The vacation that was

As we were home on Saturday watching and digesting all the news about Egypt, we realized we were safe, but won't be going anywhere for our fifth anniversary. I took a picture of the suitcases that were packed before unpacking them. I was starting a new job after a week, so I did not have anything to do. It was a little depressing.

Wife joked that there were only three countries we could go to - India, Egypt and UK. But we had visited India just two months ago, Egypt is ruled out and there is nowhere to go in UK at this time of year. If only UK was part of the Schengen agreement. Then, without us realizing it, we were trying to find a place to go at short notice. There were three conditions to be met:

• It has to be a warm place, since we had packed for warm weather.
• The vacation should cost approximately what our Egypt trip would have cost.
• They should let us in without requiring a visa.

I stumbled on a site http://www.visahq.co.uk/visas.php where I could check at the visa requirements for all the countries for an Indian national residing in UK.
There were a few islands in the Caribbean, Maldives, Mauritius and then there was Thailand.

We went to local branches of two tour companies and asked them to prepare a package for us with these constraints. Apparently, it was an unusual request, but the lady at one of the places put together a 6 day tour package for Thailand, with two nights in Hua Hin, a beach resort and three nights in Bangkok. We will leave Monday and come back Sunday. We were a little hesitant about it because of the long flight (10 hours onward and 13 hours return) even though they were direct flights, but nothing was coming up for Caribbean. So we decided to book it.

We picked up a couple of travel books on Bangkok from the library and headed home. The package included flight, hotel stay and transfers between airport and hotels. We had to plan our activities there. Wife spent an hour reading those books and came up with an approximate itinerary. The next day we stopped at the tour company to pick up the tickets, bought a couple of things and we were all set.


Thailand turned out to be a great vacation - with a good mix of relaxing at the beach and visiting tourist attractions in Bangkok. The highlights included:

• Stay at Hyatt Regency Hua Hin, with its ultra friendly staff, picturesque location and relaxed people.
• A drive through the Thai countryside and a short hike by a waterfall.
• A visit to an animal park and a short trek on elephant.
• Visits to Bangkok's famous Buddhist temples and the royal palace.
• A trip to floating market near Bangkok where you are taken on a boat in a canal with shops lined up on both sides.
• Tasting Thai street food, jackfruit, papaya and drinking lots of coconut water.

We were back to London by Sunday evening and were greeted with cold and light drizzle. Felt a little happy that we did not spend an entire week complaining how it could have been.

The vacation that wasn't

Political turmoil in Egypt has finally come to an end. Hundreds of thousands of people on the street. Situation was very volatile. The president has finally resigned and the army has taken over. We could have been right there in the middle of it all. Thankfully we were not.

Of all the places we could have gone to for our fifth anniversary, we had picked Egypt. We were supposed to land on Cairo exactly four days after it all started, when you don't know how it will all pan out. Of course we did not know this two months ago when we actually planned the trip. Dreaming of the pyramids, the mummies, the old temples, a cruise in the Nile, delicious middle eastern food and warm weather, we had booked an eight day vacation in Egypt through a tour company. Borrowed the Lonely Planet Guide on Egypt from the library and read all about the places we were going to see. Packed all our clothes and ready to leave on Saturday 29 Jan.

Then the reports started trickling in. The demonstrations started on Tuesday. "Not a big deal, these things happen all the time" I thought. They continued on Wednesday. A friend texted me to enquire if we are still going. "Yes, of course" I thought. Feeling a little bit queasy, called the tour company, who assured me things are just fine in Egypt. I blamed it all on the 24 hour news channels and their sensationalism and went on with my life.

Thursday was relatively calm, but on Friday all hell broke loose. Things looked rather bleak on TV. The tour company still planned to go ahead with it. Wife was not very sure. I called our bank with whom we had the travel insurance to find out if there is any way to get the money back. Unsurprisingly political turmoil is not covered by the insurance. If the tour company cancels the tour, they are liable to give us the money back. "That explains it all" I thought. But still the British Foreign Office's travel advisory did not stop travel to Egypt. For me, that's a strong enough reason to go. If the Americans and Brits are so cool, why does a desi bother?

The few friends we talked to all were against us going ahead. Family was worried and they were calling and texting us. Wife and I had a long discussion on Friday night. Wife argued that if things take a turn for the worse, we will be stuck in the hotel for days or weeks before we can get out. Plus there will be thugs on the street trying to make the most of the situation and foreigners are an easy target. There is a slim chance that it will all die down and things will be back to normal in a couple of days and we will look like idiots with all our packed suitcases laughing at us. But that ain't going to happen. She convinced me and we made the call not to go.

As we were watching TV, curfew was announced all over Egypt and the Foreign office announced not to travel to Egypt. That's great news! There is no way the tour company can go ahead with the tour. We talked to them the next day and they offered to refund our money, which we gladly accepted.

It's been two weeks since and things have just calmed down. The protesters have won and there is a new government out there. In hindsight, I think I should have been more ready to swallow the loss and decide not to go much much earlier. That's fine - it's just one more lesson learnt. Dumb as I am, I've got friends and family who care and a wise, far sighted wife who will not let it happen. As for Egypt, that has to wait for another anniversary.

Money matters

When I meet someone new here in a social setting and tell them that I moved to England recently after living in US for more than ten years, here is how the typical conversation goes:

New person: (puzzled expression)
New person: (pauses for a few seconds)
New person: So... hmmmm.... how do you like it here compared to US?
I: Oh.. it's very much like US. Except for the bad weather and things being more expensive here.

Then we get stuck in the standard ritual of comparing the cost of living in both the countries. It's funny how once we start talking about money matters, we don't go back to the general comparison. Yes, I truly believe our life has not changed much. Yes, the weather is bad here. Yes, things are more expensive.

It should be a well-known fact that UK, being a tiny country and thickly populated, is a more a expensive place to live than US - even for someone who lived in the expensive north east (Boston suburb). I can quote a ton of stuff that cost more in one breath: clothes, furniture, houses, train tickets, hotel rooms, petrol, cars, car insurance, toys, electronics, restaurants, movie tickets. A general rule of UK pricing seems to be to find the price in US in $s and replace it with £s. So, a $9 movie ticket costs £9. This applies to most of the things in my list above except fuel, which costs $3 per gallon in US and £4.75 here. If only they did the salaries this way!

No, this blog entry is not dedicated to (just) complaining about the cost of living here. Instead, I wanted to draw up a list of things that cost less in UK (however small the list may be). Just like most information on this blog, this is highly unscientific since I am making this list from my own experiences and household expenses, so it may not apply to everyone. OK, here we go:

Nursery (daycare): We pay about £900 a month for our son for a full time nursery (that is five days a week, upto 10 hours a day). He is typically there for 8.5 hours and during this time he gets breakfast, a snack, lunch and tea. Nappies and wipes are taken care of. The nursery has got excellent facilities like toys and playground. The student - teacher ratio is about 3:1 most of the days. Sometimes there are as many teachers as children. The teachers are very friendly and don't seem to be in a hurry to head home at 5. He loves it so much that he refuses to leave in the evening when his mommy picks him up in the evening. This is part of Bright Horizons chain in US. He just happened to go to one in US and had very similar experience, where we paid about $2200 per month. That's a huge difference!

Utilities: I have talked about this here and here but let me say it again. Mobile phone plans are cheap - I pay £15 a month for 600 minutes and unlimited landline calls for my SIM-only plan, when something similar would cost me at least $40 a month in US. Broadband, TV and phone costs me a total of £70 here, when it would cost about $120 in US. If I had just broadband and phone, the savings will be even better - £22 against $70. Gas and electricity comes to £80 a month on average whereas we used to pay close to $200 a month for an almost similar sized home in US. Calls to India cost 1p a minute through Lycatalk, where we paid 2¢ a minute through Reliance in US.

Groceries: When we lived in US, we used to buy our groceries from Shaw's and Stop and Shop, till we discovered Costco. Costco was much cheaper than those stores, but you tend to buy in bulk and things you may not need. To make a reasonable comparison, you need to compare a supermarket like Tesco here with Shaw's. I logged onto peapod.com, Shaw's online groceries site and compared the prices with Tesco.com. A gallon of whole milk costs about £1.66 (after a discount, which they seem to have always), compared to about $3.50. One banana is £0.16, compared to $0.49. 1 kg of Gala apples is £1.71, compared to $2.9 (need to buy a 3lb bag for this cheap price). And so on. I understand there are certain grocery stuff can be cheaper in US, but overall, our monthly grocery bill used to be $600-$700 (blame Costco), now it is about £300.

Car maintenance: We used to have a 2005 Toyota Corolla which required oil change every 3-4 months or so. We used to take it to a Toyota dealer for service and ended up spending about $300-$400 at least twice a year - most of it on Toyota recommended service. For someone with limited knowledge on car maintenance, I used to simply pay up. We have a 2006 Ford Fusion here. Service intervals are yearly here and the last owner seems to have spent about £200 on his last service. The key difference is the less number of trips to the dealer, which reflects on the final bill.

There are few other minor things that are cheaper here. Books in amazon.co.uk definitely belong there. New hardcover fiction releases can be had for £5-7 when it would cost $12-15 in US. Driving lessons are £21 here and costs about $45 there.

As I digest everything I have written, I realize that it is not uniformly bad here. As with many things in life, you win some and you lose some. That's the way it has been for us with this move too!

For the love of cricket

For the last few months, we have been doing just fine with a broadband and phone package through Sky. For the privilege of unlimited broadband access (max speed 20Mbps) and free night and weekend phone calls to UK landlines, we pay just £22.50 a month. This includes a phone line rental of £11.25 through BT, which seems to own all the phone lines in UK. This includes VAT and all fees, unlike US where we end up paying 10-20% extra in terms of myriad fees (this is one thing I like here - in US you never know what the final bill will be). A couple of weeks ago, I finally bit the bullet and got a TV package.

In the US, we used to have broadband (speed of 20Mbps too), basic TV package and phone through Comcast, for which we paid about $110 a month. Neither of us watched much TV, but we are Internet addicts. Wife used to watch Food Network sometimes, but nothing useful came out of it. I used to watch key sports events like Super Bowl, Tennis grand slams etc. Then Comcast got smart and raised the cost of the package by $15. Verizon was laying out fibre optic cables in our area. So we switched to Verizon, got rid of the TV package and paid about $80 for phone and broadband. That's what we had when we left the country.

We had a TV in the guest house we stayed in our first few months in UK. I watched the football world cup games in the first month, but after that we hardly switched it on. When we moved to our new home, we decided we won't need a TV package. We bought a new LCD TV anyway just for Wii games and to watch DVDs. So why did we finally get a TV package? One word: Cricket.

There are few different TV packages in UK. There is a Freeview package, which offers 50 free channels. You would need a dish set up (cost: about £150) and a set-top box (cost: about £30), but you won't pay anything to anyone after that. Well, almost. In a typical English twist, you would need a TV licence, which costs about £145 a year, which goes to BBC and keeps it free.

Unfortunately, Cricket is shown only on Sky sports channel, which is not free. Sky sports package costs £20, but you need a basic Sky TV package, costing about £20 to add sports on top of it. Wife likes to watch Cricket too and there was no other way to watch Cricket legally. With the Indian cricket team doing well and world cup coming up in India in a few months, we decided to just get that whole package couple of weeks ago. The monthly bill would come to £58 (TV licence is extra), but I think this is at least 20% cheaper than a comparable package in US.

We get few Indian channels in our package, like Star Plus and B4u Music. Wife enjoys watching them once in a while. I enjoyed a couple of days of Test match Cricket when India played South Africa and it was a great experience. There were no commercials between overs unlike in India where you feel like watching the game between the advertisements. But during the innings breaks, the TV guys kept going back to the England - Australia test matches, since it is a big deal for them.

Incidentally, India is touring England this summer. We could not get tickets for one day games in Lord's and Oval (both in London) and also for weekend days in Test matches there - tickets got sold out eight months before the games! We got tickets for an one-day game in Rose Bowl Stadium in Southampton, which is about 30 miles from Basingstoke. We will be going with three other families as of now - it's going to be fun!

Wife had been happy so far that I never watched any sports obsessively. She will realize soon that being married to a Cricket addict and having cricket TV channels is the worst of all since the games go on for days!

White stuff

As I write this, southern England has had two periods of snow already, with more forecast in the next few days. Scotland and northern England have had much more snow. And it's not even Christmas yet!

We had some snow in Basingstoke last weekend - Saturday morning to be precise. It was falling down hard but stopped in the afternoon. The accumulation must be about 6 inches - what an average Bostonian calls a "dusting". There was some snow Monday night, maybe an inch of snow. It has been cold, a little less than 0C, but it was not that bad. The snow and freezing temperatures have caused much misery, as I describe below.

Flights from all the airports, including the major one, Heathrow, have been cancelled or delayed since Saturday. As you see in the TV, thousands of passengers have been camping out in the airport, in the hopes of getting to some place before Christmas. We had a holiday party at my work on Friday. Few of my colleagues flew from US to attend it and were supposed to fly back over the weekend, but haven't. Not to be left behind, train travel has been affected too. My daily commute to London has become a pain, with frequency of trains reduced to half, trains getting overcrowded (sometimes there is not even a place to stand) and journeys taking longer stopping at all the stations in between. Looks like they are gritting the main roads, but they are hardly in drivable condition. All this for few inches of snow!

The reason for the disruption is the country is not prepared to handle the snow. The reason for being unprepared is that they are not used to getting snow. Actually they have been getting snow for the past three years, but did not get any for about ten years before that. So you can say they have been warned for three years. Being prepared costs money in terms of materials, equipment, storage and labour, but the cost of all this havoc is much much higher. Hope they learn the lesson and be prepared next year. One can always hope!

As you may expect, I have been eagerly checking the weather in Boston. At last my prayers have been answered (I was only wishing for a white Christmas for Boston) and the north east is finally getting some snow. When we moved out of Boston, we thought we were getting away from all the cold and snow, but we have been cheated. The next time we move, we should find a place where people can handle the white stuff a little better.

UK Immigration "Reform"

A new government came to power in UK in May 2010 (a couple of weeks before we moved to UK), with a promise to overhaul the immigration system in UK. They have done exactly that with their announcement 10 days ago, dropping a bombshell that Tier 1 (General) visa category will be closing down from April 2011.

To provide some background, there are two options available for professionals from outside EU who wish to work in UK (EU citizens are free to live and work in UK without a visa).

• Tier 2 (General) is roughly similar to US's H1B visa - you need to be a qualified professional and have a job offer from a company facing labor shortage.


• Tier 1 (General) is for highly skilled immigrants, places higher requirements, but you don't need a job offer to apply for the visa.

Both these visas are point based systems, giving points based on age, education, previous earnings, English language proficiency and availability of funds. They are both a little better than US's H1B visa, since spouses of the visa holders are allowed to work. But, as you can see, the Tier 1 is more attractive - you can come to UK and look for a job, are free to work for anyone, change jobs without the need to tell the government. It is this visa category whose life has been endangered with the most recent announcement.

I have a vested interest in following Tier 1 since we used it to come to UK. Though my wife and I had our jobs transferred from the US, we had already made a decision to move out, applied for the visa and then got offers to work in UK. Even if we did not get offers, we would have moved and then looked for jobs here. The announcement does not affect us, since it is closed only for new applications. If we choose to, we can extend our three year visa by another two years, then apply for "Indefinite Leave to Remain" - roughly similar to US's Green Card and apply for UK citizenship after a year. That path is still open to us (at least as of yet).

The reason for government's fight against immigration? It is politics, stupid. The voting public tend to view immigration as bad when the economy is going south. The delicious irony is that you need immigration when the economy is bad. In the last six months we have been busy injecting money into the system - we bought a car, bought a house, furnished it fully, been sending our son to a nursery, in addition to all our day-to-day expenses. Also, everyone agrees there is a shortage of skilled labor and reducing immigration severely restricts companies' ability to crawl out of recession. How do you convince people that having more qualified professionals living in the country is better for everyone? You can't. So you go with their sentiments and promise to cut down on immigration, instead of correcting it. That's exactly what this government has been doing.

The reason for killing Tier 1? Supposedly 30% of people on Tier 1 are abusing their visas and are doing low skilled jobs, ergo kill the visa. Even if you agree with the number, this logic is as thoughtful as saying, "gee there are all these people cheating on taxes, let's get rid of taxes altogether". Whenever there is a system, there are people who will abuse it. All you need is safeguards against the abuse. And killing Tier 1 achieves as much as putting band aid on a breaking dam. As Gideon Rachman of Finacial Times notes, the net immigration is going to be untouched with this. All you have achieved is to get a desi to rant in his blog.

Back in action

We returned last week from an 18 day vacation in India. As usual, it felt pretty hectic but we all had a great time.

As I mentioned before, we flew Oman Airlines from London Heathrow to Chennai. This being just before the holiday season, the tickets were a little cheap, but the flights were full. This is the first time we flew Oman and my feedback is mostly positive. The flights were clean, staff were friendly, Muscat airport - where we changed flights - was good and the Indian food served on the flight was not bad. The one negative thing was that they decided to advance our flight from Heathrow to Muscat by an hour, cancel our onward flight from Muscat to Chennai, booked us in a hotel in Muscat for a day and made a reservation for us so that we arrived at Chennai the day after - all without telling us! No emails, phone calls or texts.

I stumbled upon this trivial thing by accident when I printed out my itinerary from their website the weekend before our travel. Had I chosen to print out the confirmation email, I would have been blissfully unaware of this. Anyway, I spent a frantic half day getting us all booked on the flight the day before and they graciously(!) agreed to do this change for free.

Wife was getting her Indian passport renewed few months ago, after we had bought the tickets. Carefully thinking over for five years and realizing that life as my better half can be tolerated, she decided to have her surname changed (as is our custom, her new surname is the same as my first name, just like our son). We have spent the last two months changing her name everywhere she has an account - UK govt, banks, insurance, utilities, doctor office, grocery store. We tried to change her name in her flight tickets to India, but they wanted to charge us £150 for that privilege. We decided to take our chances and travel with her old name on the ticket (her old passport is with us still and has not expired yet). Thankfully, we did not have any issues - in fact, no one even questioned us about the discrepancy.


We landed at Chennai two days before Deepavali, a traditional Hindu festival celebrated all over India. We celebrated it with family and burst a lot of crackers. We were a little concerned how the boy would react to all the noise and loud firecrackers for two days, but he really enjoyed it. We celebrated his first birthday with a religious ceremony with friends and family. We then visited our family temple near Trichy and had our son's hair shaved off, meant as an offering to the God. He cried during the process, but settled down soon after that and we all liked his new look.


We then went to Trivandrum to visit my wife's side. This is in the state of Kerala, whose tourist brochures market it as "God's own country" and for a reason. We did a little bit of shopping and then went to places within the city.

Then we spent a whole day and night in a boat house near Aleppey, which is about two hours of drive from Trivandrum. The boat took us through the backwaters of Kerala and we spent the time relaxing and just taking in the grand scenery around us. The food was traditional Kerala fare - spicy and very very delicious.

Then we came back to Chennai, did a little bit more shopping. The boy got some more time to play with his cousins. We visited a mall called Express Avenue in the heart of Chennai. We were amazed at the size of the mall and the kind of stores available there.

After spending two weeks at close to 30C (86F - probably as cold as it gets in South India), we are back to freezing temperatures of South England. The northern parts of the country has been getting some snowfall in the past four days. We have been warned of a snowfall in this part, but I am yet to see anything significant.