, though, is the newly renovated restaurant. 

Before you get you hopes up that the restaurant is some cornucopia of super-deliciousness, it is not.   It serves average food, by waiters with a below average work ethic.  It does, though, have many things that you will never find outside the hallowed walls of the US Embassy.   For that reason, and that reason only, I frequent it often. 

Reason #1 – It serves beef! Yes, the illegal meat of Delhi is served freely on this little plot of US territory.  You can get Philly Cheese Steaks and Hamburgers with impunity.  They are not great Philly Cheese Steaks and Hamburgers, but after a year, I am not picky.  They also have a nice selection of Mexican food, like fajitas and taco salads which you cannot find anywhere in Delhi.  But that is not the entire story. 

ACSA also accepts US dollars and, if you have an account there, like we do, you can pay your monthly bills with a US check.  This is hugely convenient as I am paid directly into my US account and, although I have a Indian bank account here, it is ludicrously expensive to have money transferred to India.  Being able to pay with a US check saves me a great deal of money and makes ACSA a convenient place to hang out. 

Now, many of you are probably thinking that the other benefit is that you get away from the local population and get to interact with you fellow countrymen alone. Well, you would be wrong.  A large percentage of the population of New Delhi are naturalized US citizens and feel that it is important to join ACSA for their image.  After all, it is a club and Indians must join all the clubs to be considered important.  They bring with them all the habits and rudeness that most of us are trying to escape when we cross through the gate of the US Embassy.  Many times, I have had to remind Indians at the pool that behavior that may be acceptable outside these walls is not acceptable inside.  It is the one aspect that is most disappointing.  AS well, many other nationalities are able to join to club which makes for an interesting mix – especially when the French schools are out. 

Overall the place is, though, a nice get-a-way from the overwhelming dust, noise and aggressiveness of Delhi and, for those nationalities not allowed to join, is a point of jealousy within the ex-pat community.   For me, it is where I go for a swim and a beef fix and that sometimes is just enough to get me through the week!

Sick – Part 3

Well, I am still sick. Still have a hacking cough, headache and have cough so much and so hard, I have actually pulled muscles in my abdomen. To add insult to injury, I am still unable to sleep for a period longer than 20 minutes at a time. This, I guess, is the irony of having whatever it is I have. You need rest to get better, but the disease creates symptoms to prevent you from sleeping. Hum?

This other epiphany that I have had since being sick is that Indian doctors are no better than the beggars on the streets. As you know, I went to the clinic last week and was prescribed a ton of medicine after going through a blood test and throat culture. Of course, the prescriptions were given long before the test results come back. At the beginning of this week, my secretary called the doctor back to tell him that his prescribed treatment was having no impact and the test results were all negative or neutral. The doctor was adamant that I would have to come back into the clinic to be re-evaluated. Now, there has been absolutely no change in the symptoms from when he examined me the first time, so why could he not simply change the prescriptions, up the dosage or send me to a specialist? Well, I will tell you why?

In order to see the doctor, I would have to check into the clinic again. This would cost me 600 Rs or roughly $13. Then, the doctor will run another battery of irrelevant test at $40 a pop. Once those are done, and not waiting for the results, he will then prescribe another bucketful of medication that may or may not impact the hacking cough. In the end, I will be out a couple of hundred dollars and will have in no way altered the natural course of the virus.

My other option is not to go back to the doctor, feel exactly the same way for the same amount of time and save the money, the time and the frustration. I guess in the end, you get exactly what you pay for!

Happy 4th of July!

Saturday night was the 4^th of July celebration at the American Embassy.  As many of you will remember, I went to the wrong place last year and it did not really pan out the way I expected.  Since then, I have been looking forward to this celebration as many of the American expats have said it is the highlight of the year for them.  I really had no idea what to expect, but I did hear that the food was very Americana and that was really all I needed to be motivated – even in my sickly state

Arriving at the gate, you can see that someone had though through the process …  on paper.  Everyone attending was supposed to have RSVP’ed with your passport number, so verification of citizenship could be done before the event.  Very smart.  As well, to expedite the process all ACSA members (this is the club at the Embassy to which I so copiously refer) could buy their tickets in advance (which I had) and only needed a quick check in at a separate booth before being allowed to enter.  This was the theory…

I arrived at the embassy around 7:00pm and the entrance was simply mayhem.  They had set up a tent in front of the compound and had designated separate lines for people that needed tickets, ACSA members and those not on the list (i.e. people that did not RSVP).  So, at least the structure was there.  What, apparently, they had not factored in was that “Indian Variable” (patent pending on that phrase, by-the-way!).  

If this process had been executed by a group of middle school children from Alabama, it would have had a better chance of success.  Unfortunately, it was delegate to the low-level Indians who work at the US Embassy.  This meant that even the simplest tasks, like enforcing a line, completely broke down.  The more complex tasks of, for instance, checking passport numbers against a list, created paralysis.  In the end, a US embassy employee had to step in and bark out direction to the thoroughly overwhelmed cadre behind the tables.

To add fuel to the fire, most of the people in line were Indian.  At first, it seems a bit odd, but let me remind you that half of Delhi has been naturalized as US citizens.  You see, the Indians have figured out that if they go to the US, get a job and stay for 10 years, they can get your US citizenship and qualify for Social Security.  They can then move back to India and disappear in one of the thousands of tax loopholes and collect their social security when they retire.

Anyway, when you combine the utter uselessness of the Indians working the tents with the aggressiveness and rudeness of the Naturalized US-Indian citizens, you inevitably have a mess - people pushing their way to the head of the queues and the Indian gatekeepers unable to sort the wheat from the chaff, while the US born citizens look on in disgust.  I heard someone in the crowd tell a woman that if she is going to hold a US passport, she needs to start acting like an American and behaving in line.  It was priceless. 

The celebration took place on the baseball field with a large stage at first base and a huge area with a bar on the pitcher’s mound.  The food was correctly positioned in the outfield and there were tables everywhere.  It was wide open with plenty of room to move which is good, because it was about 100 degrees and 87% humidity.  You just do not want to be too close to anyone.

There was food and plenty of it:  Hamburgers, hotdogs, Mexican and BBQ.  They had french fries, chicken nuggets and onion rings, as well - kind of a state fair menu, if you will.  Now for many of you, this menu of fried food and heavy meat may not seem like nirvana, but for us here in India, this is the holy grail of celebratory food.  These are all the things we sit around and pine for, dream of and the first thing we get when we are released from India.  The only thing missing was that none of it was on a stick (Minnesota state fair joke). 

It was hot and I was not feeling well, so a grab a BBQ sandwich and some onion rings, scarfed the meal down and headed out.  I was actually in the embassy less time than it took me to get through the check-in process.  It was worth it, though, as I have not had BBQ in almost a year and that was worth the time invested. 

As I was waiting for my sandwich, though, the festivities were kicked off by the ambassador and other government officials.  We even had our own personal greetings from the Secretary of State and the President.  While Clinton gave her greetings from a sofa in neutral setting, Obama’s were given appropriately from the floor of a factory in which there was no one working.  There he sat alone giving us his best wishes surrounded by idle equipment and parked forklifts.  You were almost waiting for the lights to be turned off half way through his speech. Seriously, did nobody in his brain trust realize that maybe an idle factory might not be the best setting?

All in all, it was a decent little event.  The BBQ and Onion rings were good and my only regret was that I was not feeling my usually self and could not go back for a Philly Cheese Steak!

Happy 4^th of July!

Indian TV

I remember when I was a kid, the biggest benefit of being sick is that you got to have that tiny TV from the kitchen put in your room and were able to watch the Price is Right from the comfort of you bed.  No matter how bad the illness was, watching TV on a 4 inch black & white screen made it all better. Here, Indian TV is almost as painful as the disease itself. 

We have satellite TV and amongst our 335 channels, we get many Western or pseudo-western channels.  I say pseudo-western, because they are not TNT, FOX or NBC explicitly, but are stations that buy the programs from these cable channels and run them. This is all good on paper, but the issue is that all the programming and timing is controlled locally by the satellite TV providers which are the same geniuses that provide the Internet.  Worst yet, even if they get a good show, the content is controlled by the government censors.

Yes, the censors.  Everything that the hypocritical Hindu culture finds offensive - swearing, sex, references to swearing and sex, things that are not swearing and sex, but could be construed in the outer reaches of insanity as related to swearing or sex - are bleeped or simply removed. I was watching “Two and a Half Men” the other day and they actually bleeped the phrase “That sucks!” Then there is the violence.  Any violence of any kind is completely removed.  I was watching Beverly Hills Cop and when anyone got shot or punched, it was removed. For the love of God, I saw that movie when it came out in the 80s with my Grandmother Dorothy and she loved it. How graphic could it be?  

Next is the programming. Like all things Indian, the programming is done haphazardly and typically does not follow any logic in the way that it is done.  For instance, they recently decided to run season 1 of Modern Family.  Good choice.  They ran a new episode every night for 2 months straight and when they had exhausted the episode, they reran them … every night … for 6 months.  How about spacing it out and giving us something to look forward to each week.  They also advertise shows and then never run them.  A few months ago, they ran ads for a new season of NCIS, gave a day and a time and then forgot to run it.  Even when they do get it right, though, you wish they hadn’t as every time slot is more full of ads than show.

Advertisements are a huge issue when watching TV in India for both frequency and content.  When watching a movie, even on HBO, there are 8 minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of show.  This is an outrageous ratio.  You can actually go the bathroom while fast-forwarding through ads on DVR’d shows.  On normal TV shows, they run 5 minutes of ads every 10 minutes.  The best part is that in each of the aforementioned time slots, they only actually run about 5 different ads, but they repeat them over and over again for the entire 5 to 8 minutes only to take the last minute to recap all the ads in a “presented by” statement. Remember back in the 50s and 60s, when the announcer would come on at the beginning of the show and announce that Hee Haw was “brought to you by Kellogg’s Corn Flakes?” Same thing, except here it is done in an overly deep Indian voice trying desperately to sound American.  It borders on the insane!

As frustrating as the frequency is, he content of the ads is enough to drive you to drink.  The ads in India are so poorly thought through, that when we see a new ad, we have a running contest to figure out what they are selling. Sometimes, neither of us can guess it.  The basic premise of all Indian ads is to showcase a Bollywood actor or actress in situations that simply do not exist in India regardless if the context actually supports the product.

An Example:

(Click on the links below to watch.  
After watching, click on the back arrow to return to blog)  

Titan

In this ad, the charming Aamir Khan picks up a woman in a bar and they dance.  Firstly, in a country of arrange marriage, this just does not happen. In most clubs in India, men dance with men and women cower in the corner.  Secondly, what does that have to do with a watch?

Another example

Coke

Coke is an advertising giant and this was the best submission from all the Indian Advertising firms? Really?  I have seen more creativity from dolphins at Sea World.  

And this one!

Tata Manza

OK, first of all, if the tag line of "A Class Apart" means that no other car could be this poorly designed, than I am with the creators.  Secondly, they just make up stuff like "Digital Intelligence."  What the heck is that?  I surmise, it is a radio with a digital tuner.  Imagine seeing this ad in a loop 4 times for 8 minutes and every 10 minutes for three hours.  Give me a bottle and a gun!

USHA

Finally, there is this one.  Can someone tell me what the hell a guy dancing through the streets with a samosa has to do with a fan.  Yes, in case you did not catch it, it was a commercial for a fan.  

Unfortunately, I could not find any of the truly annoying ads, as it seems Garnier Skin Whiting Cream has not discovered "You-Tube."  Eventually, I will find them and show them to you, so that you may experience what torture truly is.  

So, as I lay here hacking up a lung and simply trying to breath, TV is my only outlet.  It may be the best incentive never to get sick again!