Posts by "Peter"

Finance

$100 House (Sort Of)

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Check this out, for $100 you could have the plans to a tiny wooden house which includes a kitchen, bathroom, sofa, dining table and bedroom all squeezed in to a 65 sq ft home – that’s small enough to fit in to your back garden and rent out! When you factor in the building costs and materials it’s about $16,000 (about £10,000), so yeah, I think we’ve sorted out our housing crisis if everyone moves in to wooden sheds. Still, I think I’ve just found my Dad’s Christmas present, I’m sure my mum always wanted another home at the end of the garden!

The £61 build-it-yourself house plan - Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance

The £61 build-it-yourself house plan – Yahoo! UK & Ireland Financehttp://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/The-61-build-house-plan-yahoofinanceuk-197431321.htmlThe smallest house on offer from Tumbleweed is just 65 square feet in size, but manages to cram in a living room with a couch and a built-in desk.
Other

Ugandan Engineer Dreams of Sending Astronaut To Space

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I wonder whether he’s going to put his money where his mouth is and be on the maiden space flight like Richard Branson will. It seems easy to mock, but I guess even when the Germans first tested their rockets they had to start from somewhere and didn’t have books and data tables to refer to. They are training hard for the lift off by learning how to calculate the distance between planets, not sure how that relates to sending a vehicle in to orbit but if it gets people interested in aerospace engineering it can’t be a bad thing. Still, I can’t help but think it would go the same way as Top Gear’s rocket car.

BBC News - African space research: Dreaming of a manned shuttle

BBC News – African space research: Dreaming of a manned shuttlehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9573163.stmBut it still seems like quite an achievement and if this hadn’t been a space programme I’d have been pretty impressed. Chris believes that if his team is successful, this will…
India

New Chennai Airport

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Check out the new Chennai airport that is being developed at the moment. Looks like it will be a huge improvement on the current building which is looking a bit old and crusty now – it was built over 20 years ago way before air travel exploded and businesses started invading India. The bit about the ‘green airport’ made me smile though, apparently a few plants makes the airport ‘green’. I wonder if Greenpeace would agree!

http://www.youtu.be/aNgjdQ2sGq0

India

If You Thought The West Had Banking Troubles…

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There are so many things that defy logic and explanation in India that I’ve virtually given up writing about them on this blog but I feel motivated enough to write about yet another absurd Indian practice that angers me while at the same time amuses me. It’s labeled as being more efficient and yet you end up with multiple dormant bank accounts that never get used again.

When I arrived in India in January 2008 I had to open a bank account to receive my salary. Nothing unusual about that, the company brought in the representative from Standard Chartered (a British bank which rather oddly doesn’t operate in Britain), I filled out some documents, gave 10 million forms of ID along with a blood sample, and then, just to make sure I really was who I said I was, they made me copy out my signature 10 times to ensure it matched EXACTLY each time.

Apparently in India no one can forge a signature and it’s the most secure method against someone stealing your identity – according to my boss, anyway.

So I got a Standard Chartered account and I was happy, they even upgraded me to a Priority Customer because they reckoned they could make some cash out of me. As far as I could tell, being a Priority Customer meant you could flash a little black credit card around and pay 2,000 rupees (about 26 pounds) a year for the privilege of proving to the lowly shop assistant that you were far superior to them. (or in the immortal words of Harry Enfield: “I’m considerably richer, than yowse“)

But then disaster struck. My company decided that Standard Chartered was the most evil, money grabbing, greedy bank in existence (and since it’s British, they are almost correct in that allegation, but I think surely RBS must take that crown) and effective immediately, no further dealings would be done with them.

So how does that affect me?

Well, *deep breath* in India (the country that basically developed the software that powers the modern global financial system and built all the websites what we use for our online banking to send payments at a click of a button and who provides all the telephone banking support to the westerners), all businesses, big and small, are unable to process staff salaries to different bank accounts because I suspect they lack the technological means to do so. I mean, entering an account number and sort code for each employee is pretty high tech, right?

The inability to enter an account number and sort code in to the salary processing software means that a company will do a tie up with a bank and make all their employees open a salary account with that one bank and only pay salary to accounts with that bank – banks here apparently DO have the ability to send payments to their own customers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re currently paying your mortgage or loan with another bank, if you switch jobs or your company decides to use another bank for salary processing you are forced to have the additional headache of making sure there are always enough funds in the old account to meet the monthly repayments.

I had my Standard Chartered account, I was expected to feel special with my little black card, and to all extents and purposes, I was quite happy to bank with an English bank.

But the relationship didn’t last, the company decided that all 200+ employees must open new accounts with a bank called Axis Bank who promised lower fees, better service and the deal clincher: a free pen worth 500 rupees. They do love their freebies in India.

For an entire week the representative was in the office assisting the staff fill out the reams of paperwork and helpfully pointing out that their signatures were out by as much as 3 mm and it absolutely had to be exactly the same otherwise they might not be who they said they were.

Filling Out Paperwork Becomes Part Of Your Life In India

Filling Out Paperwork Becomes Part Of Your Life In India

Being a foreigner in a country that prides itself on inefficient bureaucracy I obviously had even more paperwork than everyone else because I could easily be here on false pretenses and actually trying to subvert this glorious country back to the dark colonial times. This meant I needed passport copies, residential agreements, visa documents, tax documents and loads of passport photos which had to each be attested by two different people that it was a good likeness of me.

Two weeks later I got all the paperwork back because the signatures on two of the documents didn’t match exactly and they were worried that I might not be who I said I was – I sometimes do the ‘g’ part of Claridge a bit different and that was the problem here, a quick glance and you couldn’t tell the difference, but closer inspection would reveal that the loop on the g wasn’t as big as on the other signatures. This Is India where your identity is determined by a signature 🙂

The fact that the account representative sat there and watched as I duly signed each document infront of him was apparently meaningless – “but sir, if your signatures don’t match exactly, you could be anyone!” “yes, this is true, when I put my new glasses on, some people do mistake me for Gandhi” – but he didn’t get the joke “no sir, Gandhi is Indian only”.

Eventually, after much practice, and with the account representative getting more and more agitated that this stupid foreigner couldn’t even make his signature match up, I managed to get 10 signatures to match so perfectly even the eagle eyed desk wallas couldn’t notice any difference.

Yay! I now had a new, entirely pointless, bank account with Axis Bank. No more money went in to Standard Chartered, but Axis Bank decided that I could continue feeling superior and gave me a new platinum card (which was actually black) for a better price of 1,500 rupees a year and came with numerous advantages and benefits such as being able to use it in any ATM in India* (*you may be charged for withdrawals from non-Axis Bank ATMs) and swipe it to pay for my shopping in at least 10 stores all over India. What’s more is that it comes with built in anti-fraud measures such as having your signature on the back which is totally unique to only you. Oh yeah. Living the dream!

Quite soon, with my new ultra cool, signature-secure Axis Bank account I forgot all about Standard Chartered and started making fixed deposits and building a nice little nest egg, but it wasn’t to last. This is India. And in India expect not just the unexpected but something to blow you away so completely that defies all logic and reasoning in the real world.

My company decided that Axis Bank were greedy, money grabbing, thieving robbing bastards[1] and they’d rather rot in hell than have anything else to do with them. Turns out that the low-rollers, those that didn’t get signature-secure little black credit cards, were not treated in the same way that ‘privileged’ customers such as myself were dealt with. Because many people earn such small amounts, Axis Bank decided that they needed to be charged a monthly ‘low usage fee’ so that the bank could make more money out of them and ensure that the poor and downtrodden stay poor and downtrodden. Whatever next? Signature-secure debit cards for the housekeeping staff? Perish the thought!

Anyway, can you see what’s coming?

I have to open another new bank account because Indian companies are unable to pay salary to people who have accounts with different banks. Emerging super-power indeed!

The hunt for a new bank began, the management looked at HDFC, SBI, Barclays (yay! British!), Citibank and more. Then along came a Standard Chartered rep who asked if the company would be interested in switching to them, “Hah! No way!” was the company reply “but we’ll give you a free pen worth 1,000 rupees for switching to us” “Ooo, where do we sign?”.

Back full circle, the company is again signing up 200+ employees to get Standard Chartered accounts so that they can be paid their salary.

Me: Ah hah! I already have a Standard Chartered account, here are my details.
Them: Ah hah! Your signatures don’t match, you could be ANYONE! You must go to your local branch 15km away and prove that you are Peter Claridge and then they will make a final decision on whether you are actually Peter Claridge or not. And oh, because you haven’t used your account in over 12 months you have incurred a banking fee of Rs 2,500, would you like to write us a cheque or would you like us to deduct it from your next salary credit?
Me: You still use cheques here?
Them: Yes, it’s very secure because it has your signature on it

The Red Tape And Bureaucracy Is Incredible

The Red Tape And Bureaucracy Is Incredible

We’ve now reached a bit of an impasse because the finance director is screaming at me to get my Standard Chartered account sorted so the company can pay me, I’m saying hell no, pay me to my Axis account here is my account number and sort code and the Standard Chartered account rep is begging me to make my signatures match.

I asked why on Earth companies in India are unable to pay people to the bank account of their choice and I got a tirade of abuse back from my boss on how I think the West does everything so much better and that it is easier and more efficient for companies to pay everyone in the same bank.

Easier for companies maybe, but at the current rate if I stay in India for another 3 years I’ll end up with 6 different bank accounts – and according to my boss that’s far more efficient! TII 😀

1 Phrase borrowed with permission from my father

India

Well Done, India!

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I thought I would hold off making any public comments about the Commonwealth Games until after the actual event, mostly because being a British expat in India if you criticise anything about India the general population will jump on you and accuse you of being a bloody westerner who is always trying to put India down.

Another, albeit smaller, reason was that I had this sneaky suspicion at the back of my mind that actually everything might work out in the end. It’s just the way things are in India; everything just has a magical, borderline spooky, way of working out – I can see why India is so spiritual and the home of Yoga and other meditation practices.

I don’t really know how to tackle the Commonwealth Games, so I think I’m just going to have to split it up in to sections…err and hope that it some how turns out alright in the end.

The Indian Athletes

Just one word: unbelievable. India has always been a nation that has underachieved in world sports. Their Olympic medal tally to date stands at 20 medals in the last 108 years and by contrast Jamaica have won 55 medals in the last 60 years.

There are too many reasons why this is the case, but if I had to put my finger on it, I would start by looking at the fact that 42% of people live on less than $1.25 a day, the immense pressure on young middle class adults to get a job in a multi-national company and study rather than playing sports and the total domination of cricket in the local sporting scene at the expense of other sports.

But wow. How these games have changed all that. The hosting nation always gets a medal boost as they invest more in to the sports to raise the profile of the games within the country, but India managed to exceed even the wildest expectations of sports commentators around the world – although inside the country they were open about the fact that they wanted to come second before the games even started, but I’m sure even they felt that they had gone above and beyond what they thought possible.

It seems that India concentrated on a few areas, there was the total domination in the shooting, archery and wrestling, but they also had individual stars in other events like tennis and badminton. On the track and field side of things there is still a lot of work to do, however the women won gold in the 4×400 relay and the men took bronze in the 4×100 event.

I think to put it simply: the performance of the Indian athletes eclipsed all the negativity in the build up to the event and you can’t take anything away from them.

Some critics might point that over 25 top athletes pulled out of the events which surely made an impact on the quality of the competition. However, over 100 Commonwealth Games records were set in Delhi, compared to just 33 in Melbourne 2006 – not exactly an indication of weakened competition!

Part of the reason for the excellent performances of so many athletes could be attributed to the $100,000 that India gave to all countries (which was fully disclosed in 2003 and definitely NOT a bribe in the under-the-table-brown-envelope sense) to help fund training, transport and lodging costs – something that enabled every country to compete, like the 4 man team from St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic so remote that Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled there by the British!

OK, I think that’s enough to write about for now, I still want to look at the corruption and building controversy that surrounded the build up to event in another blog post.

India

The Wisdom Tooth Extraction

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I guess like most guys if we ever find a problem with our body we have a remarkable superhuman ability to put it to the back of our mind and lose it amongst all the anniversary dates and birthdays – we know technically these things should happen but they never make it far enough up to our conscious that it registers as something to think about or to act upon.

And so it has been about many things related to my body which I only decided to correct after the pain and suffering can not be ignored any longer. It took me a decade to finally admit that there was a slight possibility I might need to wear glasses while using a computer (having said that I’m not wearing them now) – that happened after several days of brain pounding headaches forced me to meekly book an appointment with the opticians (and this being in England they could only see me by the following week at the earliest).

The other health problem I’ve been ignoring over the years is that of my wisdom teeth. I dare not think about how many painkillers I’ve taken in the name of wisdom tooth pain. My upper ones finally pushed through a few years ago but my bottom ones decided to be difficult and kind of got stuck half way through.

11 months of the year I could get on with my life without a (dental) care in the world but like clockwork the lower teeth would flare up and reduce me to a pill popping ibuprofen junkie. Which actually isn’t nearly as interesting as being labelled as a crack addict. Hi, my name is Peter and I flirt dangerously with the recommended daily dosage limits on ‘profen with a reckless disregard to my own well being.

Earlier this month my teeth started to play up again. Out came the ibuprofen and we* carried on as normal. However after the 2nd week and still in pain it began to dawn on me that professional medical advice might need to be sought.

Not An NHS Dentistry

Very fortunately my office happens to be opposite Chennai’s best dental practice and so my trip across the road was made a lot sooner than if the nearest dentists was miles away. I reckon I could have easily ignored the problem for another week otherwise. A better man than I probably would have anyway.

Now since this is India and the dental practices are not run under a British pseudo-NHS (ie. where you have to save up for 3 months just to be able to afford to have the dentist peer in to your mouth and count your teeth for 60 seconds – but that’s ok because there is a 3 month waiting list just to have your teeth counted anyway) I walked in to the building, told the receptionist that I had some kind of discomfort with my wisdom teeth and I was sitting in the dentist’s chair 10 seconds later and informed that I would need an x-ray to see what’s going on.

“Come this way, Mr. Claridge” and I got set up in the x-ray machine which wouldn’t look out of place in a George Lucas space opera. Now I don’t want to advertise how long it’s been since I last went to a dentists but I don’t remember the x-ray machines being hooked up to Windows and the digital image being immediately available onscreen – tooth fillings being highlighted in all their shameful glory. Does the NHS have that? Or is that extra?

“Right then, Mr. Claridge”, the dentist boomed, “you have an impaction on your lower teeth”, pointing at what looked, in my medical opinion**, like two perfectly formed, perfectly straight teeth. “see how this tooth is at an angle, it’s going to have to come out” indicating that a tooth which was inclined by as much as 0.1 degrees from the vertical is cause for urgent attention “and since we have to take the bottom teeth out we might as well take out the top ones while we’re there.” I didn’t like the jolly sound of his voice.

This is the x-ray of my teeth, on the left you can see a lighter shade between the bone and the tooth, this is apparently where infections have 'eaten' away at the bone - reason enough to get your wisdom teeth checked! The solid white mark in the top row of teeth is a filling :(

This is the x-ray of my teeth, on the lower left you can see a lighter shade between the bone and the wisdom tooth, this is apparently where infections have 'eaten' away at the bone - reason enough to get your wisdom teeth checked! The solid white mark in the top row of teeth is a filling 🙁 (for the record, my skull doesn't have a 'peterclaridge.com' watermark imprinted on it!)

“OK, right” I said, “when can we get these buggers out?” making a mental note that I had 4 more days of ibuprofen left before I had to buy some more.

“How about tomorrow afternoon” he replied. This definitely isn’t dentistry on the NHS. “You won’t be able to eat for three days, cold liquids only, shall I book you in to get the first two removed? We’ll do the other two the following week”

Ugh. OK.

I was loaded up with a prescription for a concoction of pills which elevated my junkie pill-popping status somewhat. I think anyone addicted to painkillers should make a beeline to India because not only do prescription-only painkillers cost about £2.00 for a 2 week supply but the pharmacist also gives you back your prescription paper so you can go to another pharmacy to get even more! This is India! Hmm, I wonder if they do co-proxamol here.

The Day of Extraction

My final meal before extraction was an Italian BMT Subway on honey-oat bread, delivered hot and fresh to my office. At 5pm I walked the lonely road (well, across the lonely road) to the dentist. At 5:10pm I was in the dentist’s chair in a very vulnerable position staring up at the ceiling.

Now I want to get the opinion of others here that have recently had local anesthetic injected in to the roof of your mouth and gums. Do you cry a bit? I don’t know what it is but the sharp sting always seems to force out a couple of tears, which is frankly hugely embarrassing when you are a tough macho guy like myself. Do any other equally tough men here have this problem? There is something about the insertion of the needle that seems to literally force water in to the eye. Who knows.

Anyway. If you are squeamish and afraid of blood you might want to skip to the end where everything turns out alright in the end. My blog is kind of like a Hollywood movie really.

I’m always a little nervous about local anesthetic, what if it’s not enough for my superhuman body, what if I need more than the regular person and they go for a scalpel incision and the anesthetic hasn’t worked? Yeah, I have far to much of an overactive imagination. But it could happen, right? Bad batch of anesthetic. What if it didn’t go deep enough and as he starts drilling it goes in to some flesh which isn’t numbed. Shudder. Nightmares. Moving on.

Using tools which probably wouldn’t look out of place in a secret CIA rendition chamber in some 3rd world country the surgeon got to work on my troublesome lower teeth. 30 minutes later the tools had been replaced by some truly frightening equipment dreamed up by Hollywoods finest sci-fi/horror writers as he tried to wrestle the tooth out of the socket. There was twisting, turning, pulling and all sorts but it turned out that I was actually rather attached to my tooth.

Another 20 minutes later and we were back to good old human brute force as he stood up, clamped pliers around my tooth, carefully placed his right foot on my chest and heaved upwards. My world suddenly became a more frightening place.

Eventually though there was a sickening cracking sound which isn’t the tooth being crushed but rather the jaw bone giving up its hold and going for a quiet smoke around the back.

I kid you not, the surgeon was massaging his arm after that extraction and sweat was running down the sides of his head.

“Difficult extraction?” I tried to ask, but thanks to the numbed cheek, tongue and lips it came out as “niffilt extakta”. Fortunately the surgeon spoke numb tongue and he silently nodded his head. “Ready for the top one?” I asked in my stupid lisp. He didn’t look at me, he was instead staring intently at the array of very expensive tools that had been defeated by my tooth, but he nodded his head slightly.

Luckily for the surgeon, the top wisdom tooth was far easier to remove, although he did take a very deep breath before he started 🙂

The Extraction: Part Two

If you are a member of public reading this because you are about to have your wisdom teeth extracted, let me remove any doubts and put your mind at rest right now. It frickin’ hurts. See? Don’t you feel better now that you know what’s going to happen afterwards?

You will relive the moments as the surgeon levers out your tooth, you will dream about the cracking noise as the bone gives way, you will remember how the surgeon was twisting your head off trying to get the tooth out, your jaw will ache like hell, you can’t eat a thing, blood will fill your mouth for hours after the operation.

But after a few days it will be fine. And if you are lucky you can milk the sympathy for all it’s worth because you will look like blowfish with your cheeks swollen out to double the size of your face. Anyone who looks like that must have gone through a lot of suffering.

The following week I had to go back to get my stitches out (did I forget that you’ll be left with some bloody great big holes that need to be stitched up?) and confirm that I wanted to go through the entire ordeal again. I must have a deep seated masochistic side I never knew about.

Now I’m not saying that the surgeon wasn’t looking forward to removing the other wisdom teeth but the original appointment was scheduled for 4pm, then pushed to 5pm before finally being told that they’ll call me once he’s finished his weight training preparations.

After the drama of the other extractions these ones were quite easy, the foot on the chest technique wasn’t required this time and to make sure I got extra sympathy I brought my girlfriend along to watch – it was worth several fruit smoothies over the course of the next few days! However I think she took more delight in peering in to my mouth and demonstrating with her thumb and index finger just how large the holes were and how much blood was gushing out!

Wisdom Teeth Sans Jaw - Bottom Tooth On The Right

Wisdom Teeth Sans Jaw - Bottom Tooth On The Right

Being a veteran of tooth extractions now, I went home and barely moved my mouth for the next three days as the dentist ordered. It very nearly worked too because I was in much less pain except on the 4th day when I tried to make myself an omelette and I opened my mouth to put the food in, except my mouth didn’t open. Which was far more odd than alarming.

So I tried it again, but with similar results, I couldn’t open my mouth to put food in. (I realize that there is a joke in here about getting egg on my face, but I’ve chosen to purposely avoid it to maintain the high caliber of writing regular readers have come to expect from me.)

Fearing that I would be resigned to drinking fruit smoothies for the rest of my life (which can quickly get boring after 3 days) and being known by the neighbourhood kids as the man who can’t open his mouth I rushed to the dentists and pointed frantically at my locked jaw.

Oh boy, did I feel stupid. Apparently if you don’t open or move your mouth for several days your jaw muscles lock and seize up – resulting in the condition I had – Lock Jaw Pete.

The medically prescribed solution to locked jaw, as I was informed, is to get two wooden sticks, insert them in to your mouth and lever your jaw open slowly over the course of the day. Oh, and you really do look as retarded as it sounds!

As I’m writing this I’ve been diligently levering open my mouth and managed to get more movement in my jaw – I’ve now got a window of about 1cm to post very small pieces of food through and it’s getting better by the hour.

The Hollywood Ending

My stitches will come out tomorrow and everything seems to be healing very well.

On a more serious note I want to thank Dr. Satish and his team for fixing me up. Esthetic Smile is certainly the best Chennai dentist so if you are an expat living in Chennai and you’ve got some tooth trouble definitely head over to these guys, I was really impressed with the setup and felt very comfortable with the staff and the expertise. If you are British it would probably be cheaper to fly to Chennai, get your teeth done here and then go back to England rather than relying on the NHS to do it in 6 months from now!

* ‘we’?! Do I have some kind of semi-dormant schizophrenic disorder with multiple personalities?

** Mostly learned from WrongDiagnosis and WebMD with a smattering of Wikipedia articles

India

I Still Find Stuff Like This Funny

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You know, after two and a half years (flipping heck!) in India, I really shouldn’t be finding the hodgepodge approach to the English language funny anymore, but every now and then I feel compelled to photo and share some of the unique ways English is being used here in India.

The photo below was taken from a nice little vegetarian restaurant around the corner from my apartment that I went to last night. I can’t believe I’ve not been before because it was really cheap and the food was good. My whole meal, which included a dessert and coffee (I know, I really went crazy) came to Rs 155 – about £2.20.

thank-you-come-agin

As a sidenote, I’ve been here so long and seen first hand just how expensive things can come when you have double digit inflation. Two years ago the meal would have probably cost about £1.80 – so nearly a 25% increase. You know things are getting bad when the middle classes start to complain about how expensive things are getting.