busy week

It was a busy week. Jim was getting over a cold or whatever it was after we returned from our fascinating visit to Gujurat, but it seemed like a busy week at work though the evening telecons were not so bad. He had them 3 nights out of 5 but not many back to back. There was one relatively important one on Friday night, but his trip home from work took 90 minutes instead of the usual 40 or so. So he missed the telecon. It will have to take place another day. The traffic delays are often bad, but not that bad. The drive to work on one particularly light day was just over 20 minutes. Typically, it take 35 -40 minutes and about 40 to get home in the evening- unless he leaves the office later and gets caught up in some rush hour mess, then it can be bad.
On Saturday we had a rather full agenda of things to do and each one took longer than expected- from leaving the apartment in the morning through meeting up with the carpenter when we returned home in the evening, each ran late. The carpenter left about 10:30PM. The good thing to point out is that at home we would never even have a carpenter present that late without paying a fortune, the bad thing is that his work is not of high quality so we have to keep having things done over. (You may look back at earlier postings and find one about "The Carpenter"- the one who seemed very competent and who's wife was seriously injured before he could do our tasks has not been heard from since then. We do not know what happened- he may have had to take his wife to a town or village where they have more relatives who can help care for her and the kids so he can work. Families are extremely important in that respect as they all recognize the need to help. This is less strong in many western countries where the social needs are more heavily taken up by the government.) Of course, labor costs are very low here, so that is not a huge issue. The carpenter has made two stands for sculptures for us and two shelves for storage of shoes and odds and ends. He is around 3/4 done -and none are exactly right, but they will probably be OK.
We had some photos from our recent trips printed on nice paper on Saturday. This was generally a pleasant experience, though, long. The printing paper and ink are the expensive parts. The labor is cheap, so they will sit with you and help edit pictures for printing for a long time. Next we have to see about framing some. This too, is inexpensive here. We don't quite understand why it is so cheap- both materials and labor.
Janet had a bit of an argument with people in a shop on Saturday. It is a little strange when we go into shops- big or small- and the staff follow us around. In a few places they know not to follow, in some they follow at a distance and are there to answer questions. However, in most places they follow very close by- sometimes it can be 2 or 3 or even 4 store staff members following one or both of us. What often makes matters worse is that these staff people feel obligated to try to tell us about each thing we look at- especially if we touch it. 90% of the time we know what the thing is, so it is annoying to have someone tell us "that is a blue scarf" or "That is a red scarf" when it is quite obvious most of the time. In any case, Janet said she lost her cool after asking them to move away (4 staff people) several times. She told the store manager this was annoying to be followed and be told silly things. Some Indian friends said they are followed too and the staff often tell them dumb things too and they don't understand it either. We think they are partly curious about us, and we think they really want to be helpful, but most of what they tell us is useless or obvious information. About 90% of the time when we do ask for more information about something the same people have no idea what the answer is. Eventually, they may find a manager to answer, but generally they are poorly trained and probably not paid much either. We had to go back to the same shop today because they also over charged on something Janet bought, but they were quite good and refunded her money in cash. She paid with a credit card. It is nice that they paid in cash, but we suspect that the banking system does not allow them to easily credit her card, so it is easier to just give cash.
On the subject of cash... we are constantly amazed at how many shop owners have no change to give customers when we buy something. It is not a rare occurance to want to buy something and find that the shop has NO change. This may happen 50% of the time with small shops- especially early in the day. They may be able to get change from someone else, or, we know this happens a lot, so we carry as much small change as we can, but it is still surprising. Of course, everyone manages to move forward, despite this, but it does waste time... but labor, and time are cheap here for the vast majority.
Feb. 12 is another holiday here. It will be nice to have another day off from work for Jim. We ought to be looking for a short trip to take- to see more while we are still here, but we may just want to relax too.