London Chronicles – First Christmas in London

My first Christmas in London and I decide to spend it outside. 7 years back I was in Amsterdam and had crossed the channel to spend Christmas in London. It was my first trip to London and I still have fond memories. So in tribute to that cross channel Christmas tradition, I decided to spend this Christmas in Amsterdam. Now when you mention Amsterdam to anyone, you can guess what is going through their minds… weed, gays, babes and canals. For me it was none of this. It was two families. Two families which had taken me under their wings all those years back, fed me, cared for me, put a roof over my head when I wanted. For me it was like going back to home. So it was with great excitement that I decided to spend the whole Christmas week here. I shopped for Christmas gifts, did a decent job in wrapping them up and finally packed my bags and landed in Amsterdam.

Everything felt like de ja vu. The names of the shops, the language, the layout of the airport, the bus stand, the final destination, the walk up to the house, the two steps to the entrance, the door, the matriarch who opened the door, the warmth of the hug, the love in the smile, the “at home” feeling when I entered the house. Nothing had changed.

Then the kids came – only they were no longer kids, they were adults, they had their own personalities, their own views, styles. Made me feel older. Then there were new faces. A lot of the people I knew had moved on – as had I. They were no longer in Netherlands. They had been replaced by a larger number of new faces. I met a whole lot of them in the first three days of being here. Many of them had been here for 4-5 years. Their position as a part of the "gang" was far stronger than mine. Who was I –  someone who was here for a few months many years back. Everything had changed.

Then came some of the things that I remember as being things and events that I clearly didn’t like – the incessant partying, the attempts to make conversation with people you don’t want to spend time with, the lack of private time – upon reflection – the last one is an oxymoron of sorts. I am not part of the families but I expect to get private time with them which in retrospect would include excluding me. I’m sure everyone who lives here and is a part of the families lives, expects the same consideration – everyone expects to be equally special, to be invited to that special family dinner, that special family occasion… not sure why that expectation when you know you are an outsider, but the families have indeed been different to me. I have to admit, I do feel quite happy when they introduce me as their eldest kid or offer me the freedom that one would to their own kin. It’s a special relationship and I value it as much as any of the few close relations that I have in life. Some things have not changed.

So I made a decision – this was my vacation. I was not here for anyone but me. I was here to spend some time with people that I genuinely loved. Love that could be sustained only if it was unconditional. I would do what I really felt comfortable doing even if that was not what everyone did or what everyone agreed with – love becomes too much of a bother if you put others ahead of you always. I was touched when I was asked that four days into my vacation, I hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything, did I want to see the sights -  the answer came quite naturally to me. Did I want to see Juhu and Nariman Point and Haji Ali when I visited Mumbai – Nope, I just wanted to be home. That’s what I said. I wanted to hover around the kitchen checking the fridge for leftovers, jabbering away to glory on all topics from man trouble to recipes for cooking steak, raiding the pantry for savouries, lounging on the couch watching TV and feeling lazy, gulping down vegetarian food made for me in a house full of carniviores, getting my leg pulled,  – basically feeling comfortable and safe – feeling at home. I think this may be my best vacation in a really long time.

It is indeed a very merry Christmas.

London Chronicles - My first trip abroad

Don’t be misled by the title – this is in no way a recollection of my trip to Amsterdam which was my maiden international trip. This is when I travelled to Basel for a half day meeting from London – my first travel in my new role from my new “homeland”. The mere frustration and anger that I felt at the end of that trip is adequate for me go on and on about how messed up and manipulative the travel system here is. So I will rant and you will read…..

The biggest bane for any company which purports to be international is it's travel desk. I have come to a conclusion that the more money a company loses on account of it's travel desk the larger they are and the dumber they are. Rates offered by most listed hotels are lesser in many cases when checked directly than when approached via your travel desk. When you ask for quotes, for some reason the travel desk choses to give the most expensive options available. After you have done your research on the internet and have provided them with cheaper fares, they will repackage it and send it back to you as original work. Then there is the whole approval system. The whole option will have to jump through myriad loops of bureaucratic rigmarole. By the time you get the approvals from your bosses who are conveniently located in 3 different timezones, the prices obviously have gone up and then starts the process again. So in effect, an average employee who travels 40%-50% of his / her time on account of work, spends almost the same amount of time arranging the logistics and then claiming expenses (that is a topic for another fun blog).

So, here I was prepared to go to Basel. The visa was in, my presentations to the client were ready – all that was left is get to Basel. The first quote that my travel desk sends me was 350 GBP for London Basel return sector.. you add another 100-150 GBP and you can go to India and back. I am shocked and get cracking on cheapflights.co.uk which tells me that there are tickets on low cost carriers available from GBP 137!! Less than half the price on a normal carrier. I send it to the travel desk with a screenshot of the option and they still come up with a fare higher than what is shown on the net – they come up with GBP 167 which given their competency level I gladly accept. Then comes the approval process which is not too tedious as I have only one approver and he trusts my judgment to a great extent. Somehow between the few hours that it took for the approval to come in, the fares have gone up to GBP 215. I, having worked in the same company for 6 years now and having dealt with at least 3 logistics service providers, had taken an approval for the GBP 350 quote and so was saved from the process of getting new approvals for the fresh fares. So my tickets are issued. No one in the travel desk bothers to inform me of the baggage charges with this excellent orange logoed airline. So I land at the airport with minimal luggage – at least minimal as per me. I have a laptop bag (which does contain only my laptop and it's charger), a small handbag, with some cosmetics, wallet etc and a small carry on suitcase with a change of clothes for my overnight stay. The lady at the counter informs me that I have 3 pieces of luggage and I need to combine all this into one. Now, how much ever I try my Mumbai elasticity on my luggage – it is quite impossible to fit 3 pieces of luggage into a small carry on strolley. I manage to combine my handbag and laptop bag and am forced to check in my overnighter. Then the lady informs me of the charges – GBP 30 for that luggage – I paid GBP 30 to buy that damn piece of luggage and here I am paying that same amount to get one suit and one pair of night clothes across the channel on a 2 hour flight. Didn’t have a choice, so coughed up the extortion money.

For the return journey, I was well prepared because of my educational onward experience. I somehow managed to squeeze everything I had into that small overnighter. Careful planning and my sizeable mass were quite helpful in this endeavor. The check in counter again. The lady asks for my hand luggage and I effortlessly pick up the 6-7 kg suitcase and show her. She lets me in. Redemption at last – or so I thought. Waiting in line to board, another loyal employee of this wonderful airline comes and tells me to fit my suitcase into the onboard luggage “sizer” available near the boarding gate. I always thought those things were for show or to be used to dump empty water bottles etc. Anyway, my suitcase fits into that space just as well as I fit into a medium sized t-shirt – there but not quite there – with the not quite there being the larger bit. So the lady then makes me pay 55 Euros. Not sure how 30 GBP translates to 55 Euros or maybe there is another unwritten rule of how the luggage charges goes up between the checkin counter and boarding gate by nearly 15 GBP. Having no choice, I pay that as well. By this time I am at the end of my politeness – I am as rude to that wonderful woman as I am to a Bangalore auto driver who charges me heaven and earth for a 2 km distance.

Now you might say that alls well that ends well – I can claim these as business expenses but that is not the point. The point is the extent to which airlines will go to make money. Next, I’m sure they will have something about sitting in a flight – standing passengers will get standard fare, sitting with one bum cheek will cost GBP 30 and sitting on your ass fully will cost you GBP 50…. I am sure that the lady who runs this wonderful institution may be scanning social media for tips of how to increase her revenue and if she considers this lucrative idea of mine, I would appreciate it if she just paid back my GBP 100 which her company made me pay.

London Chronicles – Moving in

I have had my fair share of travels in the last 7 years. Living out of a suitcase  is not new to me. Even shifting and setting up a new house is actually not that alien. From my first "out of home" stint in Coimbatore, to life in Amsterdam to setting up two rental houses after marriage to setting up my own one.. I have set up my fair share of houses also. But there was a big difference between my previous moves and this one. I always had someone around, except in case of Amsterdam where I didn’t require anyone simply because I was moving into a fully furnished place – all I needed to do was unpack my suitcase.

Moving into my current home was a mighty task…. I have had a lot of eyebrows raised over the fact that I did it all alone, taken many a compliments on my “bravery”, garnered a ton of sympathy for my husband “abandoning” me in my “time of need”. I almost felt like I deserved a medal of honour or bravery… a jhansi ki rani in modern day London, though I had no clue what I had done to deserve it.

So, let me start at the beginning. Like all good Indian families, mine also thought that Britain was experiencing some kind of drought – no food, no meds, no electronics in this country to sustain life. So in order for me to survive till I foraged enough to sustain my ongoing life, I carried 112 kg of luggage with me. I didn’t physically carry it – if that is the image popping up in your mind – not from India anyway. I used a particularly effective courier service who came home to pack it all up – from clothes, to my vacuum cleaner, iron box, Phillips mixer, rice cooker to sets of plastic containers of all sizes, to crockery to enough groceries for at least 2 months – I’m not exaggerating. In hind sight it was a good idea – not because of drought in Britain but because of the fact that I get reimbursed by my company for transporting the luggage and I wouldn’t have got paid if I had purchased all that here. The deal with the courier company was that they would ship the stuff from India once I gave them a permanent address. As soon as my offer on the house was accepted, I mailed the address to the courier guys. The courier was to reach in 4-5 working days – maximum by Friday or by next Monday. Friday came and went and no one called. No progress on the online tracker either. I was a bit worried – images of my mixer being used to make minced meat and my rice cooker being used to make chicken biryani had started haunting me. So I decided to call them on Saturday and to my shock they said they had already made the delivery – on Friday – to a house where no one lived!!! Can you beat that? So I rushed there as soon as I could, or at least as soon as the London weekend public transport system would allow you to get from Ilford to Kingston. Dragging a 25KG suitcase with me while trying to find my way from the station didn't speed up the process either. And then there was the case of the furniture I had ordered online.

That’s a whole different story, but it is quite necessary that it be told for you to understand my moving in drama to its full extent.

The house I had rented was bare except for a fully kitted kitchen (sans a microwave – an oven is not the same as a microwave – I found out that later) and wardrobes in both bedrooms. So I needed to get a sofa, 2 beds, mattresses, cloth drying stand, ironing board, coffee tables etc…. I tried ordering online, but I didn’t have a debit card. The day I got my debit card, I put in a huge order with one of the cheapest online stores here – Argos – Ikea was out of question (if you've read my previous blog, you will know why?).. I don’t think they even deliver cushions which didn’t require assembly. Anyway Argos was much quicker on delivery time, the quality couldn’t be that much different as the prices were not and so Argos it was. Of my huge order, there was a small order made up of multiple items amounting to around 250 quid and a bigger order consisting of the bed and the sofa amounting to around 550 quid. For some unknown reason, the bigger order was rejected by my bank, the smaller one was authenticated but I didn’t get a confirmation from Argos and neither did the transaction appear on my bank statement. So I figured that the transaction had failed. I will try again later. So it came as a shock to me when I got an SMS on Saturday morning – the same Saturday that I was planning to shift – that my order was ready for delivery and would be delivered between 8 and 1.

You can imagine that while I was lugging my suitcase, trying to figure out from Google maps where the hell my house was, I had a lot on my mind. I finally found the house and a sight that buttressed my belief that I had made a right choice by selecting the house for its location. My front door was covered with packages – at least 8 of them of all shapes and sizes – just lying in front of my door. I didn’t know how to react. I was standing there stunned surrounded by all these packages when I hear a voice – “Are you the new tenant?” I see an old lady, white, with white hair and blue eye shadow who I realise is my downstairs neighbor. She sees me as a damsel in distress – for the first time in my life I actually felt like one. She invites me for a cup of coffee which I badly need. I am wondering what to do with my suitcase and then I figure – if no one has bothered to steal my packages, then maybe no one will steal my suitcase either. Right then my knight in shining armour arrives…. No it’s not my husband making a dramatic entry which would be what would be expected in true Bollywood fashion. It is the property inventory guy – but that day, to me – he was no lesser than Hritik Roshan playing Krrish to the rescue. An affable guy who walks me through the house, shows me chinks in the property I hadn’t seen before, shows me how the appliances work , towards the end of our tour and explanation of the process – asks me the penultimate question –“do you have anyone to help you with your luggage?” I say ‘Nope”. “So how exactly were you planning to get all this stuff up?” “Good question . Best answer – either rolling them over the stairs or dragging them”. He looks at me as if I am cuckoo and says – not asks, but says “I’m going to help you”. I could have jumped up and kissed him right there – I am not lying – I was happy and relieved – it was like having your faith restored.

Now in case you are wondering why I am talking of hauling things up the stairs, though the entrance to my house is at ground level, once you open the door, you have to go up a flight of stairs to the first floor where the actual abode is.

So there we were; the inventory guy (who shall remain an unnamed hero in my chronicles) and I, playing a tango with the huge 30 kg parcels - 4 of them. It was then that I realised, that in the midst of stuff from India was stuff from Argos. Does no one call or ask for signature on delivery in this country???? God… they just leave stuff at your doorstep and expect your neighbours to be upstanding citizens with good morals (I have still not paid for that stuff). After Brit Krrish and I get all the stuff to the landing, he asks me if he could help me with anything else? I am lucky to have encountered decency on my first day in the new house – spread a glow of positivity in me. When I profusely thanked him, he said the usual pleasantries and rushed to his next house. So there I was left with a hallway full of boxes and not even a chair to sit on.

I felt desolate – very desolate indeed. And then there was a knock on the door and my neighbor came to remind me of coffee. A half an hour at her house with coffee that reminded me of home made coffee, a small dog who was extremely well-behaved , a short historical peek into my neighbours life and some not so great hearsay about my landlords, I was back home and looking at what I should do. I found the knife – the courier company wouldn’t carry it in their luggage, so I had carried it in my checked in luggage. I found it and started slashing around. It was more frustration and loneliness that got to me than the mere physical exhaustion that the events of the day had brought down on me. A few boxes ripped and bubble wrap and thermocol bits all around the house, I needed time out. So I decided to get myself a chair made and realized that I didn’t have any tools. I needed to go to Kingston to get a toolkit.

Down the road from my house and across the street was the Thames walkway to Kingston. It was not until I went down the steps to the walkway that I realized how close to my dream I was. It was one of those rare days that the sun is shining bright, you can see the sun rays shimmer over the water, the Kingston bridge across the river, trees losing their leaves in the foreground, families holding hands, pushing prams, old couples walking as if they fell in love yesterday, people jogging, rowing and I was here to stay… this could be my life. This is what I wanted.. I was finally getting it. It was enough for someone like me – tough gal, tomboy exterior, to almost feel guilty – guilty that I was so happy at the moment that I was not missing my family enough. What kind of person am I??

My first DIY project – wasn’t easy – it was the first time that I was actually trying to make something. It was grueling but I did it – gingerly sat on the chair and it didn’t break… I know it was not rocket science, but for the first time I understood why some people derive so much joy from working with their hands – carpentry, pottery, gardening; it is extremely fulfilling to see something take a concrete shape in front of you – even if all you did was screw on some nuts and bolts.

With the chair done, I was calling it a day – I looked back and saw a house too messed up for me to live in and anyway half my luggage was still at my hotel at Ilford. So I was on a train back to Ilford and reminiscing my day… Gosh! Was I tired!!

The next day – a bright new day – I decided that I was going to officially move in. I checked out of the hotel and started my last and final journey from Ilford to Kingston. I started at 9.30 AM and reached home at 1. Three and a half hours for a journey which should ideally take an hour and 15 minutes. Didn’t know at that time that trains on that route do not work on Sundays as they are closed for repairs. So after an extremely tiring journey home – all I wanted to do was to sit on my recently assembled throne and rock to sleep – but there was a long day ahead of me – things to do. By the end of the day, I had set up my kitchen, thrown most of my clothes in a closet, made a temporary bed – 2 blankets and a sleeping bag and an led an exploration into the bowels of my attic to store the packaging material. Unlike back home where I once actually put a washbasin in trash and it was actually taken away – here there was rules about how you dispose off packing material. The rules were too much for me to digest at that point and so I thought I could just dump it in the attic till my next move when it could be used again. All the unpacking made me remember the times that mom and I had spent in packing – the thought that she put into each item, stuff that I forgot, didn’t think of or deemed unnecessary. The times dad & I spent in putting together the suitcase and weighing it a hundred times to ensure it was within limits. It was strange to have such widely conflicting emotions on consecutive days – one that made me happy where I was and one that made me yearn to go back – at least to meet my parents, if nothing else.

I folded for the night – my first night in a sleeping bag, in a new house. I slept with the lights on, still do. The house creaks when you walk on it, the boiler makes weird noises and it is so quite outside that every little sound manifests itself a hundred times more loudly. I didn’t get much sleep that night, but I was finally home.

And so today, I spend my 3^rd weekend in the house. I have a TV, cable, internet, some trinkets from home which made my home look homely, a pastel blue wall clock, a microwave, clothes neatly folded away or hung, all the papers - from the rental agreement to the bank documents to the contract openings for water, electricity and cable organized in box files – a sofa and bed on their way. I am as settled as I could hope to be……. Till the family arrives and then starts the process of resettlement.. one that I am looking forward to.

I will no longer be alone – there is only so much silence and solitude that one can relish and while I am relishing the time alone – I may not for too long. Or worse still I may enjoy it so much that arrival of my family can seem like an unwelcome intrusion. That very thought scares me…..