On 01-Jun-09, at 4:44 AM, Thaths wrote:
On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:52 AM, B. L. Krieger <[email protected]>
wrote:
How about stress levels being much higher?
Where? In India? Or the US?
In India. Some years ago I wrote this out to friends when considering
relocating out of the country. I have since come to define my
acceptable commute distance in Bangalore as one kilometre. If there's
no affordable housing within that radius, I don't want to work there.
"""
I'm tired of regular life being an adventure. I want to wake up at the
same time every day, go to work at the same time, return more or less
at the same time, and spend the evenings knowing more or less that
this evening is going to be spent the same way that last evening was,
or the last evening a year prior to this day. Let the adventure be
where it matters: in how I spend my workday advancing my career.
If this doesn't make sense, consider the adventures I've been put
through recently:
a. I visited the ATM earlier last week, only to discover my card had
expired. The bank hadn't sent a replacement yet. I walked into the
branch to ask, saw a queue half an hour long, and ran out frightened.
When I called phone support, they said the card was dispatched a month
ago, but the courier company had returned it because my address was
incomplete! Despite that I've been receiving my quarterly statements
from the same bank at the same address for years. They wanted me to
pick up the card from the branch where my account was opened, the
other end of town from where I work, and focal point of Bangalore's
greatest traffic jams. I had no access to my money through the week,
not even the option to transfer to an account at another bank via the
website, because the website wanted the number of the new card as an
enhanced security measure. (Finally got the card Saturday, thereby
losing most of that day).
b. Bangalore's traffic police, in their eternal quest to improve
traffic, have now designated autorickshaw lanes on some roads, but
only on partial stretches of those roads. What this means is that when
a rickshaw driver comes to one of these stretches, he'll suddenly veer
left cutting across lanes, heedless to whom he's surprising, because
there's a lathi-wielding constable up ahead. In one such incident,
this chap overtook me from the right, then turned left, before he had
finished overtaking me. He didn't notice knocking me over. I ended up
with a scraped knee that's taken two weeks to heal (bandage came off
yesterday). I also had to replace my bike's front wheel's rim.
c. My bike's insurance expired a couple of months ago, and the
insurance company forgot to send a renewal notice. Luckily, I noticed
a week in advance. Unfortunately, the insurance office is in the
neighbourhood of the same congested area described above. They don't
take online payments or automatic deductions. I went there on a
Saturday to find they were closed. Weekdays and regular working hours
only. So I went again mid-week, having signed off half a working day
to bear the traffic and the queue, only to find the office was gone!
Even the signboards had been wiped off. It was like it was never
there. On the wall I found a little notice saying they had moved to an
even farther part of town. I gave up, located a branch nearer work,
went there, thereby losing the rest of the day, only to be told
branches were not interconnected. I could pay there, but that would
mean cancelling my current insurance policy and taking out a new one.
They were happy to give me a form. Despite that this was the same
company! Attempt four, I sacrificed another half a day to find the
relocated branch and get the policy renewed, one day after it had
expired, to discover then that they had moved half a year earlier, but
forgotten to notify me, or to remove the signboards from the old
office until that unfortunate weekend of attempt one.
You know what? These aren't the kind of adventures I want to have. I
want my regular routine to be utterly predictable, and if this
involves moving to a society that has dreary routine figured out, so
be it.
"""
