With his favourite uncle

In April in Singapore 

Relocating to Singapore (Guest post by Banupriya)

                                               At Bin Tan Island, Indonesia, a 1 hour ferry ride from Singapore


I’ve been wanting to write this blogpost since we moved to Singapore and finally got the inclination (with a little pushing from Vijay!).

When Vijay got his scholarship at NUS, Singapore and we wanted to move as a family...that's when it all started. We started calculating our living expenses including Vibhat's school fees. Meanwhile we enquired with friends living in Singapore. They gave us a figure which scared us. Some were telling us that it would difficult to live here with only our stipend. It was really scary and I backed out and started encouraging Vijay to go by himself. Vibhat and I would join later after a year if he got a job. But he was very clear that we move to Singapore with him. Now what? We started doing our budget planning on how to live with Vijay's stipend and our savings here in the bank. Meanwhile I would try to get a job there after reaching and if I got one, the salary would help.

  Finally the big day came and Voila! I landed up with my 6 year old kid in Singapore with a lot of doubts. and not very convinced with Vijay's financial planning. Initially I was very careful in spending and kept converting every dollar spent into rupees :-). It was painful after living a comfortable life in India, to live here without so many things. But later on I got used to it and starting buying necessary things. We had our budget for every month. We stayed within that but did enjoy eating out too in Food courts and  Hawkers Centres which were pretty okay and were within our budget. So we also enjoyed tasting local delicacies.

With 4000 $ per month we are able to manage. Here is the breakup:

House rent - 1500,

Vibhat’s school fees and bus facility - 1300, 

Living expenses - 700

Travelling inside Singapore (use Public transport) & Phone recharges for me n Vijay - 200

Doc's visit and miscellaneous things -  300

We are able to live within $4000 and also enjoy sightseeing around Singapore. 

The idea behind writing this post is to encourage other students of NUS not to get scared to bring their family along and to take the big step comfortably, of course after doing the required financial planning.

Vibhat is going to school !!! Its called the Global Indian International School. Its about 5 km from home and Priya is currently dropping him and picking him up. He did very well on the admission test. But now he has a challenge - Hindi ! We chose that as his language, but he hasn't learnt much of it at his previous school. Neither Priya and I know much.
He was quite sad and stressed on his first day and cried three times, he told us. And the second day one time, so getting better :-). His previous school was the Earth School Montessori was very .. Montessorian (calm, quiet, teachers are very sweet) and its a bit of an adjustment for him to a mainstream school and this one in particular. Poor kiddo!

Using a Matrix sim card

User experience with using a Matrix SIM for foreign travel.
When I moved to Singapore, I brought with me a Matrix SIM card. While my experience leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, I'm not a fan of random badmouthing of companies that I see on the web. Below is my experience. Its only 1 persons' experience, and its spiced up a little bit for drama. There is also negligence on my part that contributed to the final outcome.

I had bought a plan for 1000 free minutes calling to India at approximately 2,500/- Rs. I expected I would spend this amount on the card. The final amount I spent over 3 weeks is upward of 19,000/- Rs.
In India I did not have knowledge of Singapore calling rates as also data usage, so I was not able to evaluate the plan I took properly. After coming to Singapore, I got busy in settling in at the school, visa matters etc. here and didn't pay sufficient attention to understanding how the phone charges were going. I realized too late that the data and local calling charges on the card were very expensive. I probably even crossed the 1000 Min limit on calling India.

The critical problem is that there is no convenient way to track usage (local calling, free minutes to India, data). This is mindbogglingly bad. To be on this kind of a plan, and not to give people a way to know where exactly they are in their usage is such a bad customer experience, that it crosses the line to where it merits an investigation by the government. After 2 weeks, and multiple phone calls to customer support, I started getting SMSes and recorded phone messages telling me what my balance was, but even then it didn't tell me the breakup for various services. And why did it start only 2 weeks into my trip ?
When one has some number of free minutes but doesn't know when it going to get over, its very problematic. Its hardly practical to keep noting the duration of every call you make.
The other thing that wasn't nice was that local calling rates were very expensive. Again its something that you can't evaluate very well back in India. The calling cards seem to be set up so that you get attracted by the free India calling minutes and then get screwed by the local calls.

The Matrix experience is quite schizophrenic. Any aspect of their service that has to do with generating revenue is extraordinarily good. Any aspect that might lead to revenue erosion is extraordinarily bad.
On the plus side:
1.) When I first contacted a salesperson in Bangalore, he was very knowledgeable, pleasant and courteous. He was also extremely responsive and reliable in follow-up to get me to purchase the card. 
2.) They ran ads on TV and cable sometime back. I found those extraordinarily entertaining and well-made. They also have a cute little box in which they give you the SIM card and usage instructions. These guys remind me of Indigo, the airline, for their branding and marketing ideas. And check out their website.
3.) When I had some trouble getting data service on my phone, the customer service was extraordinarily response in giving me detailed instructions and following up with me over a period of 2 hours until I got it resolved.
4.) The service worked well and call quality etc was all good. I would give them good marks for this.
5.)The most annoying thing is that its remarkably easy to get a phone connection here in Singapore. All it takes is your passport and you can get a SIM at any number of convenience stores around the city. But because I had the convenient Matrix SIM available, I postponed getting a local Singapore SIM. I also postponed setting up WiFi in the apartment properly so I could use WiFi data. These really cost me dear.

Two other people that I consulted about Matrix told me that they had the same kind of experience. That's a total of 3/3 bad customer experiences! 

If you are going ahead with Matrix anyways, things to keep in mind:
Of course the basic thing is that you have to keep an eagle eye on your call usage!
Understand the local calling rate. Check whether the local calling rate applies to incoming too.
Know your data usage. I had an unlimited connection back in India, so didn't really know how much was my average usage. Found out after I came here and paid through my nose, that it is much higher than I thought!

Note: Happy to get feedback from Matrix and hear their side of it. I did send them the substance of the above as a customer complaint and didn't hear back (Oh, yeah, that's another thing, they opened three customer complaints as a result of my calls, and I never heard back on any of them).


Their ads were so good, I will link them in here :-)

On Gold

For some time now I've been puzzling over ... gold. I have an instinctive and visceral dislike for gold jewellery (and the buying of it!). I was trying to get at the root of it and perhaps I have.

The 'buy gold' logic is very compelling. Your wife wants it. (Well atleast my wife does and so do most of our female relatives and a lot of friends, though I'm sure nowadays a lot of women have managed to stay out of it). As a guy it makes sense because it is an investment and not a consumption expense so you're keeping your wife very happy essentially without spending any money! What a win-win !

So why do I hate it so much.

I think its because all the gold comes out at events like weddings, and women overload themselves massively with it. Gold as ornamentation works upto a certain amount of the stuff ; too much and it takes away from beauty instead of complementing or enhancing it. You are no longer a person, you are a hanger to hang all this gold off of.

The primary function of wearing lots of gold jewellery is to communicate the message: 'I have lots of money'. And that's disgusting.

PS: From Sajini, here's a CBS TV segment on the same topic.

http://youtu.be/sUr2E4dfs0Y

On the cost of clothes

Sometime back I started thinking about this idea below of evaluating how one spends money on clothes. I mentioned it in one of the earlier posts on the blog, but then I continued to think about it and found it more and more interesting, so here's the idea now fleshed out more. The intention to keep detailing it out until I can get something to publish in a peer-reviewed journal :-) ( the Journal of Consumer Economics ?)

==

You could evaluate your clothes by dividing the cost of an item by the number of times you wore it. You'd look for a low number to come out of the ratio as that would indicate that it didn't cost you much and you used it a lot, therefore good value. We could call this number the cost per use (CPU). It seems an interesting way to evaluate the worth or the value you get out of it.

I've continued to think about this and find it very interesting. Firstly, you can think about how much money you're wearing everyday. This is the total cost per use of all the things you're wearing (lets restrict it to just clothes, including undergarments and footwear but not jewellery and accessories). I was surprised by the number that I estimated, in my case: greater than 50/-. I wouldn't have thought I was spending that much on clothes every day ! Take a 1500/- Rs pair of jeans which I bought recently ; I'd have to wear it a 100 times for the cost per use to come down to 15/- . I think I'll probably not use it so many times, perhaps 75 times is more like it. So cost per use is Rs 20/-. For other trousers I expect I'll use them even less than 75 times so if they cost the same, the CPU is even higher. A similar calculation for shirts, which could cost 500/- to 700/- for the kind of shirts I wear to work but which I would wear less number of times than trousers before discarding or giving away, perhaps 30-50 times (so CPU average around 15/-). Then calculate the cost for undergarments , shoes/socks, belt . And an unexpected extra, the cost of washing and ironing. Ironing now costs 4/- a garment for me, so that's close to 10/- for ironing itself ! So as I said, adding it all up, a total of Rs 50/- per day.

Its an interesting calculation to do.

The one thing that cost surpringly less for me was footwear. The current pair I use is from Bata, a fairly nice piece that is very reasonably priced at around 450/-. And since I use it everyday pretty much, I've probably used it more than 100 times already, so the cost per wear is down to 4.50 /- already . Very low compared to shirts and pants ! And its in pretty good shape still and could easily go for another 6 months, so the cost per wear is coming down even further. It seems I could cut down the amount I pay on clothes and splurge a little more on footwear, to reach a more optimal point.

For fancy clothes that you wear for special occasions, the cost / use would be much higher than for daily wear clothes. This is because these would be pretty expensive clothes, that we would wear it very few times, so double the effect. For eg. all the suits I've bought, I've used only a couple of times, and then they've gotten too tight for me :-( .

You can start doing this for the other things you buy and use. For example my cellphone cost is horrendous ; each time I've bought a high end phone (both Nokias), I've enjoyed using them a lot but they've lasted relatively short. The first one for eg. cost about 13000 and lasted for about 18 months, so that's close to 750/- per month ! No more expensive phones for me!

On education

What is the purpose of education? There are many answers, and three common ones are below:

-'to succeed in the fast-paced, competitive modern world' (an answer that I find particularly moronic)
-'to equip the child with the knowledge and skills to find work to support themselves'
-'to discover one's talents'

Are you satisfied by any of the above answers ? I'm not, in fact I'm tremendous dissatisfied with the education system (of personal interest now that I am a father). Human minds are complex. We experience emotions - joy, anger, jealousy, contempt,love. We complain about other peoples' actions and justify ours. But do we have to take all these as given, these things are how we are, or is it possible to 'step outside' of oneself, and be able to observe how our minds work, why we react the way we react, what are the hidden motivations or insecurities. As the child is growing up and its character being formed - is it possible to have serious conversations about the rather imperfect nature of the world we live in, with how we rationalize the way we (in India atleast) make our peace with the enormous poverty and suffering outside our doorsteps in order to carry on our lives. Is it possible to teach children to be decent, happy individuals ?

Can we teach children to be alive to the mystery of life ? Here we are, blobs of protoplasm with odd projections that enable us to locomote manipulate, on a large orb circling a ball of fire, in the middle of a vastness we cannot comprehend. We are one in billions today and have been preceded by billions and will be followed by billions. So how do we come to terms with all this ? Normally all this is pushed to the back of the mind so we can get on with the day to day business of life, survival, freedom from pain and discomfort, pleasure, achievement and all that ? Can we teach our children to do a better of job of this than us? And what of the infinite complexity and variety of life on earth. Can we teach our children to be open to that?

Schools have to teach maths, physics and geography and so on. But if we as parents and teachers don't weave in the above we have lost the spirit of education. And this is the state of affairs across the board. I am sure the most expensive and fancy schools don't do that much better of a job than the middle-class schools in this, because the management and the parents are as much invested in the status quo of the world today, in fact even more, so that they are uninterested in questioning it.

Post Script:
We were casually talking about something related to schools at work once, and during that I spontaneously burst out: "I have zero faith in the educational system!". I was myself suprised by my vehemence as it was not premeditated, and to some extent I didn't even know that I felt this way. Some subsequent reflection resulted in the picture I lay out above. I find it ironic that having done excellently by conventional standards in most of my education, I now am completely disdaining it. But all the reflection, discovery and learning that happened for me, mostly slowly and haltingly, completely parallel to or outside the educational system, is central to what I am today. I see that as a tremendous failure of the education system.

I don't think many people feel so negatively about schools as I do. This leads to a nicely ironic dilemma for me: at least others are comfortable with the current system, and they are true to themselves if they don't fight against it. If I don't, I am being a complete fake. And the job I am talking about above is so gigantic and so seems so much beyond my capabilities.

The above thoughts are tremendously influenced by J. Krishnamurti's writings. But I have internalized them so completely and find them so obvious now, that I am not parroting what someone else is saying.


"It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other, not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense, but the actual fact"

Bringing up baby

I haven't been writing about the baby on the blog, taking the shortcut of posting videos instead. Writing takes some 'quiet' time which is hard to come by nowadays.

Lets give it a shot here.

Vibhat is now 8.5 months old. And according to the latest doctor report that's the typical weight of a 13 month old. So that's taken care of immediately, we continue to be far ahead of the curve on weight ! Don't dare make fun of him! He's very nicely proportioned and just darlingly chubby nothing more. Maybe he's taller too and that's how he manages it.

Due to work commitments on my side, we postponed the first hair-cutting that is traditionally done as an event, so that his hair is now far too long and unruly. I'm sure he finds it irritating, poor bebe. The ceremony is on 2nd May at our village in Chittoor district and you all are cordially invited to join!

Priya is completely sucked into the baby's world as the major portion of the work falls on her. Her mother left yesterday so right now she doesn't have any real help as I don't count. We are planning to get a maid or use a pre-school soon. He is also very strongly attached to her which makes life difficult as most of the time he wants her attention. We hope he will come off this in stages.

The first gleanings of a personality that I can make out for Vibhat, is 'strong' ! He is not a mild or meek baby. He jets around the house with great enthusiasm now that he is crawling. He gets angry, as opposed to just being upset, and can scream *pretty* loudly if he feels like it. He doesn't cry a lot though, which is really nice for us. He is physically strong and likes to bang on tables, beat/scratch whoever is carrying him and so on. We have to figure out a way of communicating to him what's acceptable and what's not.

As with all babies I think, the experience and emotions of being a new parent can be quite strong. I resent (when I get the time to think about it!) the constant emotional seesaw from the joy of the baby to the demands it puts on you.

Well, there you have it for a quick summup. Hope I get to write more.

PS: The amazing photo is from Siddhu who managed to catch me looking presentable and smiling a natural smile, and also get a fantastic smile out of Vibhat. Click to enlarge

And one more..

Vibhat Krishna update

Vibhat video at Nemeli

Annaprasanna

And he crawls!

It is amazing to see a newly mobile baby. Look at the energy he puts into it.


In the bathtub:



And one more:

Anantagiri Waterfall

Anantagiri waterfall is a pretty good local tourism thingie. It doesn't seem to be pushed very actively by the tourism folks-that-be and guidebooks, but is a hidden gem. The waterfall itself is quite high and good viewing, one of the higher I've seen. The route to get there is quite an interesting mishmash. The last part of the drive is by a pretty bad mud road of a few kilometers and if you're energetic, its perfect to do it by walk instead, it makes the overall hike a good effort. At the end of the road, there's a steep flight of stairs in order to cross a rail track. Then down on the other side, and about a kilometer through brush to reach the base of the waterfall. Finally a badly maintained final stretch of steep climb alongside the waterfall to get to as high as you dare. Good fun !

Of course the bigger tourist attraction in the area is Borra caves, a really nice limestone formation. Its heavily promoted and a must do on the Araku circuit but well worth it. We didn't take any photos, but there are probably lots on the net if you're interested.

On the way back there were local markets with fresh produce. We bought a huge mound of seethaphal and spring onions. The spring onions was a funny thing, in most places in India it would be considered a bit exotic and used for curiosity value more than anything else, but here it seems a mainstream vegetable because it grows well, and the 'common man' was buying and carrying around spring onions.

Trip to Araku area while at Vizag

Priya, I and kid went to the Araku valley area for a two-day trip. Pretty good.

We stayed at a 'eco-resort' called Tyda Jungle Bells. Not particularly 'eco', but it was built within the jungle sort-of, and generally rustic and pretty nice.











The local Dhimsa dance

And in Vizag

On board a submarine ! With cousin Ramana and daughter Mohita. Can you see the propellor in the background of one of the snaps.







And everybody gets their turn..

Cross-dressing ..Grandmommy loves to dress him up



Who's got more hair ?



The 'V' sign behind the head is all the rage at a particular age...



And now in Vizag, with grandfather at a beach park.

Finally updates start again. Will do the excuses later, hopefully start getting a few photos up every day. These are from a couple of months back.





In his pram (which currently has a wheel off). Chinese product by the way. Another example of China getting into Indian markets in a big way



And in his "Bjorn". Came as a gift from namesake/godfather. Not a sign of Swedish companies invading Indian markets in a big way :-)




The bathed baby. Photos are a significant distortion of the actual state of affairs in terms of my invovlement in giving him a bath or cleaning him.