The weirdness that is hiring help

Okay, we're going to dive headfirst into some weird privilege here, so be ready.

Hiring help is bizarre if you're not used to it. Maybe it's better if you have professional managerial experience, but I'm not sure. It's a very weird mix of a personal and professional relationship.

We've mostly been interviewing people off recommendations from others in the diplomatic/ex-pat community. Apparently household employees actually prefer us as employers because we treat them better than local employers might (this is 100% hearsay, so apply salt liberally). Also hiring someone who as worked for other ex-pats removes a lot of the guesswork, as they will already know our strange foreign preferences.

The major hang-up ends up being salary. This is the least comfortable part, obviously. It's also the most bizarre. The monthly salary ranges from around USD 130 to 250, probably clustering around the middle. This is for full time work. So, obviously, we're not talking about a lot of money to most people from the US. So when a potential employee asks for what is (relative to the local economy) an outlandish salary, it's tempting to just agree to it rather than have an uncomfortable negotiation.

Apparently, this is actually a pretty bad idea, though, for two reasons. First, they may just assume you're a sucker (and you are, a bit, but willingly). That's fine, as long as it was left there. But oftentimes it results in more questions about bonuses, paying for school fees, etc. So it's (again, apparently) better to be firm at the start. Second, employees accustomed to a relatively high salary may not be willing to work for less after you leave, making it harder to find work. So you (as an employer) may actually be doing them a disservice by paying them more. So pay them less, it's better for them in the long run? How's that for noblesse oblige?

Anyway, the whole thing is a headache. Then again, it's a headache that will end with us never having to drive ourselves or clean up after ourselves for two years. So it's hard to complain. Just kidding, it's really easy to complain, it just makes one feel pretty hypocritical. Still, I have found myself wishing multiple times that we just had a good butler (Mr Carson?) to whom we could delegate this whole process. But then how do you hire the butler? What a conundrum.

Our new home

Our new apartment is a mixture of really awesome and really not awesome, as one might expect from a relatively high-end residence in a developing country. Basically, it looks really gorgeous and is very spacious but many aspects are designed or constructed very poorly. We have about triple the space we had in Virginia. We've also had about triple the maintenance issues in three weeks here than we had in our whole year in Arlington.

I won't dwell on things too much, but so far we've had two leaks (one fairly major that resulted in large portion of the floor or our apartment being covered in water), a broken cabinet, a broken dryer, and a water faucet handle that detached, among other things. We're slowly getting these issues taken care of (the Embassy maintenance guys are very responsive) and are making our house into a home (blech). We just had our living room, dining room, and master bedroom repainted (sterile white walls combined with exclusively fluorescent lighting does not make for a cozy feeling). We also repainted our kitchen cabinets - alternating bright pink and teal was not as appealing to us as it seems to have been to the previous tenant. Of course, all those cabinets might need to be replaced because of water damage, but that's a question for another day (tomorrow in fact).

Unfortunately, posting pictures of an Embassy-maintained and -secured residence on a publicly accessible website is something even I'm not stupid enough to do, so most of you will have to use your imagination.

I'll gather a few more musings on the apartment and amenities here.

The internet (after finally getting it set up) is better than I'd feared and worse than I'd hoped. Bandwidth is tolerable for most general internet browsing. Streaming and downloading large files is not so great. Gaming varies from completely fine to completely unplayable, depending on the importance of ping.

Our washer and dryer and both kind of bizarre. Instead of having a couple dials that independently control temperature, agitation, etc. you have a single dial with like 40 different settings. A bit overwhelming, and I'll have to consult the manuals every time I do laundry for months to come.

Hot water is plentiful. Water cooler than lukewarm is pretty much nonexistent. Unsurprisingly, tap water is not safe to drink. We have a distiller in the kitchen, though, so it's not too much of an inconvenience.

Air quality here (in terms of pollution and dust or humidity, depending on the time of year) is relatively poor. To combat this, our apartment is fitted with four dehumidifiers and four air purifiers. Each dehumidifier pulls about two gallons of water out of the air each day (the Embassy recommendation is to run them 24/7 to avoid mold and, since they're footing the bill, I am happy to oblige).

Our furniture is almost universally a roughly pea soup shade of yellow-green. Apparently there's a tailor that can whip up new upholstery pretty cheaply and quickly, so we'll definitely be availing ourselves of his services soon.

I'll probably post other musings on the quirks (or massive disasters) that affect our place, but for now things are more or less in order.

Flying to (and arriving in) Bangladesh

Let's start this out by saying that I'm probably going to come off as ragging on Bangladesh a bit. That's not really my intention - most of the times I'm just trying to highlight differences from what I'm used to. Given that I tend to be more comfortable with what I'm used to, though, it might come out badly. Feel free to dismiss it as the bewildered out-of-touch snobbery and kvetching of the privileged that it most certainly is.

Our first real introduction to Bangladesh was waiting in line to check in to Biman Bangladesh (the national airline). There were about four groups ahead of us. I think it took us about 40 minutes to get through the line. Each group seemed to be a subset of a much larger group of around 20 to 30 Bangladeshis, some of whom would join the smaller group as it reached the counter. They'd add bags, remove bags, and generally confuse things. Most of the bags were not even really bags, but rather bundles wrapped in a blanket secured with rope or bungee cords. Apparently this is pretty common.

The plane itself was interesting (and by interesting I mean a bit terrifying). We managed to snag bulkhead seats so at least we had leg room. The general condition of the cabin was pretty poor, though. Hopefully mostly stains and well-worn shabbiness and not extant dirtiness. The plane also made some worrying noises taking off. I'm writing this now, though, so obviously things didn't go too badly. The in-flight meal both existed and was quite tasty (and hilariously accompanied by RC Cola), so they beat most American carriers there.

Immediately upon landing, pretty much every single Bangladeshi on the flight jumped out of their seats, grabbed their luggage, and started crowding into the aisle. The resigned flight attendant made not even a token effort at stopping this.

We traded a shabby plane for a shabby bus to take us to the terminal. Delightfully, we were met there by one of our social sponsors (M hereafter) and a local staffer (whose name I have embarrassingly forgotten). The social sponsors are provided to new employees (at all posts) to help them get adjusted to their new locale. The local staffer helps with the initial arrival by making sure things go smoothly with immigration and all that fun stuff. We were particularly fortunate in that the guy helping us out used to work at the airport, so knew all the ins and outs (and, by appearances, about half the employees).

Our luggage took quite some time to arrive (but arrive it did, and in good shape!). This was just as well, as we were able to barrage our greeters with a whole bunch of questions. We also had time to use the restrooms. Public restrooms are, perhaps unsurprisingly, an iffy proposition in Bangladesh. This was a good introduction. I'll just mention that there was a man washing his feet in the sink and leave it at that.

After collecting luggage, we breezed through security (apparently there are some benefits to this whole diplomat thing) and exited through the VIP exit (more benefits) where a driver in an armored car was waiting (!). The armored car is actually not standard operating procedure, but there was a hartal (local word for massive country-wide strike for political protest) earlier that day. The hartals occasionally turn a bit violent, so the Embassy takes extra precaution.

We were greeted by another fact of Dhaka life almost immediately upon leaving the airport: traffic. Lots of it. Private cars, rickshaws, overcrowded buses with telltale gashes along their sides, and CNGs (tiny little caged moped-like vehicles that run on converted natural gas) all vying for position. Horns are used liberally and to virtually no effect. All in all, a place where having a professional driver is a major boon (more on that later, most likely).

We stopped at a photo studio on the way to our apartment to get some passport pictures taken. The Embassy needed a whole bunch and they are used all the time locally (formally signing up for a SIM card needs one, for instance). Our apartment is in the diplomatic enclave, so as we got closer the traffic died down quite a bit, and we were able to arrive before it got too late. First impressions of our new home to follow.