Hyderabad Real Estate : Bargains around the corner ?

As the year draws to a close, the realtors and agents of Hyderabad have been a nervous wreck. Recent ruckus around assigned lands and land cieling has created some major headaches for the real estate bigwigs. I am not sure if this is going to affect the political and business circles, but a lot of the investors and realtors who hold onto land and sell it for a profit may be affected.

Government passed an amendment to some land act that allows the restoration of land to the original owners or public purpose. 40 Lac acres of land may be affected by this and other land cieling acts. Realtors are fearful that a release of the survey #'s etc., will bring the prices down to bare minimum and are desperately trying to find buyers for their land. Local media sources are reporting that outskirts prices like in ghatkesar, areas beyond shamshabad have fallen by 10-15% per acre in some areas.

IMHO, bargains are here to stay for the next 2 to 3 months and this may be the right time to get in if you are able to squeeze the cash starved developers/realtors. Remember the Buy Low, Sell High that we never seem to execute well.. may be this is the time to practice that.

Please remember that I am only writing what I hear and feel, you should do your homework before you make your move. Its your money.. so, Invest wisely !!!.

Wish you all a happy and prosperous 2007.

Hyderabad and the end of another year

As 2006 comes to an end, I wanted to share some of the happenings in the past few weeks with you all.

On the realestate front, the market seems a little soft and even the big wigs are communicating the same. Since the TRS win in karimnagar, Vijayawada and Guntur seem to have a major run up in values with values now running upto 3x.

Dont believe if a developer tells you that they have sold 80% of the project and that you only have a few chances left. This month a friend of mine approached a developer and was able to negotiate him down by 800/sqft in cost of an apartment just by leveraging the fact that he can bring a volume of upto 5 units. Even if you are approaching for 1 unit, developers with large projects are desperate, leverage it as much as you can. Some of the good projects are doing well, that doesnt mean that everything should be expensive.

The past 1.5 weeks have been fun, a close friend of mine is back in Hyderabad for vacation and we enjoyed many nights with dinners at Shikaar, Far-East, Our Place, Angeethi, Zaffran, Chutneys, a few late night coffee sessions at Ohri's and daily gatherings at the coffee day & Barista.

Today we decided to go watch the NTR movie Rakhi at Hitec Theater in Madhapur. It was my first black ticket movie after return to Hyderabad. Outside it looks like an apartment building but the interior is excellent with lots of room and stadium seating, extra leg room that I have never seen in any other theater and a real DTS surround system.

Rakhi [ telugu movie, starring NTR, Illeana and Charmi ] was heavy on sister senti as the name suggests.. fans of NTR may be a little down since its not a mass movie. I think women will really enjoy it and it has a valid message asking women to fight for themselves. It could have been a little short on some scenes that were too obvious/expected, but overall it was a good movie to watch. NTR's performance was the best I ever watched and he reminded me of Sr. NTR in some scenes. One drawback was a confused director [ krishna vamsi ].. Scenes were contradicting, a strong message about women being victimized intertwined with songs that expose Illeana to the max.

Will be leveraging the next 3 days to go watch some more movies I missed including Dhoom2.

More later.. Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year !!!

Hyderabadi Traffic : A Repost of Anonymous Comments

I realized that a good post was stuck in the comments section of the blog.. So, I decided to make it public so that everyone can enjoy it.. Thanks AnoNymous

Hyderabad traffic is the world's best. So unruly and so ultra-smooth that u can even drive blindfolded and reach your destination with your hand in pocket. So disciplined and so orderly, that it would put Singapore and Switzerland in the shade.

It would instead put them in a blade packet My goodness, the crowd is so well-behaved that when u drive, they would stop and wave their hands with their hands tied behind their arse.

The great traffic cops who appear once in a bluemoon are very alert and helpful that if u ask them for a direction, they would point at the same direction u came from. Their traffic guidance is impeccable, when they wave their hands, they look like beach volleyball players.

Buffoloes make a better cop, they atleast stop the traffic to allow their breed to move across the road majestically.

Once on our roads, everybody is a law unto themselves. they care a damn and make a sham over even a small hungama. The finest of gallias and tallis follows when they let loose a volley of words from their mouth.

Paan - wah! the guys and hefty mams who swish the reddish paan do so with grace and ease that sees the juice flow at an incredible 2,000,000 mph .

The road diggers dig every place they take a fancy to. They dig and leave a creater that looks as if some meteroite from space has come and plonked itself there. The dug up space are left unattended to for decades.

That is Hyderabad - a city of nawabs

R2I Financial Data Consolidation : A Tip

The # of login/passwords that we remember in current day is mind boggling. 2 to 3 years ago I ran into this service called yodlee and I have become a fan since and have used it extensively during my stint in the US. For those of you who do not know what its all about, Yodlee allows you to link all your bank account balances, assets, investments, reward programs into one single account where I can monitor all transactions and movements.

Recently I was almost giving up on this service since my accounts are now moving to Indian Banks and Brokerages. I tried a search for ICICI and was surprised to see the support for Indian banks too. So, if you are in US and have Indian accounts or vice-versa, you should be able to link all of them together into a dashboard.

You can sign up for this in 2 ways, you can sign up on yodlee directly [ I recommend this method ] by clicking Here. Select Log into US$ account and then select register. Alternate option is to pick from one of your banks that already uses the platform [ listed here ].

They employ a # of software engineers in bangalore, so another reason to support their services I guess ;-)

Elections and Other Hyderabadi Hungama

Hyderabad has been calm and free of news for a few days now due to critical By-Elections in Bobbili and Karimnagar. Karimnagar is critical to both Congress and TRS since TRS leader termed it as a referendum on Telangana.

Interesting concepts have emerged since I have experienced elections many years ago. Cricket Kits for Youth, Money and Liquor for the poor seem to be making their way from all parties to the constituencies. Think about it, if each candidate / party is spending atleast 25 crores to win an election, how will corruption come to an end in this Great Democracy. One interesting issue in karimnagar, where there is a large Bidi making workforce seem to be the removal of the Large Skull that now adorns every bidi pack. No one seems to pay much attention to other things, at least from the news I watched, its mostly about Bidi's.

Intelligence wings seem to be a new concept in elections now a days. Each party giving out camera cell phones or handycams to their party workers to capture their opponents buying othe votes through distribution of kits and money. The idea is to capture this info about the opponents and give the video to the election commission.. I dont get it, if the party is spending so much on buying votes, cant it spend a little extra to buy the EC ?

India's GDP grew at 9.2% in the 2nd Qtr [ Jul - Sep ]. Manufacturing grew 11.9%, Construction and financing at 9.8% etc. Agriculture again showed a dismal 1.7% in growth creating concerns across India on the long term issues around Food Security for India. With the explosion in Real Estate around Hyderabad, many small time and medium sized farms have given up the production of fruits/vegetables etc. This is a repeating occurrence across the landscape near every developing city and towns.

Reliance Fresh, a retail concept of Reliance that only sells vegetables, fruits and other related items opened its doors a month ago as a pilot in Hyderabad. These stores have been a great hit and have been attracting crowds. Prices are reasonable since they eliminated the middle men who were making the buck.

Metro [ A sams club like concept ] Opened its doors in Hyderabad. I didnt get to visit this place but from what I have seen in newschannels, it looks as big as SAMS and is by membership only for small, medium and large businesses. Its kinda like a combination of SAMS, OfficeDepot etc., serving all the needs of the small and medium businesses.

Reliance and Metro are already causing an imbalance in the economy that was owned by the mom and pop shops. On the employment front, its raining jobs and people are having no trouble finding low skilled jobs in Hyderabad.

15 mins are up.. more later

Some Useful Information about developments around Hyd

Hyderabad Outer Ring Road : http://www.hyderabadringroad.com/

Must See is the ORR video

Hyderabad International Airport : http://www.newhyderabadairport.com/

Dont miss the tour of HIA

Real Estate Information about new and upcoming Projects :
Let me clarify that I am not promoting this site in anyway. This site provides free information after registration and you have to be a paid member to take advantage of their offers. I have been reading this site for a few months now and the updates that pramod sends out are well researched and informative.

PRAMOD KIRON's EXCL Ventures : http://www.exclventures.com/

Vastu Fever in Hyderabad

Vastu, the fengshui like concept of India, which was intended to be an architectural science is driving all hyderabadi's including builders crazy.. Hyderabadi's are now so hooked into this concept that they cannot do anything without thinking about it. Let it be the direction / location of your home/bedroom/kitchen etc., or when it comes to picking a location for business or some folks are even applying it to their office spaces..

In the name of health and prosperity, folks are modifying many aspects of homes and some folks have even gone the extra mile to tear it all up and rebuild in the same space.

Recently while flipping through channels, found an interesting debate about this concept of vasthu. Participants were Builders, vasthu experts and the NGO jana vignana vedika [ peoples knowledge forum ] were fighting over whether this works or not. I did not hear anyone put forward any convincing arguments and the discussion went in many directions with no conclusive answer [ as expected ]

Builders : They were worried that vasthu was not standardized. They gave instances of where they had to make major modifications to projects just because some one announced that their project had a defect ( dosham ). One builder said.. "We dont care if vasthu works or not, we just want a standard". Another builder complained that he is unable to build enough east facing houses and it would just be impossible to make all houses face east.

Vasthu Experts claim that it works. For every question they had a story about how some one lost money or health or dear ones because of bad vasthu. Thats serious stuff, I think the host himself was so scared that he didnt ask them too many questions. They challenged the NGO folks to live in a house that was against vasthu for 3 years for a cash prize.

JVV : Jana vignan vedika claims that vasthu has nothing to do with science and its just an interior decoration philosophy like feng-shui. They have even thrown a challenge for some one to prove vasthu along with a cash prize.

Some fun facts I gathered from this program w.. India's vasthu is completely reverse of what it should be [ and silly me, I moved to India ;-) ] .. Building on hills is not allowed per vasthu, but still folks living on these hills [ banjara and jubilee ] are making money..

All said and done, I dont know if this works or not, but as a smart investor its important to get something that meets the basic principles, otherwise it may be a challenge to resell it.

Oh btw, my office is finally ready and I moved in last week... So far I did not even think about which way it was facing.. should I ?... what do you think ?...

Comment Spam

I am planning on restricting comments feature to registered users of blogspot .. Recently we have been targeted by spammers who keep posting information about mortgages and old city politics. Let me know what you think..

Hyderabadi Khabar

End Of Year activities including contract renewals are keeping me busy at work. Apologies for a late post..

N'uf about me, let me blabber about a few of my observations.. Most of the observations are critical of something or the other.. believe me, it makes living in Hyderabad a lot more fun.. whats life without some <>

• Comedy show .. Was at a party recently where Ash Chandler was performing.. His performance was ok but.. the jokes seem to be a straight out of the Comedy Central shows that I was glued to during my days in the US. Not sure what he was trying to do, but first he tried to be Seinfeld, then he tried to be a mimicry artist [ trying to impersonate Clinton and Bush ;( ], and in between he tried a few Sinatra and James Brown tunes. Overall I thought he was a better Sinatra impersonator than a comedian.
• Event management... seems to be the in-thing now. Every birthday party, engagement and misc event is being organized by EM's. They are very professional, young and hip crowd, as we have seen in movies before. The bigger challenge is that they keep walking around the event with headsets and bluetooth devices as if they are some sort of secret service entourage for the president of the US. I attended a recent event at HyderMahal in Grand Kakatiya and the EM's were going beyond what would be considered acceptable behaviour in the party. On the same note.. tollywood actors are now entering this business with the recent one being Raja.
• Democrats and Republicans should outsource their strategy to Hyderabad. Politics here are at their best[ pun intended ]. TDP tries to find fault with everything that the cong govt does and then the cong govt some how finds a document or news clipping with naidu claiming credit for the same in the past... What do you do when your opponent tries to nail you .. just add their assets into the same investigation.. TDP recently got the high court to investigate land fraud around ORR [ Cong's project ], .. Next day Cong govt included the land around Airport [ TDP project ] to the same dispute. Do you think TDP or Cong will pursue this any further ?
• Real Estate is sizzling and the values continue to soar. I have recently seen residential areas in jubilee hills sell for 80k a yard and some for as low as 38k per yard [ Not sure why such a huge difference.. may be one of them is an NRI and the other a localite or it could be the vaastu factor ].
• Commercial properties are hot now a days.. recently saw an ad for a commercial space in madhapur, nothing great but a 1500 sqft floor in the 2nd floor of a building. It was sold in 2 hours for 90 Laks.. Buyers were rushing in to give an advance to a shocked owner and... Guess what, the same owner listed the 3rd floor of the same sqft for a whopping 1.1 Cr and that sold within a day. I still cannot understand why the 3rd floor would sell for a premium..
  
• Malaysian township, a joint venture of APHB and IJM of malaysia booked at around Rs 1000/sqft almost 2 years ago was being hyped a lot. So a friend and I decided to take a look inside and this turned out to be the "Height of Optimism" of Hyderabadi's. This is just a glorified KPHB built as high rises, the quality, finish and layouts of the apartments and duplexes were so bad that we didnt have to bother much about anything else. This one is now going for anywhere between 2500 to 3000 and I would recommend you buy somewhere else instead of this one. You can get a decent construction quality at Gacchibowli for the same amount.
  
• Kitty parties .. This was my first run-in with this concept... Some how I was always under this impression that its some sort of a ladies party with an "adult" angle. [ sorry ladies, I really thought that it was.. based on the word kitty ;-) ]. Now its clear, Have to thank my buddy who explained what it ... Kitty only refers to a pooling of contributions and nothing else. Now that I know its like any other do's you would attend in Hyderabad, I look forward to attending some more of these.
  
• Stock Market.. I have heard it all .. Buy Low Sell High ? .. Look at the long term ? . Well I got bit once during the dot com bust.. so let me end it there .. ;-)

BTW, I am itching to write about the VAASTU [ feng-shui like concept] fever/craze in this city.. people are going nuts about it, but its getting late.. and my 15 minutes are up.. see you next week

90 days and Loving it. Hyderabad Rocks

One more month has passed since my 60 day update.. . Things are still looking excellent and the recent festivals added to the +ve thoughts about our move so far. With diwali and dusshera occuring very close to each other, we had ample opportunities to visit family, relax and enjoy the good times in Hyderabad.

Finally my son is in ukg / school and he seems to like the environment a lot. Everyone from the director of the school to his class teachers were flexible and willing to work with us, to get him accustomed to the new environment. We showed up 1.5 months later than our scheduled date and paid the term fee ( Rs 7500 ) for the current term. The fee covers everything including his meals and supplies. Uniforms and Bus are separate... due to the proximity of the school to our house, we decided to drop/pick him by car for the first month.

Boy-o-Boy, kids from my experience so far do nothing but watch TV/Cartoons and Movies. I am trying to get my kid outdoors, couple of my team members gave me references to a cricket/tennis training facility, another one gave me a reference to a taekwondo teacher who comes home to teach kids, etc. I am going for Cricket primarily to get him used to a team sport and tennis for the physical activity. Will update more on these once I finalize on them.

Started driving on my own during night and evening hours. I was driving in hyderabad before I came to the US, but it feels very different now since the traffic in hyderabad is in the worst shape I have ever seen. You should have seen the traffic between Road #3 and Punjagutta on the day before diwali weekend. Took me almost 1 hour, to get from jubilee checkpost to punjagutta center.

I am still lagging in taking care of myself on the Physical Fitness front, but I decided to make the best out of the situation by taking the stairs at the office. Some of my team look at me like I am crazy, but I plan to continue doing this as much as I can.

My pet projects are finally on track and I am doing my best to spend atleast 1 to 2 hours a week on them. Currently looking for some junior programmers that can help me with the basic work... heard that I can hire some good parttime programming help for less than Rs 5000, which should solve some major bottlenecks for me.

AP/Hyderabad Barbers and Dhobi's contribute more to GDP than Software

Interesting article in DC today, not sure if the facts are being shown in the right light, but was an interesting read ;-).

Central Statistical Orgn of India has calculated the addition to AP State GDP due to its IT sector ( may be non-bpo?) as 1490 crores. At the same time, their survey indicates that dhobi's contributed 526 crores and barbers contributed 519 crores and tailors contributed 447 crores equating to a total of 1492 crores.

The positive aspect is that service sector is growing along with the rising income levels, but I am disheartened by the fact that we are only generating 300 Million USD in the state in IT services.

Hyderabad Real Estate : Corruption, Investments and My Strategy

Housing / Real Estate are the most expensive in Hyderabad. With 1 sq. yard .. equivalent of 9 sq. ft going for an average of 20,000 in most live-able areas and upto 50,000 in the posh areas, it has become a challenge to find a suitable living space in Hyderabad. Commercial / Main road / prime plots if not kabza'd or taken over by crooks/politicians will fetch you 100,000 per sq yd on main roads of Jubilee and Banjara hills.

Corruption is very rampant in real estate transactions in the best areas of the city. There are some plots being sold with multiple registrations and some being put under litigation by the original owners / pattadar's of the nawab time. Now a days, it has become compulsory to have every member of the seller/original owners family sign on the sale deed to avoid any issues in the future. Settlement mafia's are rampant, they some how get the common people with good land into trouble and settle for 10-20% of the value etc..

On real estate investments in apts and houses, its important to realize that the days of 100-300% returns are gone if you invest today, and even the 50-100% returns are very rare. The large returns are available to the folks who are plugged in to the political/industrial families and can acquire land before projects are announced or for companies like infosys [ who is evolving to be the biggest land grabber in India today ].

Coming back to the housing thing, the house I currently rent would cost me around 3 to 4 crores to buy ( 30 to 40 Million rupees).. and the possibility of this area moving up 100% in 1 year is very unlikely.. [ who knows.. I have been wrong many times..;-) ]

My thought wrt buying in my favourite area is different.. Correct me if I am wrong.. I some how am not too big on house ownership after living through it in the US. Too much of dead capital .. Atleast we had home equity loans to draw upon in the US. Now, I pay 30,000 pm / ~Rs 10/sqft all inclusive.. [ No extra charge for maintenance, repairs, servant quarter, solar heater, 24 hr muncipal water .. and just have to let my landlord know to get things fixed when they are broken etc. ]. Yes, 30K are running out of your account pm, but I would hear a giant sucking sound if I had to pay the bank @ 11% on a loan of 24 Mil Rs...

Here is my understanding about deductability of interest in India.. The max deduction you can have on housing interest is 1.5Lac/annum so going to a max of 15 Lac loan@10% will get you the best benefit for the early years. A nice article here. . .... So, what good does it do paying 4 Lacs of interest on a 40 Lac Loan ?. I certainly agree that appreciation is there, but do you think its worth buying an apt in the current market at Rs.5000/sqft ?

Some of you asked me what I am doing with the money if I have not bought a house.. I still have a sizeable amount left in the USD, dont want to touch it unless I am sure I can consistently beat the ~15% I am able to generate Year over Year. Of the money I have in hand, some risk capital has gone into speculative land deals [ Jai Telangana ;-) ], invested in some mid level housing where the values are more affordable and can fetch some good rental income and thirdly sticking to the true and tried 15% compounding with some of the investments. With the small amount left, I am trying to leverage it as a down payment to leverage a govt subsidized investment in a family business/ industrial unit.

Hope this strategy will pay off in the long run and I am not too worried about the future since Uncle Sam and Social Security are supposed to take care of me and my family ;-).. Yeah Right !!!

All feedback regarding this article is welcome...

Utilities, Telephone and Other Bills in Hyderabad

Typically 10 - 15 th of the month is where I receive all my Bills. So far, I have not seen any shockers but here is a summary of my observations. Many companies including mine, have eseva centers within their campus where you can pay off the bills. My driver can also handle this for me, but I decided to visit and experience the eseva facilities this week. Will update on that later...

Electric Bill : The bill was for 242 units, for Rs 752 including all taxes. The pricing for power in hyderabad varies based on tier/slab. 3.05 per unit upto 200 units, 4.75 upto 300 units, 5.50 or above 300 units. This amount is still reasonable considering we have been using our Fridge, TV's, Laptops, Lights, Fans etc along with partial usage of A/C's for the last 20 days.

Gas : Cooking gas seems to be very scarce now a days with the govt subsidized domestic cylinder going for Rs 300 and equivalent commercial cylinder going for Rs 600. So, most restaurants, hotels are using domestic cylinders causing a shortage in the market, also a rush towards installing lpg kits in auto's and taxi's is inflating the demand for cooking gas. Most people seem to have more than 2 or 3 connections and rotate their cylinders without ever running out of gas. I have not applied for a connection of my own yet, we are just using the cylinders, regulators provided by friends and family. I will soon be joining one of the groups by adding a few empty cylinders of my own to the pool.

Milk : Plenty of supply around, many diaries that have sprung up in AP including Heritage, Vijaya, Mother Diary etc., supply a lot of options in Fat Content etc. A near by store delivers our milk by 7:30 every morning. Toned milk costs Rs 16 per litre while whole milk costs Rs 20 per litre. Expect to spend around Rs 700 with delivery charges etc. There are other options from local farmers etc., for now..we are sticking to the pasteurized options until our kids get used to the change.

Internet : Expect to spend around Rs 1000. Most companies reimburse this expense unless you work for someone that doesnt put you on a leash via a Laptop. I am yet to figure out the best mix of connections to have. I have SIFY broadband at home but its been very unreliable [ recently some one cut off and stole 1/2KM of cable in my neighborhood ]. I am testing a tata indicom wireless broadband card for backup and it is working fine for browsing/email/telnet etc.

Maid/Driver etc. : Looking for a reliable driver and maid ?, good luck!!!.. Driver rates vary from 3 to 4.5K depending on whether they are also acting as your errand runners or not. Some drivers refuse to do any household chores/errands etc., so ask this question ahead of time. Maid's and Maid Services are available between 1 to 2K, but finding a reliable one is the toughest task of all.

Non-Telugu speaking junta arriving in hyderabad will realize that hiring a hindi speaking driver/maid will be the biggest challenge. A colleague of mine is paying 5K to his driver just to keep a Hindi speaking driver/errand guy around during his 1st year in Hyderabad. He says everyone including the watchman cannot speak Hindi and its becoming a challenge for his family. The local hindi speaking labor has moved into professional jobs with Security, Construction, Transportation companies and the new arrivals are from coastal AP and have very limited/zero Hindi... may not be a bad idea to buy "Learn telugu in 30 days" before you arrive.

15 mins are up.. more next time..

Hyderabadi's Travel Update

With my trip for an offsite meet, I really did not get a chance to update the blog.. My trip to kerala was very exhausting but rewarding. An excellent networking opportunity with global leadership teams. It exceeded all my expectations of an offsite meet. Work and Fun were well balanced with a cruise on kerala backwaters, snake boat races and performing arts demonstrations including panjavadyam, thayyam, kalari-payattu ( martial arts ) etc., and my favourite was kalari-payatt.

Kerala Cuisine, was heavily based in coconut sauces, and was centered around SeaFood/Fish dishes. I dont remember the names of all the dishes, but overall the food was excellent. I tried every item in the buffet for the first 2 days and ended up with an upset stomach towards the end of day 3. My favourite of all was Ada-Pradhamam { a payasam like dessert made with jaggery etc. }

Hyderabad Fab City In Trouble ?

Deccan Chronicle reports that state govt has decided to cut the SemIndia Fab city role to 75 acres from a proposed 5000 acre operation. Mr Agarwal of SemIndia was supposed to have his initial plant operational by June 2007 and all indications are that he has not started any work yet. Govt seems to have decided that it will give the remaining land on lease to any semiconductor company that wants to setup here.

Though all indications are that this will be revived through a renewed effort of bringing in small players into this project, the recent news for Hyderabad has not been very good in the manufacturing sector. Dell and other companies that were being invited by this great city have decided to move to Chennai. Chennai is slowly gaining momemtum to be the biggest manufacturing base in south india..

Dusshera, Diwali, Ramadan.. Party Time !!!

Dusshera and Diwali are now fully commercialized in Hyderabad .. Just 1 week before dusshera, special offers on everything from appliances to groceries to clothes have been relesed. I have seen advertisements for special offers on purchase of groceries too.. We are fully hooked into the western sale culture here..

With Dusshera, Ramadan and Diwali around the corner, companies are organizing many [ or should I say too many..] parties to let their employees have fun during this time. Many companies have planned major concerts, parties etc., for diwali and the element of surprise and the boasting rights go to the one with the coolest/hippest/biggest rock/other band performing at their party. For Dusshera dandia is in full swing along with dance competitions, informal and formal parties, along with a medley of sweet and savoury offerings on every floor.

I had the honor of judging a dance competition, and I was amazed at the energy and the enthu displayed by the young members of the teams. Most participation is from the new kids out of college under the direction of their senior members and these activities work as the best team building excercises. Competition was at a business-unit level and the cheering squads were in full force with their customized cheers etc. Did I mention that there was also a cheering award and it went to the loudest team [ not much has changed with the hyderabadi culture of enjoying things to the fullest along with the rowdiness of the crowd... poor MC was having a tough time controlling them ... I hope you all remember the cheers from college days in hyderabad...things like jeete ga bhai jeetega.. ; vittala vittala..; and so on and so on.... ].

I am a pain to deal with, when it comes to appreciating art or dance, but this one was really cool.. nothing traditional, nothing too exotic or western, it was a medley of everything with beats that I never expected could be integrated so well. Each team had 6 different song and dance mix with custom music mixes integrated as one show. Makeup, Music, Crowd everything made it worthwhile and I promised myself that I am never gonna miss these events in the future. The networking and socializing opportunities at these gatherings are endless. The competition was followed by dandia night, and after guzzling some extra calories through sweets, hyderabadi samosa's and sweet lassi etc., we headed down for a nicotine fix.

Other Updates :

Last week we had a party at Touch, to celebrate some wins/growth of the organization. Party started 1 hour late but quickly gained momemtum. I need to get better at this time sense thing in India.. if the invite is for 7:00 .. dont even think of going there until 7:45 - 8:00. Touch had great ambience, simple interiors that give you a feel of an wide open space but at the same time providing the space to relax and connect with the party goers. Excellent Drink offerings and Staff, but food was average [ may be it has something to do with the menu picked by our event organizer ] .. Dessert Bar as always was my favourite.. I am not sure what I ate, but I had multiple servings.. Drinks, DJ and Music made up for the zing missing on in the food buffet.


Another team of mine had their quarterly bash at Runway-9 or something like that, I couldnt make it due to a customer meeting, but will update you the next time I am there.


Haleem is the speciality of this season in Hyderabad. Yesterday I was reading that Hyderabadi Haleem is now being exported to the Mid East and is a crowd favourite in most restaurants there. To enjoy/expose this delicacy of Hyderabad to my team, I am organizing a haleem party at Pista House near Hitec City.. [ depending on # of confirmed attendees, we may either go there or have them deliver it to our break area] this restaurant is supposed to be one of the best ones for haleem in Hyderabad and also has an outlet closer to the Hitec city area. We are heading there in 2 weeks .. and will update you soon about that.

Next week I am headed to a southern state for an offsite workout/gathering of leadership teams and may not be updating the blog... Until then...
Happy Birthday T and Happy Dusshera to all of you

2 Months since My Arrival

Its exactly 2 months since I arrived in hyderabad... No regrets, no challenges to deal with, enjoyed every bit of my stay here... bottomless biryani buffets... litres of teachers and blenderspride scotch [ may be thats a little exaggerated ;-) ] and the ability to re-live in a fun culture of dakhani [ hyderabadi ] phrases including my favourites "maakki kiri kiri" and "bindaas". Today I really laughed when a team member said "pareshan mat lena sir....", to calm me down about an issue....

In the last 60 days, I was able to complete the basic tasks like renting a house in hyderabad, move in, get connected, hire a maid+driver and move my family here. Couple of things I am really behind on are my son's school, drive on my own [ need to figure out how to get a license and insurance ], physical fitness / gym and a pet project I started while I was in the US. I hope to get on track by the 100th day or so..

With the global nature of the business that Indians deal with, work hours are not well defined. The higher you climb the ladder, the worse it gets.. though not a daily activitiy, you are expected to participate in calls, reviews etc., with australiam/APAC customers in the morning, Europeans in the afternoon and America's in the evenings. So a workday of mine goes from 11am to 7pm on some days to 2pm to 10pm on somedays. The best part is that you get to slack off on both Indian as well as Customer Holidays ;-). Companies have adapted well to this global demands with extensive work from home options, including wireless internet, vpn, blackberries/other devices that are tied into the company phone networks so that you have a virtual office extension that comes with you all the time.

Some of you asked me about lunch etc.. so here it goes. Cafeteria's at work are very well maintained / managed in many of the large companies. Food goes from the traditional thali between Rs 25 to 50 depending on the options along with traditional offerings like biryani, curry+paratha etc. at less than Rs 50 for a large serving. Cafeterias also have free coffee/nescafe/tea machines along with a coffeeday express or similar store that offers gourmet coffee between Rs 10 to 30 depending on your choice. Other standard things include a bakery counter where you can buy puffs, rolls, breads, sandwiches between Rs 5 to Rs 20, and a fruit bar that offers a medley of fresh fruits from Rs 10 to Rs 20 based on the size of serving. In some locations of our organization, food is free for the basic thali type and you pay extra for others. In some organizations like google, its all free including the gourmet varieties of everything and anything.

More later...

Broadband, Sundae, Real Estate, Telephones, Banking : An Update from Hyderabad

Beam Broadband : I ordered this service atmost 4 weeks ago and am yet to see any movement on this. The company called me a couple of times to schedule installation and never showed up. Hope they will show up some day and now that I have my primary broadband through sify, I am not too worried about them.

Sify Broadband : This is my primary provider now and the service has been excellent so far. Had 2 issues and 1 issue was fixed within 30 mins. The 2nd issue was related to bad weather and looks like a tree fell and severed the fiber connectivity to our neighborhood. This took them almost 18 hours to fix and my vonage service was down during this time. The best part is that SIFY people were courteous enough to call me and update me about the progress and when the service was up.

Network Services : Vonage works well on SIFY if the internet is up, VPN, remote desktoping to US from india are working very well. while there is some lag from home, its no different than remote desktop from the office facilities in Hyderabad.

Sundae/Desserts : Based on my previous story about Ohri's Hyderabad and its sundae's, my wife tried the awful awful sundae as a Lunch Replacement.. dont ask me that story ;-).. She says its "awesome".. so, go try it and email me your feedback. We also tried various others with names like lovers paradise, tall lady and lewinsky... this has now turned into a regular session to unwind after a busy day of work.

Telephones : Though the providers have matured over the last couple of years, they still keep adding subscribers without additional capacity. One other challenge you will face is that the roaming agreements are not that good so, you may loose connectivity when you are far away from the city.

Banking : ICICI bank account is fully operational after a long struggle to prove my address, and I am happy with the netbanking services they provide. Even bill pay, trading and other services are available along with SMS notifications for account activities like checks/withdrawals etc. I applied for a Demat+Trading account and waiting for that to be activated. These services require tons of paperwork and have extensive beauracracy tied to them. Banking institutions tried the mcdonald's "dumb it down " principle .. so, no one wants to think beyond the box.. an live example was a friend of mine who tried to cash 2 checks at ICICI. The teller asked him to get 2 separate tokens to cash these checks. The first token flashed on counter #X, and his second token flashed on counter #Y within 30 seconds of the first... He is yet to figure out a way to use 2 counters at once... This is normally how the indian companies deal with operations and customer service..

When i run into folks like Beam Cable Installer, ICICI bank and the many other service providers that never keep their word and ask for wierd documentation..., I remind myself that I have come here with very low expectations ... and that helps me stay cool.... I see the issues, laugh and move on.. Life has been entertaining and relaxed in Hyderabad so far.

Appliance Shopping in Hyderabad : Mr. R to my rescue

We embarked on shopping for the kitchen and other appliances that I was badly waiting to acquire including the Split A/C's needed for my house.

Appliances : All models of refrigerators, microwaves, cooking ranges, mixies, cookers, Washers, Dryers etc., are available in a wide variety over here in Hyderabad/India. Samsung, LG, Kenstar, Whirlpool etc.

• Refrigerators vary from 25K [ tall models in India ] to 50k [ Side by Side ] to the 100K [ side by side with bells and whistles like mini bar etc. built in ]. Other features include no-frost, twin cooling [ more efficient since both sides are driven by different evaporators], cool select zones [ to adjust for vegetables vs other food ] and myriad other features..Samsung Fridge
• Microwave ovens come in all ranges and sizes from 20Litres to 37 Litre capacity with a number of features that I have never seen in the U.S. These features include a rotisserrie, Grill, Convection Oven and many other features including jog dial controls etc. They vary from 4000 to 15000.
  
• Cooking ranges come primarily in the gas with 4 or 5 burners and sunflame seems to be the leader in this. There are even the thin ranges which you can initially place on a table and in the future integrate into the granite counter tops like you see in the upscale houses in US. These vary from 3000 to 17000 for the thin models.
  
• Washers come in top loading, front loading, automatic from 5.5 kg to 10kg loads. I am really surprised to see the front loading models being available for very low prices in the market. People generally do not go for dryers but they are available in case you want to splurge. Washer prices vary by capacity and features. I have seen them go from 7000 to 70k, with the front loading + 6.5 kg being ~20000 - 25000.
  
• Airconditioners : They come in both the split as well as the Window type. You can also go for the larger multi-split which would be able to support multiple rooms with a single compressor. Being an ops guy, I preferred independent systems for A/C for redundancy [ or failover ;-) ] and I decided to go with the 1.5 Ton Split A/C for my 3 rooms...Samsung A/C

Now to my story, we decided to go with samsung all the way for the fridge, A/C, Washer and Microwave. We visited a couple of stores to understand the pricing and how it varied from place to place. We picked a fridge [ side by side ] and 3 A/C's and were about to finalize at what we thought was a great discount. Here is where you have to be very careful when shopping in India [ At least my experience was so.. ].

We reached home and were talking to my neighbor [ Referred to as Mr. R ] who said that the prices were too high and that the dealer may be taking me for a ride. He said dealers play these games with list price, sale price etc., and asked me for the model #'s and put in a call to 2 dealers and his friend who works for samsung. Within 24 hours, he came back with pricing that really surprised me and had major savings compared to what I have been quoted

The best part is that Mr. R gave me a well organized tabular entries on a white paper, that listed each model #, what to look for to make sure its the right model being delivered, what accessory#'s to expect, what else to demand in terms of service and freebies etc. The best part is the 1500 installation charge that the dealer claimed was non negotiable some how got knocked down to 1000, and he even got a few more freebies and a deep discount on the stabilizer etc.

Now, this is what I hate about shopping in India or may be I should love this, but being an outsider to this type of haggling, I was already declaring victory [ thought I was so cool that I already learned the tricks ] when I saw the prices go down in the first place.

The dealer is supposed to stop by tomorrow, take an order, give me a written committment on all the above items, a review with Mr. R, and I will be signing on the dotted line. Overall $2700 or Rs1.2 Lac for Fridge [ equivalent to what I had in US in a whirlpool model ] + 3 A/C [ incl installation ] + 1 Washer seems to be a good deal and Mr. R agrees that I am in line with what the desi shoppers would get when they visit a store... and he added.. your job is to watch out for what they deliver.. otherwise it will be a whole different story ;-)

Watch Out !!! ... Lets say you made a deal for an AC 1.5 ton of model JWDB which is a newer model, the dealer just delivers the older JWDA do make up for the additional discount he may be providing you. Since both of them look the same, you may not even realize the difference except in the newer compressor features etc that make the new one superior.

Oh BTW, aquaguard executive [ term for the poor sales guy in india ] is coming in tomorrow for a demo on their new water purifier.. What a contrast.... this guy showed up 1 day early to do the demo and my wife had to send him away to come on tuesday, while the BEAM broadband cable guy has not shown up until now.. 24 days and counting.. glad I called SIFY after 2 weeks.

Hyderabad Italian Food : Little Italy

I went to this little italian vegetarian restaurant called Little italy near Jubilee Hills Checkpost in Hyderabad. I was introduced to this by a close friend of mine.. I know, a lot of you are thinking, finally he is talking about vegetarian stuff.. I am a big fan of vegetarian dishes as long as it has atleast a starter that is non-..

It has a very well designed interior with the smallest restrooms I have ever seen in a restaurant. If I remember from my last visit to Hyderabad, this place was used for a parking/cellar for the building above. Looks like they have turned the parking space into a restaurant and the space was so well utilized that their power generator sits at the edge of the road. I Wonder if they will convert to a take-out joint the next time MCH expands this road.

First Visit : Menu was extensive and has too many choices to pick from. We ordered a couple of thin crust pizza's [ thats the only kind they seem to make ] along with an order of Eggplan parmesan [ who else would order that ? ]. The pizza came out well, but the crust was burnt in some places making it taste wierd. A friend ordered with black beans and it sucked, I ordered a Pepper-oni pizza I ordered [ not the real pepperoni, its peppers on the pizza.. duh what would you expect in a veggie joint ? ]. Reasonably priced, Nice place, but I could not order any drinks since it was Oct 2nd, which is a dry day in India.

Second Visit : It was my team's choice to meet here for a going away party and no one knew that it was vegeterian until one of them said.."Can we have a chicken starter to go with our drinks..". One of the team members decided to order grilled mushrooms in olive oil and it sucked big time... On the second round, the manager recommended that we go with the onion rings [ nothing italian about them.. but were good with the drinks ] followed by Chips + Salsa.. [ you heard it right.. eating chips and salsa at an italian place .. ]. Main course again was a combination of pizzas and they were delicious this time. [ We took extra care to avoid the ones with beans ]

When it was time to pay the bill, manager informed us that the credit card machine was down and that he could not accept the corporate credit card. After a few tries he gave up and offered to pick up the payment at the office the next day. It would have been a major pain to let him into the building etc., and we pooled the cash to pay off the bill.

Overall we enjoyed the food, but I would not recommend the outside seating since you are pretty much on the road and can hear and smell the automobiles around you.

Hyderabad Subway Experience : Did I tell you how much I love Ohri's

After devouring tons of Hyderabadi Dum biryani+mirch salan, and gobs and gobs of kubanee ka meetha, I finally took a u turn and tried the subway in Hyderabad at Jubilee Hills.

Everything from the baking ovens to the wrapping paper looked like they were imported or made for subway in India to look exactly like the ones in the US. I looked through the menu and found some interesting knock-offs like "Chicked Meatball", "Roasted Chicked" etc., On the local favourites menu were the Tikka Sub etc., that attracted my attention and I ordered one of the 6" tikka sub on wheat bread.

Wheat bread was cut and the attendant pulled out a small cup of pre-cooked chiken tikka and heated it up in the microwave. After that the normal toppings of lettuce, tomato, onions were followed by a gooey-yellowish-brown liquid which he referred to as mustard followed by a coating of mint-mayo. I ordered a nestea w/lime [ close cousing to the southern sweet tea.. which I am a fan of ] to go along with the sub.

Now to the um.. um.. ummmm.. part.. The taste was as expected... but I could not taste the chiken or the tikka due to the size of the bread compared to the amount of chicken that was in my sub. May be I should try their tuna next time to see how that goes.... and the tikka sub... I prefer the Ohri's Tandoor chicken sandwich anyday over the Tikka Sub.

This shop at jubilee hills, has a move-n-pick icecream store integrated into the same premises as the subway and I tried a scoop of their banana icecream, which I thought was creamy but slighly bland for my taste.. My all time favourite in hyderabad so far is Ohri's "Awful Awful" sundae .. [ I was introduced to this by my friend's daughter sne ] and I am yet to find something that can beat it..

Next Post.. Little Italy,a italian-vegeterian restaurant .

VOIP through Vonage in Hyderabad

Finally, I have broadband at home in Hyderabad. [ This is my first post from home ]. I signed up for the unlimited service which costs Rs1000+tax and provides a 256KBPS speed on downloads and 64/128 on uploads. Service is provided by SIFY and the qualityof the service is excellent. On initial pings to the gateway at their facility, we saw delays of 15ms and the installer called up the central office and some how got it down to 5ms.

My first test was to setup the Netgear Wireless Router and program the static IP. This required the installer to call in again with the mac address of the router and once that was added, everything worked liked a charm. I Was able to configure the wireless lan, and tested various sites including the ones in US which were blazing fast compared to what I have seen in my past experiences in Hyderabad.

Next I embarked on connecting the vonage router that I badly needed to keep in touch with friends and family back in the U.S. We hooked up the vonage router which comes with a nice feature of 110/220v adapter to the 220v power and connected it using a cat5 cable to the netgear router. My first call to the US was audible, but had a lot of packet drops and upon investigation, I found that vonage provides a bandwidth saver for connections that were not Cable/DSL quality. Couple of clicks on the vonage site, a reboot of the entire equipment after a couple of hours changed the call quality from worse to excellent. Since then, I called a couple of you from my new line and I could not hear any delays that you would normally hear on a VOIP line.

You will need :
1. A Wireless Router ( Get the ones that can take static ip + uid/password ). Do look for a 220v adapter for your router, its a pain to attach a converter in front of the adapter and the heat generated by the 110v to 220v converter is making me nervous.. I may go out and get a 220v adapter for the router tomorrow.

2. Basic Vonage adapter.. comes with the 110v/220v power cord.. so no issues here

3. A UPS would be a good addition, I will look for some during my first visit to the computer shops in ameerpet and will report back on how that goes.

4. A basic phone setup.. again, look for adapters that support 220v, using a 220 to 110v converter for the long term is a pain.

Hyderabad Customs : Container Clearance

Happy Birthday G and H!!! ...

The most dreaded time of receiving the goods has arrived. .. thanks to the excellent work done by my packers and the unloaders.. I am happy to report that everything made it without a single dent or scratch..

The customs clearance process has 3 steps followed by unloading and unpacking.

1. Destuffing of the container and 24 hr cooling off period
2. Examination and Duty Payment [ Officer will go through the boxes and estimate the duty on the items he thinks are dutiable ]
3. Delivery / Release [ Once duty is paid, they release your items to the delivery agent ]
4. Unloading at the House
5. Unpacking [ I did not sign up for this service.. since I had extra help at home ]

Tip1 : dont get into this on your own, have a 2 to 3 helpers along with you to make this easy. Too many things will happen at once and with 10 unloaders working on your consignment, its very likely they will drop, drag and do everything possible. Remember its a fixed price contract for them..

Tip2 : Have an excellent packing list, try not to put a value in there if possible but do highlight the year and model for electronics since it makes it easy to negotiate the value of the items while the officer is inspecting

Tip3 : All labor groups have an expectation of a tip, so talk to them before they start the work and set the expecation of a better tip if the work was done to your satisfaction. I spent 1200 Rs of tips for destuffing, loading and unloading and it was well worth it since they put in extra time and effort to do it right.

Tip4 : This was a very obvious risk that the inspector was taking by randomly inspecting the boxes, by law they are supposed to look through all boxes.. Do not bring alcohol, but if you do, it may be wise to declare it. My inspector asked me multiple times about it and indicated that his colleague has been reprimanded recently when a box with bottles was dropped by the loaders and was caught by the warehouse security before it left.

Overall, the customs inspectors were very friendly but lazy, they were so busy reading the newspaper until they got a call to expedite my container release..

... Now to the story.. ;-)

On wednesday, it was the ganesh nimajjanam and the shipping agent indicated that it may be a better idea to go to ICD ( Inland Container Depot ) located in the moosapet area on thursday. Destuffing was planned for wednesday but we were unable to find the labor or the officers that could sign off on breaking the container seal due to the holiday in Hyderabad. Due to other plans I had for thursday, I scheduled our family driver as my proxy [ a real task master ] to represent me at the destuffing area. Destuffing took around 3 hours, and he offered them a bonus ahead of time in return for not dropping boxes or dragged the furniture on the warehouse floor. Everything went well, and the unloaders even put some extra blankets below the furniture in the warehouse to earn their bonus etc.

Friday was the day for examination and duty payment. The Assistant commissioner who was responsible for the office was on leave and the rest of the office decided to show up late. I went in at my scheduled time of 11:30 and no one showed up until 12:30. At 12:30, I couldnt take it anymore and called a family member who knows a few higher ups in the customs department and after a few calls, everything started to move on its own, with everyone taking extra initiative to get things closed asap.

I had 3 helpers with me who were responsible for keeping their eyes on the consignment and the parallel processes. During examination, all boxes will be opened, doesnt matter what's in it. So, I left 2 of my helpers to watch the labor that was working to get the consignment ready for inspection. This included lining up the boxes in a row and opening them so that the customs official can look into the boxes randomly. While this was going on, I sat with the examination officer and identified which boxes had the items I wanted to declare, primarily electronics and valuables. They were not worried about used furniture or clothes.

One important tip is to create a very detailed packing list while the container is being loaded. It helped me a lot since all the boxes with electronics were marked with a E, the official had an easy time finding them and estimating the values etc.. Also note the year and model if possible in packing list, so that they can estimate it faster. I had to pay 15000+ in duty, which was much lower than I expected.. [ considering I had good bit of electronic stuff with me .. ]. In some cases, the customs agent looked through cases that had very basic items to make sure that it really had what is listed in the packing list. He stressed on the importance of not taking the risk with hidden alcohol multiple times and then signed off on the duty estimate. Rest of the process was handled by my helpers, they paid the challan in the extension counter of ICD, got the Assistant commissioners signature for release and then loaded up the container into 3 DCM trucks.

Trucks reached home at around 9pm, due to a union stipulated dinner break between 7:30 - 8:30 for the unloaders. While my team watched and made sure that nothing was being dropped or dragged by the unloaders, all items were brought into the house [ 1st floor ]. One challenge was with our 3 seater Leather sofa, that would not fit in the stairwell. They left it for the night in my neighbors house and returned in the morning to lift it through the balcony. Since I did not sign up for the unpacking service, I utilized my helpers to unpack the furniture and other major items, which produced a ton of waste ( 80 wrapping blankets + 100 empty boxes ) on the first day itself.

Overall, it was a tedious process, but leveraging your contacts for the right purpose [ Due to the audits around ICD, they are willing to only get involved in expediting the process.. which I thought was fair.. ] and having extra help on hand can make this process easy.

Container Arrived in Hyderabad..

Got a call from the local shipping agent that my container has arrived in Hyderabad. On this note, I caught up with a couple of friends and colleagues that have moved here recently using the same company and the horror stories surrounding the process in hyderabad are not very encouraging. Folks have had to literally beat up the shipping company's agent before they got anything done. To be fair, this story is not specific to the one I used, it seems to be common with all the local shipping agents.

I have put in a call for extra help from my family, and reinforcements are arriving for the day I take delivery of the container. The biggest challenge seems to be with the process of unloading [ into customs warehouse ] and loading [ back into small trucks to be delivered at the house]. Here they use the small DCM trucks and it takes atleast 3 to 5 truck loads before everything reaches home and you can understand what all can go wrong during this time including the theft of small boxes etc.

Today is ganesh nimajjanam in hyderabad, and its an official holiday for the state govt offices and schools. Considering the traffic and people movement issues, even MNC's have asked folks to stay home unless absolutely necessary and only essential personnel have been asked to show up. While driving to work, I noticed that a lot of shops have not even opened their doors.

More later..

Weekend Update : Gacchi Bowli, Hitec City, Kondapur, KPHB

Happy Birthday P!!! ... Hope all my blog readers had a good long weekend. Since the request has been for regular updates, I intend to use the next 30 mins to scribble about the past weekend.

2007 Business planning sessions kept me busy for days and it all ended with a gathering followed by a great dinner and drinks at the recently opened Novotel hotel in Hitex ( HICC ). Visits to such places reminds me of how much Naidu has done for Hyderabad, not sure if these are his ideas, but the architecture and the plans of Hitex and the supporting hotel which is now managed by accor group is breath taking.

Novotel, the hotel in HICC had the best service staff and the management I have seen in Hyderabad. The lobby was well designed with lots of open space and natural light, and leads into a pool area, that is tastefully landscaped using the natural rocks, lake and palm trees. This open area was used for our dinner, and it had a bar, buffet, lots of tables and seating space.. at the end of the evening every one was so impressed by this space that they were already planning for their team's next Off-Site meet here. As usual the menu included Bar+Starters, followed by a elaborate spread of veg and non-veg food and desserts.

Saturday, I took some time off to meet with old professional acquaintances followed by a lunch with my buddy's father-in-law at Chutneys. Talk about a simple andhra food concept that still attracts thousands of folks every day. This was my 4th visit to chutneys since I arrived in India and at 3 after noon, there was still a 20-30 min wait. Had my favourite item Babai Idly and also tried the Rava Onion Masala Dosa on the recommendation of my lunch partner. Umm. Umm.. [ Some one send me a clip of rachel ray saying that please.. I almost forgot how she does that ]

Saturday evening, I visited the chikkadpalli gang that I had last visited in 1992. As i drove into the area, it was pretty clear that the city of hyderabad around RTC X roads and Himayathnagar has not changed much except the road widening. Every gully had their own Colorful Ganesh Pandal with atleast 6 to 10 feet ganesha's. Spent a lot of time with some close friends followed by a dinner at Blue Fox and headed back home.

On the way back, I noticed some unusual activity in the ntr gardens area and instructed my driver to turn the car in that direction. Many ganesha's from the city were arriving for nimajjan.. which confirms that HC order is not being implemented. Teen-Maar, Nagin/Snake-Dances, People doused in gulaal, Convoys of kids bringing their own little ganesha's were a common sight. The area was was very well lit and was under intense watch by the police. One observation I made is that Desi blood mixed with alcohol leads to nothing but the nagin/snake dance.. half of the crowd was drunk and they were in the same mode I used to be in my favourite basement parties of DC... "T Dude", I have seen some cool steps that you would have enjoyed which were a fusion of Teen-Maar and Snake Dance.

Moving on to Sunday ..

Please get me some red and green shirts, Deccan Chronicle astrologer says "Red and Green is the winning combination for virgo's for the coming year.. Red will help with health.. and Green helps with avoiding any obstacles" That should give you an idea of how much time I spent in my car going from one development to the other to get a feel for the Hyderabad Hitec Area. This is the first time, i have completely read the DC hyderabad edition including Tarot Power, Jessica Simpson's cosmetic surgery, Beyonce's advice to women about owning atleast one sexy dress, and some Harry buying a wedding ring for his girl friend lindsay.. totally clueless on who lindsay is and why she made it to DC.

Woke up very late and decided to head to the Gacchibowli area to look at all the things that folks keep referring to in every discussion. We drove on KPHB on the Hitec-Kukatpalli road. Most of the land here is empty with the first half km having great roads and then ends up in normal Hyderabadi roads. They have even constructed a Metro Railway station here, but I thought that it was not too appealing due to its distance from the center of Hitec City. [ The parking lot of this railway station had tons of cars making rounds without any purpose, little did we realize that it was being used by car driving schools until we got closer ]. Then we hit KPHB Phase 4, which looked like it was gonna fall in the next thunderstorm followed by Rain Tree which is a huge complex of new apartments and a mega mall. All you JNTU'ers, remember the rocks behind your college?, thats what has transformed into this bustling township. Its good area, but nothing impressive for the prices its commanding, there was too much undeveloped land around that could be built up by other builders.

Headed to the popular whitefields area. Every one in town told me how cool this area was and I found it to be an impressive concrete jungle with very less open space. Apartments here are going between 3000 to 4000 per sqft. It reminds of Gandhi Nagar area with 40 feet main roads.. The advantage with this area is that you are surrounded by neighbors who are IT professionals and are like minded. Take a left after satyam and just in front of Jayabheri's silicon towers and this is considered to be the whitefields area. Dont get me wrong, the the layout is good, but it looks like every developer is building 100 flats in less than 0.5 acre lot. Couple of areas called vasant valley, alluri something[ it started with alluri ] were good but they were still stuck in between high rises. My favourite story of the day a sales pitch I had .. Salesman pitched on how good the balconies are, what they forget to mention is that the land that these balconies open up belongs to another company which may build another complex or what ever they want.. but it doesnt seem to affect sales, people are banking on the doubling of prices in another year... Good Luck !!!!

Had lunch at Wangs Kitchen, where I ordered Pad Thai and Pepsi, taste was in line with my expectations but it was not made with flat rice noodles, instead it was made with regular chinese noodles. The portion was huge for Rs 100, and I could only eat half of it. Spent the rest of the day visiting Gopanpally Area, Kondapur, Aparna Construction's Orchids [ Excellent layout next to Hitex, but they should have left a little more space between houses.. ]. Aparna constructions is considered to be a very good builder that doesnt cut corners in the construction quality, so they always command a premium in their layouts.

Overall, construction is in full swing in this area. While I drove past the CA and microsoft campus, I noticed that L&T crews all had their hard hats with access to First Aid facilities onsite etc.. May be the MNC's are requiring indian construction companies to get strict on safety with all the construction related deaths that happen in town.

Time to relax and get ready for my container which I heard is in Bombay and has not arrived in Hyderabad yet...

Updates :
Its been 2 weeks since I ordered beam cable internet, the guy is no where to be found.. my neighbor quipped.. "dont worry.. he will show up when he is ready..".. Next day an interesting discussion at lunch led into ways to identify a bad service provider.. "Make it a point to visit the office before you sign up... if you see broken glass or windows .. you know what to do "


Hey, it only took me 25 mins to write all this ?.. Not bad, will try to be more chatty next time.. Ciao

Persistence and Resilience : What makes an Indian Dreamer Stand Out

Persist : to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning
Resilience : an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

As always, last week we were having a fuzool[wasteful] discussion about things to do, sitting in a friends balcony far away from hyderabad.. as usual, we were out smarting each other on which things would work and which wouldnt... u know how we normally used to do it in the US... his better half chimed in.. what you guys lack is the "Resilience and the Persistence" that Indian dreamers have. They are willing to take it on the chin and try it again and again and again.. we have always given up too easily.... She was right, the past few weeks have shown me the clear difference between a Non Resilient Indian ( NRI) and an Indian Dreamer / Doer.

Call it laziness or trepidation, I got too hooked into the prescribed Rat race that we learn to run in the US. Just as the credit card companies wanted, I learned to be happy with a fat paycheck, house, cars, bonus, 401K's, mutual funds, tax savings.. and all the BS that never get you where you want to be. As I look back.. I see how easily a bunch of us gave up on a few great opportunities we had in hand, including websites, consulting business as well as training business. The same opportunity if provided to an Indian dreamer would have been a multi million dollar enterprise now.

This week I had a chance to meet a partner of a Private Equity firm and he referred to the untapped potential of india and how PE funds are actively circling india with millions of dollars to fund and bring out the best from any corner of India. He was talking about how the future is all in the Indian SME's [ Small to mid size enterprises .. referred to as sme's in india ] which are similar to the proverbial garage in silicon valley.

His take was that Technology was already overvalued in India and that they are primarily focussing on Healthcare, Manufacturing and Retail Supply Chain that would take India to the next level in the global economy. Some stories he mentioned about the work coming out of 1 and 2 bed room apt's in Hyderabad, Bangalore and some unknown remote towns were amazing, the heroes were high school drop outs and particularly PHD's that still kept tutoring in the evenings to make their ends meet. Angels and PE's are now coming along and providing these folks the labs and money to make a comfortable living. Of course, his firm has a financial interest in it, but atleast the Indian Dreams are getting a chance to see the light of the day...

Now when I think back about the Dog Grooming Service in Jim Carrey's Dumb and Dumber, may be it was not a bad idea after all ..

Ganesh Chaturthi

Sunday was ganesh chaturthi and also the telugu calendar birthday of a few family members. Visited my parents, participated in the pooja and had lots of fun with kids, family and extended family after the pooja. Ganesh festival in hyderabad has been a special event with a number of pandals on the road that are organized by community and civic groups. This time the surprising thing was that i saw more activity from corporates and other groups within companies with a pandal in the campus of our own organization.

Nimajjanam is another story with High Court issuing orders not to use hussain sagar, and the politicians not willing to implement the same. Its a double edged sword and people are keeping quite for now, we have to see what will happen in a week. Some of the cool ganesha's this time included "Grage Ganesha.. made will grapes", "Laddoo Ganesh .. Made with all laddoos" etc., and dont underestimate their sizes, they were atleast 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide from what I have seen.

Sweets some how take over your diet during festivals in India. Payasam, Laddoos, Kajjakayalu.. and on and on..no more frozen stuff ;-).. I had a blast and am back to work today. This week is going to be very hectic with a few major tasks in creating the business plans for next year for my organization etc. So, my scribbles may be limited to a few sentences..

I miss the 30 day return policies

Folks, all of you sending emails that I am not reachable on my new cell.. hang in there for a few days.. its a combination of the cell provider's unplanned growth [ They keep on adding subscribers without having the bandwidth ] + troubles with my new phone that had all your numbers in it.

Bought a nokia n70 last week and after 2 days of usage, this phone is constantly rebooting when I am in a call. When I took it back to the dealer, she put me in touch with nokia care and it takes around 2 weeks to troubleshoot this phone and then provide me with a replacement in case they cant fix the issue.

A visit to nokia-care near panjagutta was the most discouraging part. There were tons of folks complaining, moaning and bitching about the issues they were having and the standard answer was "Go to input counter and turn in the phone, we will call you in 10 days..".. Input seems to be a term for checking in the phone for service.. I was able to leverage a contact I had at nokia to get a standby phone while my original phone is in service..

Since I am talking about phones, its amazing how much folks here spend on getting the latest handsets. Its considered to be a status symbol more than anything and most of the yuppy crowd is always flaunting the latest and the greatest in mobile technology. Without getting carried away, I chose one that had all the features I needed and was around 35%th percentile of the cost range available here... Yeah I know.. I am cheap ;-)

Quick Update : Hyderabadi Happenings

Disclaimer : Blog has been catching up with hits from many places.. also heard that there was a discussion around this in sunday's party in US.. got 50 unique hits on this day itself. Remember, these are just my ramblings and are my personal opinions, they in no way reflect the feelings of my employer or any one I am associated with... Had to do this to Cover My A**.. Also please ignore grammar and spelling.. since I am trying to dump my mind here without spending too much time..

Past weekend was the last chance for good muhurat's before the 3 to 4 month "soonya masam". Looks like there are no auspicious times till february and tv9 reported that there were 900+ marriages and 1000+ gruha pravesha's happening between 17 and 19th of August. I moved into my new rental house, It was fun to have the family around and everyone taking the interest in making the best of the occassion. Since this was at 3am I didnt invite anyone except my immediate family and pooja was done in a more serious fashion than what I was used to in the US... .

My container has not arrived yet in India. Visited the shipping agent and provided him the list of items with values attached to it along with copies of passport etc., and the expected date is around the 28th. So, until then I will be living in an empty house with the basic furnishings.

Saturday was fun filled with a dinner party @ an ISB Alumni house . Met the families of some old friends and we had fun enjoying the real hyderabadi delicacies along with the combination of chai+samosa[the real triangular kind .. not the aloo filled blobs we get in the US ].

At the end of the day I had to visit an injured team member. He was very critically injured when a passing mini bus hit him while crossing the road. Road accidents in hyderabad are so horrible that bike rides are no longer fun. There are atleast 3 to 5 bike related deaths reported in the paper everyday including lorries that have climbed over the bikes etc. He is still in critical condition, but the emergency response was very fast. May be since he was in the hitec area, the ambulance got him to the hospital in less than 15 mins and got him admitted for an emergency procedure. HR and Legal teams of my organization also reacted quickly to arrange for everything and I was really happy to see the emergency plans they have in place.

Sunday brought along visits to some interesting Real Estate ventures including the coveted medchal area. Geez.. if I have to pay the high rates so far away from hyderabad, I might as well come back to US and buy an acre on some of the lake communities. Land seems to be a bigger hype in the medchal and surrounding areas. Who knows, may be the next batch of suckers will double it for the next year.. herd mentality fuels the bubbles.. and the standard statement that everyone uses is "Land will never loose value.."

Sunday evening, we went for a party of the elite real-estate hyderabad crowd. I was not on the invitee list, but I accompanied a friend of mine. It was a pleasant surprise to see such big wigs and politicians not showing any arrogance .. and really they were down to earth.. I have to plead guilty for asking one of the big realestate guys where he thought the market was headed.. and his answer was "Its going to stagnate soon.. but who knows who will come along next and drive this further"... Drinks and Appetizers at the table, followed by a dinner buffet.. Food was excellent, followed by an awesome dessert bar.. you can guess where I spent most of my time..

Visited TMC to check out appliances, anything you get in US is available here too but at a small premium. The advantage is that you get full service and support. Word .. "Service" should be taken with a grain of salt, since its a pain to get anything done. ICICI pissed me off after making me go round and round.. I will cover the story in another posting.. went to HDFC and I was out in 10 mins with my work done.

Ordered cable based Internet from Beam and a Fixed Wireless line from Tata Indicom. The thing I am starting to get sick of is the concept of the marketing executive. Even if I call a company saying I need xyz.. they want to send a marketing person that comes and tries to sell the same thing that you are asking for. In both cases, I cut off the sales pitch and told them I am not willing to hear anything.. here is what I want.

Enough for now.. time to get to work..

Re-Initiation and House Rental

I titled this a re-initiation based on an old document on wikipedia about tribal initiation.. "An initiation is also a ceremony by which a person is introduced into a society, or other organized body, especially the rite of admission into a order."

The initiation ceremony with colleagues and team was with a long drawn out drinks and dinner at Zaffran Exotica on Rd12. Food was above average consisting of multiple rounds of appetizers and drinks, and then followed by a simple rice based main course and dessert. Blenderspride and Old monk still seem to be favourites in mid level restaurants in the town. Also, caught up with a number of friends and visited various joints including Ohri's, Deccan@Kakatiya, Little Italy etc..

Last week also brought along the long and boring KANK [ kabhi alvida na kehna ] making it my first movie at IMAX and in hyderabad. I expected a lot more masala and entertainment from Karan Johar than the boring infidelity story. God, rani was crying all through the 2nd half...Loved amitabh's role as "sexy sam".. Reminded me of Hugh Heffner from playboy... After the movie a stop at Ohri's for a midnight coffee and we headed to the "end of mid term" bash @ISB, which was in full swing at 3:00 am with booze and music in high gear.

On the home front, signed a lease in Jubilee Hills after a long search. For now I settled in a 2700 sqft house and plan to move out in a year into my own place. We have a nice family in the ground floor and they are going out of their way to make me comfortable etc.

Independent House Rental : When it comes to independent houses around jubilee, banjara, srinagar, prashashan nagar, hitec etc., they vary from 17k to 50K for 1700 - 4000 sqft and also the price goes up with amenities. Normally it goes around Rs100 per sqft in a good neighborhood with nice features etc. I liked this house since its a stones throw away from my kid's school, coffee day, food world, a couple of nice restaurant [ trying not to give away the exact location ]. Security is acceptable and my house is half a km from the main road making it more secure due to a lack of pass-through traffic. Second on my list was a beautiful house at the edge of a valley with a private lawn etc., but the drive was too long from where I intend to join my kids and from my office.

Apartment Rentals : On the apartment front, I felt claustrophobic in the big townships I visited. There were some major builders who divided up 1500-1700 sqft into a 4 bedroom apt and the bedrooms were smaller than my hotel room at ameerpet. IVRCL towers is a departure from the rest and is very well laid out. The only challenge is that its far away from the city for now, but as hyderabad expands, this area will certainly become a city of its Own. Its around 14KM from Jubilee Hills checkpost and 20 KM from Ameerpet.

Main city of hyderabad is saturated at this time. No growth in property values and everyone is running towards the outskirts. Sainik Puri, Tarnaka, HabsiGuda etc., are also good areas with low rentals, in the 8k to 15K range, but they are far away from the IT Centers and some of my team members take 1.5 Hour to 2 hours on a good day to get to Madhapur. Future may look very good once the ORR [ outer ring road ] is complete. There was a newspaper column yesterday interviewing a couple of folks that bougt acres of land 100 KM away from hyderabad... I doubt it will get to 100KM away from the center, but the city is certainly evolving into a world class and happening place with the new airport and the knowledge corridor being connected by an 8 lane, elevated expressway soon. [No Hype .. Real Facts ]

There are some new and very upscale townships being constructed by Jayabheri named Orange County, [.. wasnt that the county bankrupt at one time ?] as well as L&T in the knowledge corridor -aka- gacchi bowli. They are going around 3500-4000 per sqft and are looking like the next big towers that will come up in this area. Also heard that there is a 90 floor tower being constructed soon some where around here. While I was in the US it was very hard to believe the hype, and believe me, there is a lot of Hype .. but Hyderabad is a happening place.

Thats enough for now.. more later..

1st Week in Hyderabad

As expected, life was easy the first week. Left my sons with the grand parents and joined work 2 days ago. Hyderabad realestate is steaming hot and thats all people want to talk about. Doing my best to ask dumb questions about roads and areas to divert the topics but it some how ends up being a discussion about how the real estate is doing there.

I am put up at Rd#12 Banjara and everything is very accessible. Roads are in pretty bad shape compared to what they were during the congress plenary 6 months ago.. I think its due to the rains. Tried to visit Hyderabad Central and PVR Cinemas on a sunday evening and realized that it was a major safety hazard to even consider going in there at that times. People were packed in every floor and the only way in and out was through the main door [ update : Firemarshall has issued an ultimatum to Hyderabad central to fix the issues or it will be shutdown in 2 weeks ]

McDonalds opened its doors in Hyderabad recently at IMAX with a 20Rs Veg burger, 20Rs Softie and 6Rs fries etc. This is a big hit in hyderabad, and there are lines in front of this joint all day long. Heard some one complain that there was no cheese in the burger.. I dont intend to try it any time soon... Will keep you posted if I do.. Subways seem to be doing well, also a new concept called Yo!China is doing well. 3 More mc'y'd's and 2 subways are expected to open soon.

Some eye openers since my arrival.. [ mostly through newspapers or tv ]

1. Beggar mafia is REAL : Cnn IBN had a hidden camera expose that showed how doctors help beggars amputate their hands/legs etc., and some of the beggars that were forced into this profession by others

2. Internet based NRI marriages are not working : TV9 had a program in which they claimed that atleast 800 AP women are affected. Some cases were bad, one guy just left his wife in the US airport, took her passport and left; one family tried to kill her in India to avoid the issues they woudl face in US. Gist of the story was that India now has some sort of a domestic issue agreement with US and that they would be able to take action going forward.

3. Land Grabbing, Fraudulent Documents, Defrauding NRI's is at a peak. One realtor that was working with me to find a rental said.. and I quote him.. "Take this sir, belongs to an NRI and I have him in my pocket, I will get you what ever you want .. ".. decided not to deal with him any longer.

4. Refer to Wow Hyderabad .. to see whats happening around HYD and whats coming up. Focusses more on the high end happenings, but its a good start.

In Hyderabad

Hurray!!!!.. I am finally here.. In true bollywood/tollywood style, I wanted to kneel down and kiss the ground... that would be too much Over Action [ Or was it the stuff on the ground that changed my mind ? ]. Once in the terminal, I learned that we were the first plane to land that night and others that arrived before ours were redirected to Chennai and Bangalore due to the rains.

First leg of the flight to amsterdam was very relaxing on a new A330 used by Northwest. My son enjoyed the video on demand that allowed him to watch various shows including Dora and Sponge Bob. Airline food in the NW flight seemed sub par to what was served on the KLM flight. Child Meal was very good on both NW and KLM, it was a combination of health+junk food that kids love [ Nuggets, Yogurt, Juice, HashBrows, Cookies, String Cheese etc.]

Forming a line to check-in at Amsterdam schipol airport was an eye opener even before I entered India. The KLM gate staff could have done a better job in controlling the overall process .."Nothing new... everyone wants to get in first as if the flight is going to leave without them.." quipped, one of the staff members in his dutch accent while checking my passports . KLM had a MD-11 on service which I thought was a good choice considering the short runway at HYD.

KLM flight crew was the best I had seen in my travels over the past 14 years. They were very patient, friendly and I saw them going beyond the call to help families travelling with infants. Not sure if its normal or not, but I noticed that there were atleast 8+ infants in the section of the plane I was in. Most of them seem to be going back home with their grand parents and the crew was very helpful to them even carrying the infants and while the custodians took a bathroom break.

As we descended into Hyderabad, I could clearly see that the sky was overcast with streaks of water on the window. I suddenly remembered the short runway and the number of times international flights had near misses of overshooting the runway. As expected the pilot slammed the breaks as soon as he hit the ground. MD-11 screeched to a halt at the end of the runway and I could see the Scooty parked in a house not too far from my window..

Immigration, Customs were a breeze [ did I mention that this was the only flight that landed for the night ] and we headed home with family.

D-Day Leaving for the Airport

The last few days have been pretty hectic with a quick business trip to a nearby city to meet up with an existing customer and the team. Today, I am leaving for Hyderabad, India via amsterdam in Northwest/KLM.

It was a very emotional and enjoyable weekend.. spent a lot of time with everyone [ friends, family, acquaintances ] we have relied upon for support over the past 13+ years in the US. A last minute trip to McyD's, Starbucks and a night at the Fox & Hound with friends wrapped up stint in the US.

Let me reiterate that my expectations are Very Very Low about having a smooth transition through the rest of the process. I hope that the lower expectations will keep me motivated during the tough initial months in Hyderabad.

Container Shipped today , and 3 days to Go

Local team of packers/movers were here yesterday to get the items ready for the container thats due to arrive tomorrow. This team was really careful in handling and packing the items with extra foam and some times they went overboard by enclosing pillows in padded boxes.

20" container arrived today on a truck after a 30 minute delay. The team of packers that I hired locally loaded the container. As expected, the additional volume created due to boxing of the items left little space to load the last 6 chairs and a couple of other items that we have to leave back. It was a measly 100 cuft left in the garage.. will deal with that later..

Looking back, may be a 40' container would have been better but the value of the left over items does not justify the additional $2+ k. Looking back, I now realized that the cu-ft estimation tools need a 25% adjustment mainly due to the additional volume created by the packers. So, if you use a tool like air7seas for cu-ft calculation, add 20-25% to it and then get the appropriate container.

Now that the shipment has left, we loaded our suitcases etc., and moved to a friends house.

Here is how to get on IT List of High Spenders ?

I always wondered about the folks who were outside the rings of taxation in India, ie, folks who do not have a deduction at the source.. ran into this interesting article on ibnlive .. may not get all those politicians and the big fish that use benami accounts .. but its an excellent start..

..."Government gets information through AIRs on spending of at least Rs 30 lakh in property, Rs two lakh in mutual funds, cash deposits in banks over Rs 10 lakhs annually and credit card spending over Rs two lakhs yearly besides large purchases of equity and purchase of high value plasma television, pen and other luxury items including cars."

3 Weeks to Go..

I had been too busy with activities over the last 2 weeks and forgot to post the updates, will try to summarize the details of the past 2 weeks in this entry.

Shipping : Received exorbitant quotes from corporate movers, so I decided to go with a local mover who will be packing and loading up the container that I booked through Air 7 Seas. Air7Seas also offered packing services, but I decided against that since I didnt want to deal with a subcontractor that I would have no control over. Packing and Shipping is scheduled for 1 week before my move and a 20ft container has been ordered to ship most furniture, personal goods, electronics etc., to Hyderabad.

Travel : Booked my tickets 2 weeks ago through NorthWest and the date has been finalized as 24th of July for my trip back to Hyderabad.

Shopping : Last minute shopping for some kitchen ware and dinner ware was complete over the last 2 weeks. I am still loading up on any critical electronics that I would miss in India, but considering the 220v issue, I am only picking items that can support 220v. Got a new vonage line so that I could stay in touch with friends and colleagues in the US without spending the extra Rs for international calls.

House : Showings were high, we had 42 showings in 4 weeks, and towards the end of last week we received an offer on the house. If there was one challenge in moving back to hyderabad in 7 weeks, it was the sale of the house. Now that its taken care of, we are much more upbeat about the move.

RemoteControlMail : Found this interesting service by DCI, at remotecontrolmail.com. Completed the required forms to start forwarding my mail to this company and will keep it for 1 year until my W-2's etc., are received for this year.

Indian Taxes : Charitable Contributions, Salary Structure

Charitable giving becomes a habit after a couple of years in the U.S. It may initially be coerced [ by the boss ] but the satisfaction surrounding the activities makes it a self initiated process for most of us. No matter what the cause, the end result makes it all worthwhile, since it draws people together who are willingly contributing to an altruistic purpose.

While investigating the tax related items about India, I found this very informative article by Ameet Patel that deals with Charitable Contribution Deductions in India.

Oh .. dont forget to calculate your estimated Indian Taxes using TaxCalculator at Outlook Money..

Outlook Money also has an interesting article on the affect of the recently enacted fringe benefit tax in india. It discusses ways for employers and employees to draw up tax efficient and win-win salary package. Article can be accessed here

Time to call HR and see if this can be leveraged.. or it may already be built into the current package being offered...

Stuff, Stuff , and more Stuff.. What do we do with it ?: T-6 Weeks

6 weeks to go..... [ Before I start my journey back to Hyderabad, India ]

This week, we took an inventory of all the items we had including finances etc... sorted into 4 groups, Yes-No-Maybe-Deferred.. "Yes" items are getting shipped/being transferred to india, No items are going to charity and May-be's are on the border depending on the space and cost of shipping, Deferred items are related to finances and assets that need further consideration related to taxes and penalties..

Electronics : decided to take my existing Klipsch Reference Series HT System along with the 96" carada and projection system I have at home. This week I splurged and got a 50" nec 50xr5 multi system plasma [ There are very few choices in multisystem, and avsforum was a good resource to investiage them. Also bought a small/low-end HT system for the second room. Vijay@WorldImport helped me make some informed decisions about adapters / converters etc., that I will be using to setup my projector and main HT.

Furniture : Based on wyrablog and other recommendations, we decided to take all our hard wood and high end furniture. Since the sofa's were pretty beaten up, went ahead and got a new Leather Sofa Set to replace them. Also got a replacement for an existing queen bed which was falling apart. We have a glass dining table and its costing more to ship the glass top [ $400 to crate the glass] than to buy a new one, so we decided to sell it on craigslist.

Kitchen : Most pots and pans are going to the dumpster except the items that were recently purchased. Wife is planning on buying a complete set of tableware and cookware next week.. and these may be the only items going back with us. Small appliances like Toasters, Sandwitch makers etc.. are going to charity since we can acquire new ones in India. It didnt make any sense to take Large appliances like refrigerators etc., since they are readily available in India and you can look them up at Compare India.

Other Stuff : No we are not taking paper-towels, cleaners etc., decided to get used to the Indian stuff. May be a couple of personal hygiene items will go.. but nothing major.

Computers : Laptops and Desktops that we already own are going with us and we are also thinking about getting a new laptop, but it can always be done later during one of my business trips back to US.

Overall, the week was pretty laid back.... Its amazing how many people respond to the listings on craigslist.. time to get rid of my junk..

Listing My House for Sale : T - 7 Weeks

A hectic week, with majority of the time spent in cleaning the house before getitng it on the market. Finalized on the realtor that will list my house and completed the necessary paperwork. Craigslist and ebay were very useful in selling/giving away the non-essential stuff we accumulated over the past 5 years in this house. Craigslist local listings were particularly helpful in finding local mover to move non-essential stuff to storage, painter as well as an electrician [ at a reasonable cost ] .

House was listed on MLS this saturday and within the first 24 hours, we received a couple of showing requests. At this rate we may be able to receive an offer within 4 weeks of the listing.

Based on recommendations from R2I sites, I sent emails 2 movers about shipping a 20 feet container to Hyderabad, India. Got the initial estimates from poonam@air7seas and tarun@sky2c . Air7Seas estimate was more consolidated and easy to understand while sky2c had a long list of ala-carte services. HR team recommended that I try our approved moving companies and I fired off an email to get some estimates.

Getting an admission in a good school at Hyderabad is proving to be a complex task. I Enlisted the help of a very resourceful colleague at work and a close friend to close this. Depending on when they call, schools are giving them different answers on whether they can allow my son to join or not.

Looking back, I am really surprised how much we were able to accomplish this week wrt the listing, packing and movement of the non-essentials to storage. I hope this will be my last major move !!!

Oh, one more addition to this week, Congratulations to the new parents G&H, who had a baby boy this week.

Weekend Update

It was a fun weekend and we spent a lot of time with our close friends. A close friend had a baby girl over the long weekend. I dont know if they felt the same way, but we enjoyed being there .. May be they were wishing that I had moved already out of the US ;-)

First order of business is to get my 5 year old home on sale. This week I sent emails and left vmails for couple of realtors who were already selling houses in our neighborhood. Two of them came back with estimates and the reasons why they were the best choices to sell my house. First one was a lady from a reputable company that had no idea about the neighborhood and the second one sounded like a car salesman trying to get the listing at any cost.

Couple more realtors who came by and a call from one of the realtors that lives in the same neighborhood as me and he sounded much more in tune with my assessment of the values. Will be talking to him more today/tomorrow before I make a decision to list my house with one of them.

One thing that bugs me is the 6% commission they demand for selling the house. I know for a fact that selling / listing agent doesnt really do much other than list it on MLS, I can certainly understand the buyers agent requiring the 3% [ in some cases .. ]

more next week

Research

Moving to india is a complex project and if we add in the laziness we have gotten used to through the on demand services available in the US, it makes it much more daunting. I have started thinking through the complexities involved in asset sales, transfers, education, tax complications etc.

Google was of great help in finding many resources that helped me understand the complexities involved in such a transfer. Some of the resources I enjoyed are below..
R2IClub had tons of info related to the overall return to india process

ReturnedToHyderabad and WyraBlog were more focussed towards the Hyderabad specific items.