Oct 9th: A very busy day!

Morning:

I am still not allowed to work, and going to the consulate is ok... but discouraged. The folks in charge really dont want there to be anything that resembles work happening at all. I guess there are some pretty specific rules/regulations on what is allowed to happen when people are furloughed, and not following those properly get our section "dinged" somehow. But I was allowed to go in for some things, in particular today I was set to do a bit of upkeep work. Filling out contracts and the like so that I could actually live here - since a lot of local services will only work if you have an Indian bank account and an Indian phone number.

Due to some strange circumstances I have ended up with four social sponsors. Social sponsors are people who are already established at post who volunteer to help new arrivals adjust to the area. They will pick you up from the airport when you arrive, show you around your new home, and leave you with some basics of life so you dont start off in a totally empty apartment. Initially my sponsor was a couple of folks, Connor and Alexandrae - but they were going to be on vacation when I arrived. So I was assigned a new couple, Edith and John. John and their driver picked me up this morning and drove me to the consulate. Once we arrived the tedium started. First a representative of the local phone company assisted; he needed basically all of my details including my home address in America. The trouble is that whatever form he was filling out didnt like my home address, he kept asking "No Street, Ave, or Lane?" I guess the form really felt like there should be something like that. Then I think he must have mistyped something at some point. From what I could tell he was filling out an online form fresh each time something went wrong, and would just submit a new one each time. Took about 45 minutes I think - but finally I was able to slap a new SIM card into my phone and gain an Indian phone number. I'm glad that I upgraded my phone recently, because now I can have my e-SIM from Google and a physical SIM from India. The real blessing with that is that I will only need to carry two phones with me as I go about my daily life, my work phone and my personal. Some people are stuck with three or more sometimes!

With access to an Indian phone number; I was able to go to step two of the plan. There are two banks that diplomats here use, RBL and Axis. In my research I found that RBL would better suit my needs. They dont have many saving options that build value... But I have other banks for that. I just need some local money holders that will make things as easy as possible to get my USD into INR for using around town. (Side note: after chatting more with Willy - I definitely made the right choice! He went with Axis and has been having nothing but trouble with them). This process was equally annoying. It seems that here in India there is a huge cultural preference towards bureaucracy. There were like 50 pages that I needed to sign, and each page needed at least three signatures. ALSO - they made it clear that they expected the signatures to be identical. There were a few that the person helping was like "that one doesnt look right, please do it again" crazy stuff. But eventually it did get done.

After that I headed over to the med unit to get a medical briefing. Most of the stuff they talked about was stuff that I was already aware off. Be careful of mosquitos, make sure to only drink filtered water, ect ect. But it was a nice chance to check in with them on some local questions I had. And I was also able to get a creme for something that had been irritating my foot for a while. The folks there were very helpful! After all of that it was a bit past lunch time, and as luck would have it Edith hooked me up with some grub! Her and a lot of the other folks from the consulate were having lunch out at the picnic tables out front and she had bought me some Chinese food. I sat about and made conversation with a lot of the people who will soon become my co-workers. Its been too long since I've seen them tho... so I dont remember many of their names at the moment. Lunch was good and the company was also good. As it was wrapping up I got a call from the bank lady, turns out we had missed one of the pages and she needed a few more signatures. She sent someone over with the page and I had to hang around a bit longer to sign one last time. Finally after that was wrapped up I was able to leave the consulate.

Afternoon:

I hadnt mentioned it before, but while all that other stuff was happening some gentlemen from the networking section there had been helping with configuring my router. I am familiar with how to get routers set up, but there was an issue getting the one I had brought with me from the states online. Basically there is a point when you go to connect to the local ISPs that they make you sign into your account with the ISP. Well, I dont have that information because it is controlled by these folks at the consulate. So I brought them my router and they got it all signed in for me.

John gave me a lift back to my place where I had just enough time to grab some things and get ready for my next journey. You see, a couple days back I got a call from my managers manager volun-telling me to go to a secret meeting among the management folks. Another bit of context, when it comes to organizational structure here in the State Department I fall under the "Management Section". I am a Diplomatic Technology Officer, my manager is a Chief Diplomatic Technology Officer, and his manager is the Management Officer. So if I mention a Management Officer, that's where she ranks - her name is Gwen. Anyways, there was a secret meeting happening downtown where we were going to discuss the shutdown. I walked on down and made it at the same time as my manager Shawn, who lives around the corner. The host's home was lovely and he had a good spread of snack food. Turns out the secret meeting was really just a chance for the big wigs to get together and chat with most of us folks who had been furloughed to let us know whats going on and give us a chance to ask questions. Nothing much really interesting happened during the meeting. I think the most interesting thing was that I finally met the CG or Consulate General. He is basically the equivalent of an ambassador for our post. Seems like a friendly fellow! The only other thing of note is that unexpectedly both my manager Shawn and myself are furloughed. Anyone overseas being furloughed is already uncommon, usually all of us are considered essential personal - but having no technology presence in the consulate is especially abnormal. Oh well, not much that we can do about it. Just have to note on our mandatory weekly tasks that we couldn't do it on account of govt shutdown.

Evening:

As things wrapped up Willy and I headed back to his place. We had a standing plan to hang out with Miles some more and play some cardgames. I had a couple decks with me and taught them both how to play Cadillac and Golf. I've taught lots of friends and acquaintances how to play Cadillac and so far everyone has always loved it. Nice for me, because it is really nostalgic to play. Brings back fun memories. We had a good time then geared up for the second event of the evening. I also had standing plans with my original social sponsor, Connor, to grab dinner. The plans kinda ballooned out because another gentleman named Danny was also invited. I'm kinda to blame for this ballooning because I invited Willy, and Miles as well. The plan was to go get dinner at some place near where I live, and everyone else was living in the Pink Houses over where Willy lives. We hired a pair of Tuk-Tuks to get us to the dinner spot, this was my first time riding in one of these yellow autos. Ive gotta say it really is an experience.

I am blanking on the spot we went for dinner, but it was nice! Good grub there. I had some sort of fish curry. The fish was really well prepared, but totally bone in. Like they gutted it and then charred it before putting it in the dish. Meant I had to separate a lot of bones as I was eating, but not a bad experience otherwise. One of the dudes I dont know so well started a cool little roundabout. He said "Alright everyone, give us your life summary" or something to that effect. I dont remember what everyone had to say, but it was a nice little get to know you exercise. After dinner all the other fellas hopped in an auto back home, I just walked myself back to my place since it was so close by.

Hmmmmm, probably best place to include this. There is some strange seed thing that places will offer after a meal. The verdict on it is a bit mixed. I tried it at this meal and at first couldnt come up with what it tasted like. Best I could describe was minty lemon? But then someone clued me into the word I was missing, Licorice! Nothing like mint and lemon lol. I tried another set of it at a different establishment and it tasted like the smell of some of those toys I grew up with that you would put in water. Little fuzzing balls that would boil away to reveal some sort of little plastic thing.

OH! At the dinner we had a bit of a dad joke off and I was hitting them with lots of the ones that pops would say, like "Have you heard the one about the sidewalk? -Its all over town!" Miles wasnt quite getting the joke. We were all sitting around trying to explain it to him, and either he truly didnt understand or he is a phenomenal actor XD - tbh I am pretty sure that the situation is that he was just digging deeper into it looking for a depth that wasnt there. I've done that before. Basically you just instantly discard the punchline as - "well thats too dumb to be the joke so there musty be something else". Eventually he did admit to getting it... but "it's not a very good joke." Which was very funny. Its tough to describe a situation like this in anyway that comes across well, but it was a fun moment that stood out to me.