Smaller Indian Village Destinations

Hi friends and family,

Don't die of shock, I am doing a second blog just days after doing another one.  This hasn't happened in over a year.  I thought I would just put a few recent photos of my adventures up here and then give a brief explanation since life here is so different from back in the good, old USA.

About a week ago we spent the night in Belgaum, India, near GOA, while flying one of the four holiest men in India, according to the Hindu Religion.  His title is Shankaracharya and when we flew him, we got the most amazing handling in Indian airspace that I have ever seen.  Direct to altitude, no level-offs, direct to destination, no turns, and asking for our descent request before we started even needing to go down.  Very unusual.  When the man, who speaks no English or Hindi, only Tamil, his native language, was coming down the steps of the plane, we asked for pictures and I put my arm around him for the snap, which got me "shouted on" by all the Indians present.  I guess you are not allowed to touch him, so that was a faux paus.  I immediately placed my hands together and apologized to the audience, which was accepted.  That's him coming down the aircraft steps in the bottom picture here.  He traces his lineage back to Lord Shiva, which is one of the Hindu gods and so he occupies a very special place in Hinduism.  According to my copilot, there are four of these guys, one for each geographic sector of India and this one was from the South of India, not far from Chennai.  We flew him for two days and while staying in Belgaum, I snapped a photo of our pool at the 3-star hotel where we stayed, which was probably one of the nicest available in this town.  Our rooms were huge, with two inter-connected rooms, one for sleeping and one with a couch and chairs and a second window A/C unit, which would probably be needed at certain times of the year.  I was on my way back from the gym, where equipment was basic and I was the only one there, but the stuff did work and I had no complaints.  Not every one of our trips is to some exotic location with 5-star hotels available, so don't think we are always living high.

The second photo down from the top is taken with another Citation XLS that belongs to the Maharashtra government here in Mumbai.  I was giving a flight check to the chief pilot, who is a friend of mine, and we were at the Vadodara Airport, which just so happens to be my copilot Vipul's home town.  I had been there before a few months ago on a charter but Captain Buhariwala chose to fly there for his Proficiency check and so I got to see it again.  Plus, I got to fly in this fine aircraft again, which was nice.  It is actually newer than ours, so it's the newest Citation XLS in India at the moment.  The captain and his wife are good friends of ours and we have been out to dinner with them, but the best part is that he is a good pilot and I enjoy flying with him and his copilot for these flight checks.  They always appreciate my understanding of this aircraft and helping them to understand and operate the systems is fun.  This time I had him do a short field landing because India has many airports that are around 4,000 feet long and I want to make sure these guys are sharp on coming in to these shorter airports, which require a lot more skill than landing at Delhi or Mumbai, where the runway is over 2 miles long.

The third photo is of our Air Hostess on this particular day, Rupinder.  She was made available because our own Parizad broke her leg on the local express train here the other day.  She will be out for 4-6 weeks while that heals up.  Vipul had taken me to the train station in downtown Mumbai to watch thousands of people get on and off these local trains during the rush hour.  The trains only stop for about 15-20 seconds, during which literally thousands of passengers get on and off the trains.  You have to preposition yourself near the door when it's time to get off and not before.  If you get too close to the door, you will be forced off by the motion of the crowd.  If you are too far away, you will never reach the door before it moves on.  I guess Parizad was traveling with her brother and some friends during a busy time and got pushed down by the crowd, and broke her ankle.  She weighs all of 95 pounds and was not in the women's area because she was with her brother so got into trouble with the bigger guys getting on and off the train.  Ouch!  Anyway, we have had two rental air hostesses in the last two weeks and this is a picture of Rupinder.  She says she was offered a job last summer by our company but they didn't reach an agreement so she has been free-lancing and ended up working for us this day.  Most of these air hostesses are in their mid-20's, agewise, and make around $100-$120 USD for a full day of flying with us. 

This weekend we were on a political flight since it's election time here in India.  This means that you fly into places you wouldn't ordinarily go because these politicians need to connect with people out in the villages.  We flew into two VFR (visual flight rules) airports that had no operating control towers or any kind of instrument approaches.  This gets interesting because if you haven't been in there before and you are trying to find the airport, all you have is some Latitude-longitude coordinates and then you search in the haze for what you hope is a runway that you can recognize.  We found both of them, even though it gets a little dicey when the visibility is only about 3 or 4 miles.  The client did bother to get us a hotel rooms for the 3 to 4 hours that we were waiting for them in each location but even though it may have been the finest in town, it was marginal and probably wouldn't rate anything above a 2 star hotel.   I snapped the next photo of the menu at our restaurant for lunch because I got so tickled at the misspelled English.  The Hindi word for 3 is "tin." Which is pronounced "teen."  I thought the menu was talking about only 3 beers available, even though we weren't drinking beer, I was laughing at that when my copilot pointed out that "Tin Beer"  is actually beer served in cans.  So, then I got that straight but pointed out that Budweiser had become "Badweiser" and I know my folks would have loved that name for any kind of beer - ha!  The Kingfisher should have been one word and the Royal Challange was another typo so they were 3 for 3 on that.  But, the air hostess was horrified at the lack of cleanliness of the chairs and furniture.  It's just another world out there, nothing like Delhi or Mumbai at all and worlds away from anything you would see in America.  I was entertained by the 25 year old's naivete about life in the villages just a few miles from the big cities.  She could not imagine what they "do" and how they have any "life".   After seeing the typo on the menu I gave her the nickname, "badweiser" and told her she had a lot to learn.

Karen and I were at home the other day and went to the mall for lunch and a movie.  Only problem was, the movie we wanted to see in English wasn't showing for more than 2 more hours and we were already tired and stressed from having run around the mall with literally thousands of people having a holiday on "Republic Day."  We have never seen the malls this crowded, it was totally unreal.  One of the stores had two salesmen with bullhorns, inside, trying to outdo each other across the aisle.  Loud doesn't begin to describe it.  But, anyway, we didn't want to bother to go home in traffic and more stress, only to turn around and come back to the mall, so we just decided to buy tickets to the next Hindi movie, which was just starting, and sleep through that movie in order to get some rest so we would be up for our English movie.  The whole plan worked great, except for the fact that Shah Rukh Khan was starring in the movie, he has been my passenger, so I had some interest in the movie, AND, they constantly break into English in these Hindi movies.  They call it Hinglish.  So a large part of the dialogue was in English and it was a bang, bang action movie and those scenes could be done in any language, they are universal, so we didn't get as much sleep as we thought we would, but still felt rested and only paid 3 dollars each to have a couple of hours rest.  When I went to the theater box office window to buy the tickets, the guy said, this movie is in Hindi, I said, "I know."  And then I asked for the tickets anyway.  I think he thought I didn't understand Hindi.  Doesn't he know I have been living here for nearly 3 years now???  Shame on him for thinking that - ha!!

I spoke to another ex-pat pilot who flew the holy man and he said he is a nice guy.  He was nice to me.  Karen has issues with the fact that he did jail time for a murder-for-hire situation a few years back.  A couple of the local pilots that knew I flew him brought that up, too, but Vipul, my copilot, is a believer, so it is interesting.  Having him on board did cut through a lot of red tape with ATC.

Take care my friends and have a great week.

Dan

Belated Happy New Year 2012

Baby tiger track

Hi friends and family,

This blog will be extremely short as I have to get ready to go fly here in just a few minutes.  I realized that, again, it's been awhile since I put anything up here.

Karen and I recently had the privelege to go to Nagpur, India, and do a 3 day tiger safari.  Of course, you always take the chance that you won't see the big cats, but just the experience itself is worth the trip and there is a good chance you will see them.

We didn't this time but made a vow to go back and try again because the experience is just awesome.  This is the morning photo, as the sun comes up, of our little resort by the gate to Tadoba National Park, in Central India.  The first picture above is of baby tigers that they know are there and are watching out for.  We didn't get a chance to see them or mom but it was so exciting to be that close to the wild kitties in their home domain.

We also recently got back from South India, Kerala, where we were able to spend a week with friends and then also tour on one of the backwater boat trips and then drove several hours up in the mountains of South India where they grow tea near Munnar, India.

I will put up a more complete blog here with pictures and more thoughts about our exotic vacations here.  We just feel so priveleged to live where we can take advantage of things that I have only ever read about in National Geographic or some exotic travel book. 

Right now I am on a trip with one of the holiest men in the Hindu religion in India.  Everywhere he goes it attracts crowds. He is one of four Shankaracharya's in India, this one if from South India and is called Swami Jayendra Saraswati.  This stuff is just so out of my field of view and if I had ever even thought I would be doing something like this, I would have told you it was a crazy dream or something.

And, here is a picture with Sushmita Sen, she was miss India and later Miss Universe 1994.  We had her on board for a charter in the middle of December.  Very interesting person and just another example of the people that I get to meet and talk to almost every week, it's something different.

And now I have to close but I will put up another blog with more photos and descriptions here in the very near future.

Karen and I are doing well and looking forward to our next trip to America.



We love you guys,

Dan and Karen

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Hi my friends,

I realize that I haven't been on here for a long, long time. I actually tried to write a blog about a month ago and something happened to it and it didn't load. I lost it somewhere in hyperspace so I let it go. The last couple of months I have been spending an inordinate amount of time in Lucknow, India, since that is where the aircraft owner lives and when we come here, unless we have a confirmed charter flight, they just leave us here. Also, interestingly, they really don't have long-term permission to park the aircraft in Mumbai, our home base. Sounds crazy, but it's one of those India things that would take too long to explain. We were in Lucknow for 23 days of October and it doesn't look like November will be too far behind. I just fly Karen over from Mumbai and she enjoys spending time here since they put us up at our boss' private guesthouse, where we are treated like VIP guests, with full availability of the gym and spa. Karen loves all the free spa services. We have both taken advantage of full massages, facials, pedicures, haircuts, you name it. I think the skin on my face and feet is in the best shape it's been in since I was about 4 years old.

Karen and I took a couple of days off and spent time with Dr. John McGhee, our good friend from Auburn, Washington. He is working on a very interesting new project, trying to produce a kind of soap opera program for the women of Pakistan, who are addicted to these programs, but these have a heath and spiritual twist to the stories. We saw the initial program, which was extremely well done by a great cast of actors, including the lady who played Ghandi's wife in the classic movie from the early 80's. Her name is Rohini and we spent a lovely couple of hours at her home with Dr. McGhee. Very impressive, and we hope that this wonderful project takes wing and can express God's love and care in an amazing new venue on Pakistani and Indian television.

Karen and I will do Thanksgiving alone this year at Lucknow. But, we are happy to have a great place to do so, under the care of our wonderful hosts. Probably won't have turkey like we were able to do last year in Gurgaon, with our new oven. We took the oven to Mumbai but are still waiting on the gas cylinder to hook it up to, so Karen can try to cook some of our favorite dishes in our much smaller kitchen. We will probably go out to one of our favorite restaurants here in Lucknow, called Barbeque Nation, and see if they, by any chance, have any turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving. Most likely we'll be eating chicken, and that's okay.

The Indian economy just keeps on rolling and my job security seems pretty well maintained if I am still interested in working in India. My plan now is to work here, if possible, until mandatory retirement at age 65. That's still more than 6 years away so you can see we are having our big adventure here. It's turned into more of an adventure than we thought it might.

We had thought about coming home for Christmas this year but decided its a very difficult time of year to travel and everyone has family agendas so we put it off til Spring, when I will come home for training anyway. I am hoping to go back to Thunderbird Academy for their reunion weekend. It will be my brother's 40th year and I knew lots of people from his class. We like the weather in Scottsdale that time of year so maybe we'll do it again. Plus, we can visit our kids and see the grandkids, too.

We love our new apartment in Mumbai and it's close to a lot of restaurant choices and good things that Karen can do, even when I am out of town. It's much more convenient and handy than our Gurgaon apartment was, which was kind of far out.

I am going to keep this kind of short, try to get it to publish and wish each and every one of you a very wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas Season. Since Mumbai stays quite warm throughout the winter, as opposed to Delhi, which got cold in December and January, we will enjoy moderate temperatures throughout the winter (think South shore of the big Island of Hawaii for weather comparisons).

We love you all and hope to hear from you soon,

Dan and Karen Clifford

P.S. The pics are from the Formula One race in New Delhi a few weeks ago. Our aircraft owner bought 50% of the race team and we got to go to the weekend trials. We had tickets to the race but traffic was so bad we couldn't reach in time for the race. Still had fun, though.

Buying vegetables and eating out

We were taking our taxi through Mumbai the other day and saw this place in the city where the farmers come to sell their goods.  Its amazing how they just sell their stuff right there on the highway.


The last picture is out of our apartment window in the afternoon sun, looking North.  You can see other highrise apartments in the area, plus our local go-kart track, if you look carefully.  It's a beautiful area and one of the remarkable things about it is that there are no slums visible in your window view, something that is very hard to achieve in any part of Mumbai.

Karen still has to worry about the supposed crocodiles in the lake and now we hear there are leopards in the forest around where we live.  I won't lose any sleep over this but it will give her some added things to think about when I am out of town - ha!

I actually put this blog together several weeks ago and couldn't get it to publish so we'll see if I can get it to go up today to give you guys a little better idea of what our life in India is like from day to day.

Love you all,

Dan and Karen

Good morning,

I see it's been almost a month since I last put up a blog. I know that some of you are on Facebook and see me there, some of you are on my email list and get those letters, and some of you are probably seeing all of this stuff as I put it out. This blog was my kids idea but I do have to admit that I have enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. I just don't do it as often as I would like to.

The other day I was totalling up a logbook page and it really pointed out how little flying I have been doing lately. Since the first of June, when the move to Mumbai really got serious, I have only flown about 30 hours. Usually I fly that much in a month. Some of you have asked and I am on salary so it's not a monetary issue, it's just that I like to fly and to be busy, so this has been a particularly frustrating stretch for me. This last week we did have two flights, which was nice. One of them was actually a charter flight and it was down to Kochin, which is a place that I hadn't been to before down in the Kerala coastal region of Southern India. I was glad to get a chance to fly down that way, even though it was only a pickup trip and allowed no time on the ground at all. A couple of days later we had a trip for height verification on our RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimums). An engineer flew in from Bangkok and he had the equipment required to do our height verification testing. ATC around Mumbai was not in a particularly good mood and they sent us offshore for our test flight. That became tricky because the engineer wanted us to fly in a straight line for 45 minutes but since we were headed out to sea, even though we had slowed way down, we couldn't fly that long or we were going to get out of radio range, which would complicate things mightily. So, we flew as long as we could and then turned around before we lost communications. We headed back towards Mumbai but there was some serious weather on the way and we began negotiating for moving around the weather. The controller started us down, which we couldn't do during the test, so we had to turn around again and fly out towards the ocean again. Then, I went back in the cabin and checked with the engineer to see if we could trun around and fly back into Mumbai for the landing. He gave me the thumbs up so, we headed back in, but on the way in Mumbai had a couple of 360 degree turns to make room for other planes as we headed back in. With the Hindi/English thing going on, it's always an adventure. It's in times like these that I am thankful for my Indian copilot, who can speak their language, so to speak. Lots of explanation was required for the controller to allow us to fly at an RVSM altitude when we were seeking RVSM certification. It seems that we already were RVSM approved and the only thing we were going was getting our height certification from the engineer. Sometimes, it's just how you word things that makes the difference.

If you have looked at the pictures above, I am sitting in the pilots lounge of the General Aviation Terminal in Mumbai. This was something we didn't have in Delhi, so I have to appreciate the building and the accomodation of our private planes here. The parking here is quite interesting, with the runway just a few yards away, the big jets go roaring right past you. If they ever had directional control issues due to an engine out or something, it would get really interesting really fast. It is fun to watch the big planes, the 747's, the 777's and big Airbusses do their takeoff and landing thing just right in front of your eyes. The Mumbai runway is probably one of the most used pieces of runway real estate in the world. They do have a second runway but it runs in a different direction and so they are reticent to use it under normal circumstances, which keeps runway 27 very, very busy. Sometimes, they tell us we are number 20 for landing and it isn't too hard to be number 10 for takeoff. I try to save fuel by taxiing on one engine and also idling for long periods of time on one. At least here in Mumbai the taxi times are short, compared to Delhi. I have never, ever taxiied as much as I did in Delhi. Sometimes, it was a 20 minute taxi to a far away runway. Here, last week, we started, called for taxi, and tower told us to pull into position for takeoff, so it was less than 5 minutes from startup to takeoff, but this seldom happens. More likely is that you will do a short taxi and then wait 20-25 minutes for your turn to takeoff. Since airplanes are feeding in from several different takeoff positions, you often don't know your sequence and if you start your second engine, that will just about guarantee that you will have to wait another 10-15 minutes than you thought.

Our houseguest, Ankita, went home to Delhi for the weekend to take care of some business. She will be back on Tuesday evening so we have had some time to ourselves. Karen has not been feeling well, so has been sleeping most of the weekend.

We had something really interesting happen on Sunday morning. Our househelper from Delhi had called a few weeks ago to chat about something. She has been talking about coming to Mumbai to work for us here since she liked us so much. I couldn't totally understand what her conversation was about but she was trying to get it so her 20 year old son could come down and work for us. I had tried to tell her that we didn't have a position for him because Karen really doesn't want a male housekeeper around when I am gone so much. But, come Sunday morning, he shows up with his suitcase, at the front door and was expecting to go to work. Now, he spoke just a little English but not much. His mother speaks none. I had, at the most, indicated he could stay with us for a few days while he was looking for work but now that was going to be negated by the company of our little air hostess. I was eating breakfast, getting ready to go to church and the doorbell rang. In he comes. So, I called my friend up in Delhi for whom this kids mother now works and explained everything to him. He said Saina would be coming in to work on Monday morning and he would explain everything to her then. Of we went to church, with this very nice young man just tagging along. I am not sure how much he got out of the English only church service but he was just so nice. After church I called my copilot and asked him to please explain to this young man, Attosh, was his name, that we really didn't have a place for him to stay and that I was so sorry for the misunderstanding. I was willing to pay for his transportation back to Delhi, which is 1,000 road miles away. He said he would only need 500 rupees, which is about $12. I handed him that and he packed his bag and headed out. We were so relieved because we really don't have a servant's quarters in this apartment, like we did in the one in Gurgaon. Here, we only have three bedrooms, one of which is the office with the computer and all, so no bed in there. With Ankita here, there is no extra bedroom at all. Karen and I were sweating this out but after Vipul called and talked to our new helper, he was very nice and totally understanding that his mother had kind of misguided him and so off he went. I did get him to one church service in the few short hours that he was with us. Karen wasn't feeling well enough to go on Sunday morning so it was good to have someone to talk to the auto rickshaw driver.

Wow, I just got a phone call and the airplane has some interesting flights coming up. Also, amazingly, the management actually listened and did not take the new captain they were looking at. He just didn't have a good reputation here in the local flying community, so that is always alarming. I had talked to his former boss and they said they had restricted him from VIP flights. I had told them in an email last week that I thought all of our flights were VIP flights. I still thought that I was going to have to try and work with this guy and do some intensive training. But, we dodged a bullet and so I am breathing a sigh of relief and thanking my lucky stars.

Our taxi will be here any minute to take us to the mall. There, we are going to eat some lunch and try to take in an English movie - yahoo!!

I'll be back with more next time.

Dan

Shocked in India

This week Karen and I were visiting with the pastor from our Mumbai SDA church here in India. We actually love Pastor Rajan Paul, who graduated from Spicer College in Pune, with a Master's of Religion degree. Since then he has gotten married (arranged) two years ago and now is the senior pastor of the Mumbai Central church. The first time I heard him preach back in late May, I knew I was going to like him and he is known for his preaching style. He is a wonderful young man and always has a smile on his face. Since I graduated from the SDA theological seminary at Andrews University 32 years ago this month, we started comparing notes about studies and the life of a young pastor. Since I had taken a year out of college and gone flying in Botswana for a year, I was 26 years old by the time I finished seminary and headed back to California, where I was a youth pastor at the Redlands SDA church. So, by the time I was finished with graduate school and back in California, I was right about the same station in life where our young pastor is. He has been married for two years and his wife is expecting their first baby around Christmas to early January. Now, here is where the paths of an SDA minister in the USA and one in a developing country widely diverge. Without probing too deeply, I asked the pastor if he was comfortable sharing salary information with me. I well remember before seminary, my first year out of college, this was 1976, and my starting pay was $1,000 USD/month, give or take a little. My ex-wife was working already as a dental hygienist and in California, they were pretty well paid, so she was making roughly twice what I was making, which didn't bother me at all. With two incomes and not much expense, we were able to get by just fine, even though our first year of marriage, I was still in undergraduate theology training. Without too much pressing, and with a smile on his face, I asked our young pastor about his current pay and he revealed that he is working for less than $90/month US. I asked him again, because, for a moment I was in shock. He laughed again and said that because he has his graduate degree and works at the Mumbai church, he is making quite a bit more than some of the other young men. The local conference does take 10% of his pay for rent on the parsonage, which is attached to the church. We have seen it, and it is just a different world than we live in, trust me on that. We pay our housemaid, who only comes in 6 days a week for about two hours, quite a bit more than this, and she has no education at all. Our drivers, who were full time at Jindal in Delhi, were making more than twice this amount of money and, again, they barely spoke English and their main contribution to life was driving a car in bad traffic. This is just so wrong. Not only is that wrong, but now I did a little math and its just obscene the difference between his pay and mine. If a wealthy executive were making as many times more money as I am than the pastor, he would be making over 35 million dollars a year. Karen and I came home and discussed this for quite some time and we are just shocked that there are dedicated and hard working young people who will submit themselves to a very rigorous and intense post-graduate education for this amount of money. I still remember when my dad talked about arriving in Chile, South America back in 1944. Of course, at that time dad didn't have his master's degree but he had his undergraduate degree in theology and a burning desire to work in Spanish work, since he had grown up in El Paso, Texas. When they got off the boat in Chile, dad discovered he would be making a dollar a day. His and mom's first opportunity to come back to visit family and friends in the USA would be in 6 years. My company here in India flies me home, business class, twice a year. To put one last period on this sentence, the pastor here kind of laughingly told me that his wife has a pretty good tech job with a local company. In fact, her office is right behind our apartment here in Powai. The sad part, his entire salary pays only the tithe on his wife's salary, so she is making 10 times what he makes. I know that pastors in America must now be making in the neighborhood of $50,000/year. The last time I checked, the Indian rupee is about 45 to 1 on the USD, so you can take the same number in both the USA and India, and that's the pay, only here its in rupees, where it's USD in America. An American pastor makes about 45-50 times as much as an Indian pastor. I don't know even where to start with this, but now I have a completely new and amazing appreciation for these pastors and workers.

If you noticed the pictures look a little different today, we followed our Mumbai Central pastor to another SDA English speaking church in the Mumbai area. A friend in Delhi had told me about this church in an area called Sanpada. If the driver knows what he is doing, then it's possible that we might get there quicker than we do to Mumbai Central. Sanpada is an area across the bay, which is part of Navi Mumbai (New Mumbai.) We drove kind of through and passed it on the way to Pune a couple of weeks ago, so I got a brief look at it and now we know. I was very impressed with this huge SDA school that we ended up at for church today. As it turns out, it is a private, SDA school but, since private schools are so highly sought after, they have 2600 students here. When I saw all the school busses and the size of the school I was totally in shock. After church today, one of the teachers informed me that almost the whole congregation at church today was made up solely of the teachers at this SDA school but that most of the students were not Seventh-day Adventist at all. So, I said, what a great opportunity to give them reading, writing, arithmetic, English and Bible. He said they love it and that the school is highly regarded and very successful. I had no idea and love surprises like this. We met in one of the classrooms and sat on very hard desks for the entire length of the SS and church program. Gave me so much more respect for these young kids who come in and sit in these desks every single day. Karen and I guess that there were about 25 people there today, with only one child in the entire congregation. Interesting. As soon as we arrived, the pastor came out of the classroom and greeted us, along with the local pastor of this church. We were honored as guests with special recognition and introduction from the front, as well as one long-stem rose each. Just a wonderful experience, and the pastor of this church said he had heard about me already. I forgot to mention that 3 weeks ago, when we were attending the Mumbai SDA central church, we ran into the president of the Western Indian Union office, and when he saw me, he said he had already heard very good things about my sermons from his grandkids. I guess they attended Mumbai back on July 16, when I was very priveleged to speak there. All this preaching stuff, and the wonderful way that the people here respond to God's gospel of Love, makes me wish, again, that I was two people, so I could share all the time. I got the thelogy degree to please my parents, who thought flying was not a worthy profession, but I have been flying professionally for 31 plus years and it has been a very enjoyable career. Anytime someone pays you to do what you love to do anyway, it's a good life, but we really have to fix this minister salary thing here. AND, I bet, although I don't know, that the teachers are not paid well, either. So fundamentally wrong. And, I have many friends in India who are pilots or working tech jobs and they are paid quite well. It's just a different culture.

Hi Victorville, Hi Garden Grove, Hi Redlands. These are the three SDA churches that I worked at back in the late 70's and early 80's just before I voluntarily switched careers. Great memories, great people and a wonderful experience. I wasn't paid well, but it was an OK life, with lots of the compensation coming as appreciation directly from the parisioners. (Not money, just great appreciation for trying to communicate God's love to them and their kids.) I need some of that love and forgiveness myself these days. I have been struggling lately and just really need your prayers and love.

Thanks for coming along, I hope you enjoyed the message and the journey. Love you all!!

Dan

Waiting to fly

Hi Family and friends,

In early to mid-June, Karen and I began the process of saying good-bye to our Delhi and Gurgaon friends and boarded an airliner for a two hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai on June 18th. Getting three cats on board a domestic airliner in India is no small task. Security insisted on seeing the cat containers but wouldn't have anything to do with the cats themselves. I talked to many supervisors and coordinators before the transaction actually took place. Karen was busy with the debit card covering the cost of the extra baggage and the cats themselves, which we had already taken to the vets office and gotten documentation of their shots and certificates so they could travel. The vet was trained in America and when he sees and American he charges American prices so all the paperwork and the cages, etc, ran way over $200 USD. They were not happy about their new journey and of course, when we arrived at our new apartment near mid-night on Saturday night, security was not happy to see us or our cats. They refused to let us into our new apartment. Calls were placed and, with the cats howling in the background, after about 45 minutes of negotiating, we ended up being let in. The first picture at the top is one of Karen's and my best friends in India, Louise Eikerman. She called and met us at the mall just a day before she was going to board an airliner for her native Canada. She is a nurse and a sweetheart, who has helped us a couple of times. She is now already back in India and has said that Vancouver was lovely this summer. Blue skies, perfect temperatures, etc. Rub it in, Louise. Friends Simon and Jess Alexander also saw us off and have invited us to spend Christmas with them in one of the most beautiful parts of India, the Kerala coast. We really look forward to that and hope that it all works out.

In the meantime, the last few weeks have been consumed with getting a major inspection done on the airplane so that has given us a little time to get some trips done, which you already saw the blog for the Pune trip. We have been busy trying to get all the paperwork in order for our third visit to the FRRO, foreign regional registration office. This most hated of Indian government bureaucracies is just indicative of how things go wrong when you allow paperwork and old ideas left over from the British way of doing things to flourish and grow for decades. Its just horrible and now we have made two visits there with at least a 90 minute drive each way in traffic and with not even the courtesy to get in and speak with any of the people since they always find something wrong with the paperwork. Part of this required a visit to Delhi by airlines to deregister there so we could register here in Mumbai. Until you have been here and done this you cannot imagine the amount of time and energy that goes into keeping all your paperwork and visas and other transactions current and ready in case you need them.

At least, since I have come to Mumbai, we have been flying some quite interesting people. The picture above with the lady in blue is a famous Bollywood actress here named Somali Bandre. She flew with us twice and once she had a planeload of friends from Bollywood so that was a fun and interesting trip.

Karen and I have been traveling to the Mumbai Central SDA church every weekend that we are here. Traffic is bad, although if you leave early enough, we can make it in 45 minutes. If you leave a little late, then it's over an hour. Gives new meaning to the trip to church every week but we love the little congregation of only about 60 people. The pastor is a wonderful, young man, Pastor Rajan Paul, who has been very kind to Karen and I as we moved (shifted) into the Mumbai area. Just an interesting sidelight. The pastors here in India are paid so poorly that it is just kind of sad. Our current pastor's wife has a nice, corporate job near our apartment and she makes many times what he does. In fact, he told us that his salary only pays the tithe on his wife's salary. Kind of puts dedication to the church and it's work in a new light when you consider that. I remember my folks taking a job as missionaries in Chile, South America back in the mid-40's. Dad's starting salary was $30/month and they were starving to death. Just unbelievable what church work expects of people sometimes. Dad said that even though they were ex-pats from America that the division office had decided that they would be compensated as locals. If I had been dad, I would have been on the next boat home. They had just riden on a frieght ship from New York that took them weeks to get there. Once they got there, it was going to be 6 years before they got to see America again, courtesy of the church. Mom had her first baby thousands of miles away from home, without the support of family or people that she could easily communicate with. Wow, mom, I have a new appreciation for what you went through. You made some great friends, though, and now, all these years later, your friends from those many years ago in Chile, the Wanderslebans, are good friends from Cleveland, Tennessee. Turns out, that many years later, I hired Fred Salyers as a pilot at Life Care Centers in Cleveland, and he had married the Wanderslebans daughter, Joyce, so SDA world strikes again.

When I first came to India, I had told Karen that 2-3 years would be it. Now, I am going into my 3rd year and I have changed my story. Of course, you never know how it will work out, but if things go according to my plan at all, then we will stay in India for another 6 and 1/2 years until I hit my 65th birthday and will no longer be able to fly here.

We keep talking about things that we should blog about and then I can't remember what we wanted to say when I sit down to write. One of the things we have discovered is that pedestrians are not protected in traffic like they are in America. If a car comes for you, you better jump, as they will not move or slow down. So, Karen ends up screaming at the drivers and waving her arms like mad, which I am sure just makes them wonder what's wrong with that blonde, American woman there in the way. I tell her she is not going to change the culture here but that doesn't seem to change her mind about this one. We like our neighborhood here better with a Chili's restaurant and a Spaghetti Kitchen that make us feel much more at home.The gym is about 3 blocks away and when we walk there we have discovered one of the differences here is that they don't pick up their pet's dog poop so you better watch your step. We see the natives stopped, with their pets, just doing the business in the middle of the sidewalk, not even moving to the curb. PLEASE, people!! Karen usually makes friends with every dog in the neighborhood but here she has met with some resistance that we have blamed on skin color. These dogs not only don't want to come to her, but bark and snap and really don't want to be with her. She got her feelings hurt but not every dog on the planet is going to love anyone. Our little Poppy cat was going into heat and caterwalling around the apartment for weeks, so I finally took her to the vet and got her fixed. We just took her to a vet a few blocks away and you would have been amazed at this little vet office, with the operating table right there in the office. They shaved Poppy's side in a square about two inches on a side and so it will take months for her hair to look right again, although she doesn't seem to mind. Boy, now I think she is becoming my new favorite kitty, as she has calmed down and really is a wonderful cat, considering she was going to be a Feral cat on the streets of Gurgaon until that fateful night in March of 2010 when Karen reached down, picked her up and her life changed, miraculously, forever. God does something similar for us, if we let HIM. Karen now knows the names of all dozen or so dogs that we see on our way to the gym and back each day. We love our gym and the people here are warming up to us. We finally found a couple of ex-pat organizations that have promised to let us know what is going on and to invite us to come to their social functions.

I have decided I want to buy either a real piano or possibly and electronic one for the Mumbai church. They have neither a piano or organ so the music is done each week with the assistance of a wonderful, young man and his guitar. I love the guitar, but miss the keyboard function and hope maybe we can find one reasonably here in Mumbai to help them out.

Hope this finds you all well. Will be back flying again in just a couple of days. There will be more road pictures and stories from that.

Love you guys,

Dan