iwant2_r2i: My R2I (Bangalore) Diary

[iwant2_r2i]

Overall:

A year later we are still glad that we decided to return. There have a few times my wife felt like we should've stayed back, but those were just fleeting moments. We get lots of help from our parents and without them the transition would have been very hard.

If I could use only one work to summarize how I feel about R2I, it is "thankful". Living in India reminds me how fortune I'm with the opportunities I've had in my life and the resources we have at our disposal. One gets reminded of our good fortune quite frequently while living in India.

Work and work life balance:

I enjoy what I do at work and nothing has changed since the return. Since I transferred to the same company, the work culture is pretty much the same and our team has quite a few returnees. It is a fun team with lots of confidence and optimism.

I spend quite a bit of time in the night talking to teams in US, but there is flexibility in my job to make the necessary adjustments. The adjustments are difficult, but I'm glad I have the flexibility to make it work. I had to travel a few times to US in the past year and my time away was hard on the family. My wife's schedule is pretty packed as well. She works with teams in US, India and Europe so there is no window in her day for a downtime. But overall work life balance is ok.

We get a lot of *feedback* from parents and relatives that our work life balance is messed up. My wife and I discuss this and don't think that it is a valid observation. Yes, we work long and late hours, but we manage to spend more quality time with our kid than most folks do (or can afford to). We drive our kid to and from school, one of us takes him to the Piano and Slokha class and one of us hang around him when he does his homework. Most of our relatives have not seen work following you home and they are not comfortable with Blackberries and VPNs as yet.

Work and work life balance will continue to be top of the mind items for us to keep track of. We are fortunate to have a short commute and a supporitive work environment.

Child and schooling:

My son has adjusted quite well and is doing well at school. In another few months, it would be hard to spot any difference in his accent. He now prefers to speak in Tamil and has become quite eloquent in expressing complex thoughts better in Tamil than in English. His English has also deteriorated a little bit to my US English exposed ear, but I guess we are like this only :)

My son's reading habit has continued to grow since our return. IMO, there is not much emphais on reading in India as it is in US. The exposure we got living in US helped us provide the appropriate encouragement at home. He has taken an very active interest in Maths upon return and in my opinion, thats an influence from his present school. He is academically inclined and has a voracious appetite to learn new things. He has already started mentioning that the stuff covered in class is easy and boring to him. We'll need some guidance on how to keep him challeged and engaged at the same time. I'll post some queries in the appropriate threads.

Will post more as time permits........Let me know if there are any specific topics of my experience that will be useful to future r2i-rs.


Having successfuly executed a return to India, our new long-term-with-no-timeline-in-mind goal is to settle down in a tier 3/village when we are ready to retire. I'm sure there will be return2villageforum.com somewhere all the relevant topics will be dicussed by knowledgeble people.

[BeeAndButterfly]

Hi there,

Nice to read a 1 year milestone update and glad to know that r2i worked for you.

How do you ensure that your kid gets enough material to read? Is it just primarily buying brand new books from stores such as landmark and cross roads?

Good luck.

[r2i_real]

Overall:

Let me know if there are any specific topics of my experience that will be useful to future r2i-rs.


Having successfuly executed a return to India, our new long-term-with-no-timeline-in-mind goal is to settle down in a tier 3/village when we are ready to retire. I'm sure there will be return2villageforum.com somewhere all the relevant topics will be dicussed by knowledgeble people.

iwant2_r2i,

Congratulations on your successful r2i and glad that you find it satisfying after a period of absorbing it. Our children are our biggest worry when we are moving and i'm sure it's a relief for you that your son is well settled.

One question: My wife and I are not from Bangalore, but that's where we are planning to move, don't have any relatives there either. Given that you were in the same boat, how did you find the overall experience with no local family/relatives support? (i understand you have your parents/in-laws with you, but I assume they were new to B'lore as well when you moved).

Our plan is to move in mid-2011, and are visiting B'lore in October this year to research on schools, places to live etc. etc.. I am wondering if there's any r2i meet scheduled for that time frame. If not, I will try to arrange for one, let me know if you are interested.

Thanks and good luck.
Ajay

[iwant2_r2i]

Hi there,

Nice to read a 1 year milestone update and glad to know that r2i worked for you.

How do you ensure that your kid gets enough material to read? Is it just primarily buying brand new books from stores such as landmark and cross roads?

Good luck.

Thanks. When we returned, we purchased enough books and shipped them to India. That lasted for about 6 months. He is currently reading the Magic Tree House series and I purchased half of the series
in US during my business visit. We purchased some Enid Blyton books from Landmark, crosswords etc. Just this past week, I signed up for a membership at Just Books - http://justbooksclc.com/. They seem to have a good collection of books for kids. Hopefully, that turns out to be a cost effective option going forward.

[iwant2_r2i]

iwant2_r2i,


One question: My wife and I are not from Bangalore, but that's where we are planning to move, don't have any relatives there either. Given that you were in the same boat, how did you find the overall experience with no local family/relatives support? (i understand you have your parents/in-laws with you, but I assume they were new to B'lore as well when you moved).

As with most things in India, nothing gets done in an instant. Everything required multiple visits. Thankfully my dad and father-in-law bore the brunt of those things. They made the first vist, collected forms, filled them up and called me to just come in and sign the paperwork. My driver speaks Kannada and he was a big help in government offices and gas companies. This forum is great. I was able to provide my folks some idea of where to start based on the plethora of information that is available here.

Our plan is to move in mid-2011, and are visiting B'lore in October this year to research on schools, places to live etc. etc.. I am wondering if there's any r2i meet scheduled for that time frame. If not, I will try to arrange for one, let me know if you are interested.

Thanks and good luck.
Ajay

I don't think there is anything scheduled for Oct. There is a thread that was used for the past two meets. You might want to revive that and schedule something. I'd love to join. I haven't been able to make it to a r2ier meet as yet. I hope to attend this weekend's one Chennai.

Good luck with your move.

[back2desh]

Congratulations on your successful completion of your year after R2Iing to bangalore. We are also returning on June 2010 (end of this month) to Bangalore. Probably we should have R2I Bengaluru meet. Where are your kids studying, I mean which school? We plan to live in Jayanagar area and only after coming plan to look for schools. Appreciate if you can share some good school information. (I am not in big favor of putting them in the so called International School that are very expensive). I would like them to study in simple but decent school.

On the book front, does anyone know how Amazon Kindle works in India? I was considering bringing it to India so that my son can download and read books of his choice.

As with most things in India, nothing gets done in an instant. Everything required multiple visits. Thankfully my dad and father-in-law bore the brunt of those things. They made the first vist, collected forms, filled them up and called me to just come in and sign the paperwork. My driver speaks Kannada and he was a big help in government offices and gas companies. This forum is great. I was able to provide my folks some idea of where to start based on the plethora of information that is available here.


I don't think there is anything scheduled for Oct. There is a thread that was used for the past two meets. You might want to revive that and schedule something. I'd love to join. I haven't been able to make it to a r2ier meet as yet. I hope to attend this weekend's one Chennai.

Good luck with your move.

[iwant2_r2i]

back2desh,

We like Clarence Public School. I don't have much information of schools in Jayanagar area.Is your son comfortable with eBook readers. I'd be interested in knowing at what age kids get comfortable with eBook readers?

Good luck with your move.

[bostonr2i]

Congratulations!!!!
I have also bought one way tickets for my family to Bangalore on 3rd July.
I will come back to sell the house and planning to finally return by September.

[back2desh]

iwant2_r2I:
Yes my son does like Amazon Kindle and he has read couple of books and he likes it. But I am not sure if this Kindle will work in India though!
Clarence Public School may also be closer to Jayanagar 8th Block, other schools that I am considering are DAV Public School (CBSE, Kanakapura / Vasanthpura Rd.) and Podar Internation School (ICSE, Bennarghetta Rd), if you or someone in your friend/family circle know about these schools and provide feedback that would be a great help! I have still not decided if to go with CBSE/ICSE! It looks like more than CBSE/ICSE whichever school gives admission and adaptable to my kids I will enroll them there.

back2desh,

We like Clarence Public School. I don't have much information of schools in Jayanagar area.Is your son comfortable with eBook readers. I'd be interested in knowing at what age kids get comfortable with eBook readers?

Good luck with your move.

[wolf21281]

The sad part is this bottle was inside the cage and if I recollect correctly, the cage was pretty well sealed. So this particular bottle is not likely to be trash thrown by the public. Another sad note is that there were plenty of monkeys in the zoo that were just roaming freely and just a few unfortunate ones had to live life inside cages.

I don't recall seeing any specific notices around plastic usage like the ones you are referring to, but there were other notices about not disturbing animals and those were mostly ignored by the visitors.

On a lighter note, there were two leopards in the mood and there was guard making sure visitors did not disturb them :-)

No issues - the monkey is a smart animal and it won't get hurt trying to eat the bottle or something. Chimps can be trained to drink from the bottles and monkeys (all) are very emulative. The bottle must've been a toy from the zoo keeper only or may have been used by them to nurse it back to health in some illness. Looks like the monkey's quite attached to the bottle - monkeys have the same IQ as of a 3-4yr old kid so likely it does think it to be a toy!

Have a friend who is a wildlife vet and works in the B'ghatta natl park itself -will ask him that and post the answer for the curios folks here :P