Whisky Lady – Frolicking February 2017
February was just frivolous and fun! I flew off to Delhi to co-facilitate a conference, home to Mumbai then a few days in Goa where I made a quick trip to Paul John distilleries too!
For the Whisky Lady, February had two whisky industry events:
- Glenmorangie’s 3 country introduction to Bacalta
- International Scotch Day
For our regular whisky tasting sessions, I played host to two!
- A bit cheeky, I twisted our original underground club‘s most sacred of traditions – blind tasting – by teasingly revealing the bottles from three independent bottlers… who did not disclose the distillery on their labels.
- Then even more sneaky, I planned to repeat the performance with our Bombay Malt & Cigar gents to see what they thought of the selection.
My idea was to contrast and compare tasting experiences… alas the BMC night was postponed to April however here is a sneak peak into what the original club thought!
- Sansibar Islay 8 year (2007/2015) 52.2% – Citrus spice & everything nice!
- Port Askaig 19 year 50.4% – Floral, beautifully balanced peat with a long refined finish
- Wilson & Morgan “Highland Heart” Sherry (2006/2015) 43% – A classy classic whisky – soft wine, spice and simply superb
Without our regular ‘proper’ tasting evening, the BMC gents decided to do their version of a ‘Bar Night‘ with whiskies more accessible to us mortals – Aberlour 12 year, Lagavulin 16 year and Penderyn Madeira finish.
Our Whisky Ladies also departed convention and embraced a Sunday sundowner to sample gins made by our very own Whisky Lady – Susan Dias!
Another whisky lady and I brushed off the last Nordic whisky samples to explore:
- Iceland – Flóki Young Malt 1st Edition 47% – Barely a whisky, suggest adding a few more years… and then see what its all about
- Finland – Teerenpeli Kaski Distiller’s Choice 43% – Loved their homage to light sherry! What a fabulous dram…
- Denmark – Stauning Young Rye (2010/2011 – Oct 2012) 49.3% Batch 5 – Can’t tell whether its because I’m not a fan of rye or… but not my whisky style but didn’t do it for me
- Denmark – Stauning Peated 4 year (2009/2013) 55% 2nd Edition – All Danish peat, grain, locally malted… not bad but…
In February, caught up with the tasting notes for earlier sessions and experiences…
Starting with our original club’s November Irish night:
- Teeling Single Grain Wine Casks 46%
- Teeling Single Malt 46%
- Teeling Small Batch 46%
- Teeling Cask Strength
(Photo: Table for One)
Then our combined Whisky Ladies / Bombay & Malt and Cigar gents “Ladies Choice” whiskies with guest posts by some of our whisky ladies:
- Japan – Akashi 40% (Nikoulina) – Appetizer whisky…
- Sweden – Mackmyra Vinterdröm 46.1% (Susan) – Special edition
- India – Paul John Single Cask #1844 60.5% (Paula) – Unpeated single cask
- France – Kornog Taouarc’h Pempved 14 BC 46% (Pooja) – Our bras stayed on this time!
- Taiwan – Kavalan Solist Sherry Cask S090102020 57.1% (Shruti) – What a whisky!
Followed by the Whisky Ladies “out of ordinary” North American evening:
- Shelter Point Single Malt (2016, Batch #1) 46% – Fantastic 1st foray into the world of whisky – bravo BC, Canada!!
- Westland Single Malt 46% – Continues to confirm these Seattle folks are making darn good whisky
- AD Laws Triticum Straight Wheat 2 year (Batch #1B) 50% – The trouble with tribbles and grain experiments
- AD Laws Hordeum Straight Malt 2 year (Batch #1B) 42.5% – More grain experiments
And closing with more Whisky Live Singapore postings with:
- Dalmore – Quick nip of the 18 year
Curious to know more? Check out recent Whisky Lady’s monthly missives:
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- Blog https://whiskylady.co/
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- Twitter @WhiskyLadyIN
Delhi dawn… another Sunday snap
For many years I called Delhi home.
Winters would bring chilly temperatures hovering just above zero. Which sounds wimpy when compared with a Winnipeg winter of -40’c, however when you have no indoor heating, it is mighty cold!
And fog, so thick sometimes you could barely see a few feet in front of you. Causing havoc with air transportation with delays endemic those winter months…
This is what I found looking out from my hotel window, an early morning in February…
Dawn in Delhi from the window of the Taj Mahal hotel on Man Singh Marg. That mythical quality was clearly not captured so well in the photo, and alas is a combination of natural (fog) and unnatural (pollution) factors.
Such a contrast to our scorching sunshine days in Mumbai! I returned from Delhi early Feb to be greeting by an unseasonably early temperature rise.
Related Sunday snaps:
Pppffft Provident Fund Follies in India – Part 3
Everyone likes a nice story book happy ending? Right?
And guess what? Spoiler alert! I’m about to give you one…
To recap… once upon a time I had real salaried jobs in India.
With each job at each company there was a little thing known here as a “Provident Fund” i.e. something you contribute to towards your retirement.
Which is a great thing!
Except that if you are not actively contributing to your Provident Fund (PF), it goes dormant and lies there withering away with no interest accumulating.
Yeah… you got that right… it gets frozen.
Factor in inflation… rupee devaluation… and basically what could have paid rent may not even buy a cup of coffee when you try to retire. I exaggerate… somewhat… but not completely…
So what happened?
Job #1 – Zippidydoodah!!
- Remarkably quick… merely took a few calls, getting the right forms, supporting documents in place and that was it!
- Redeemed in weeks… that’s correct! Under a month!
Job #3 – Get smart!
- Began with the usual “We lost the paperwork” and “Ooops! We didn’t set it up with your middle name…”
- Re-submitted paperwork with a different ID and different bank account without my middle name. Smart lass, eh?
- Redeemed in only a few months… that’s correct! Under a year!
Job #2 – Umm….
There is a reason the middle job comes last in this story…
There was more than one obstacle in this case… Like any good tale there were villains aplenty!
Villain #1 – Good old M&A
Original company merged with its global competitor… Combined company again went through a further acquisition… each change meant a further complication.
Villain #2 – Good old incompetance
Original PF registration had the wrong date of birth. Yeah, I know, how could that be when all supporting documents has the correct date of birth? Simple… someone… somewhere… wrote or typed a “0” instead of a “9” and voila! We have a problem.
Villain #3 – Good old ignorance
Once navigating a defunct PF was managed, date of birth corrected, someone got the bright idea that I was disqualified from withdrawing due to my citizenship. Seriously???
Yet like all good stories, we have heroes too!
Hero #1 – Good old boys…
Unbelievably, remarkably, astoundingly… despite all the changes, the Finance guys at my erstwhile employer remain.
Even more amazingly, they respond to my emails and til this day do not ignore my calls.
Without them nothing – and I do mean nothing – would have happened.
Hero #2 – Good old persistence
Even with the right people behind you, without consistently, persistently following up, resubmitting documentation, checking and rechecking… submitting new documentation, checking and rechecking… submitting yet new documentation, following up, checking and rechecking…
Only with pesky sometimes annoying prodding could any progress be achieved.
Hero #3 – Good old info
When ignorance reared its ugly head, more help was needed.
Even the right people, with persistence, gets nothing accomplished without the right “proof” that what someone less informed thought impossible was indeed possible and proper. Information is power. Proof of that information is even more powerful!
Documents were duly submitted dispelling ignorant assumptions that foreigners – and more specifically Canadians – have no access to their Indian Provident Fund.
So then what happened?
The heroes prevailed and defeated the evil villains and my beautiful lovely provident fund was won!
Redeemed in only a few years… that’s correct! Under a decade!
Moral of the story?
Living in India Tip #2
Remain friends with the finance and admin guys of your former employer!!! You never know when you may really really really REALLY need their help!
Related posts:
Garbage bricks? In Bandra
Years ago a Turkish diplomat getting ready to leave India shared that one thing he would not miss about Mumbai was the constant cacophony of the crows.
I was puzzled as this was not an issue for me… at the time I lived in Kalina. While there were birds a-plenty, crows weren’t specifically a problem.
Til we moved to Bandra.
That’s where the fun began.
And I remembered the crow comment… Oh how I remembered his genuine frustration at the constant, relentless cawing… What trouble they were getting into homes, garbage… the nuisance and nonsense of these feathered devils.
It was a frustration I began to share.. particularly as we have several crows who have adopted our building.
One does get used to all sorts of noises and sounds, so after time, the cawing simply blended into the noises that make everyday life here.
However there is another aspect to the equation.
The humble garbage bin.
Why you may ask is this at all relevant?
Because in addition to the sharp cawing, this is a further element of angst with these scavengers.
They LOVE garbage. They LOVE even more making a mess of things. All your unmentionables strewn about for all and sundry to see… Our building crows boldly open bins to unearth your hidden edible treasures.
Enter the brick to the rescue.
In my climb up the stairs I discovered a simple yet smart way adopted by several neighbours to combat the crow garbage scourge!
Just like the odd cones on our building pipes that keep the rats and mice away, a simple brick on top of the garbage bin makes it sufficiently challenging to the crows.
Voila! Garbage crow deterrent!
Now I gotta go get me a brick!!
Other Sunday Snaps:
A ‘Tolly’ good evening in Kolkata
As I sat in the Tollygunge Club in Kolkata, hearing Bengali, munching on fried fish with kashundi (mustard sauce), sipping my ‘rum pani‘ (Old Monk, of course), I felt so much at home.
There I was with an old friend and his partner, my partner and his old friends – who just so happened to know each other.
It is a small world like that.
My partner was in Kolkata to perform in a play.
I was in Kolkata to meet with my client and conduct focus group discussions with their team.
It wasn’t an accident we were in Kolkata at the same time. One commitment sparked another and thankfully nothing got in the way.
So that Sunday evening, we came out after the play to meet our friends, enjoying the slight nip in the air…
I could not have been happier.
For me, Bengali is one of those languages that I do not speak but I was immersed in enough consider it a familiar friend. It is the sound of one of my many past homes… the home where I lived in the 90s as a student in Chittaranjan Park, Delhi.
And Bengali food is something that once upon a time was what would constitute a regular home cooked meal.
The setting? A piece of history.
While the Tollygunge club was officially founded in 1895, the Club House was built even earlier and is now over 220 years old. What was once home to Tipu Sultan’s son and a member of the East India Company now is where our friends come out to enjoy their day or night.
Rather than be a stuffy relic, ‘Tolly’ is where families and friends go to entertain and be entertained, relax and re-invigorate…
It is a nice reminder that things do change… yet also retain elements of days gone by.
It was also a time to reflect…
Looking at a friend I’ve known for more than 20 years, it was clear that I’m not the same person I was back in early 1995 when we first met.
However I would not be the person I am today without all the ups and downs, rights and lefts that occurred in between.
So though Bengal is no longer a core element of my everyday today in a way that it was living in a Bengali home in a Bengali colony, hearing Bengali, eating Bong khanna, listening to Bengali music… these experiences are all intrinsically part of me, not just my past but indelibly part of who I will always be.
And for that I am thankful. It was indeed a ‘Tolly’ good evening!
Me with my friend’s partner
Related posts:
Just part of living here… Indian tax rectification requests
It has been awhile since I shared an update on my latest greatest efforts to get something fixed with the Indian Income Tax Department…
Over a year ago, I shared my hope that the tax tide was turning… at the time I was doing a manic happy dance as there seemed to be a tacit acknowledgement that the ‘outstanding amount’ was hokum, bunk, BS and more!
And another notice… more money! NOT!!!
Of course, I knew that just because I was finally paid a refund vs having it adjusted against the fictitious ‘outstanding amount’, that didn’t mean the issue was actually resolved. No siree! That isn’t how we roll in this part of the world.
So I duly filed yet another rectification request… feeling rather like my CA and I are becoming experts at this… was it number 4 or was it 5????
And nothing… a full year of nothing… no “ITR Rectification” notice, meaning a formal response to my request.. just nothing…
At one point I even attempted to do a follow-up rectification request online – not allowed as there was already an open rectification request for the year in question.
The challenge with being in limbo is you can’t assume it is actually fixed… because it is not. Yet without a formal response, one simply has to wait… wait… wait for it… wait…
Then came the phone call.
That is correct… a phone call… asking me to again pay for tax that was already paid in 2008/09.
One year and three months after the last rectification request was filed.
For which no formal response has been received…
I think he is used to people getting upset with a call from the IT Department not a gushing:
“OH! I’m so happy you called! Thank you!
Now…
Help me out here, what can we do to get this internal system glitch fixed?
At least to get it updated for the year in question?”
You could tell he knew it was actually paid but no one is able to acknowledge that one system in the IT Department doesn’t “talk” to the other system and hence tax payers – all 1% of us – get lost in the middle.
The reply was to re-send what had already been submitted online to an official email ID. Hmm…. that is simple… suspiciously simple… Would it really work???
Did my enthusiasm to get something fixed from 2008/09 make me vulnerable to some brilliant new scam or trick?
Or has the tide actually officially really finally turned and it will indeed be smooth sailing?
Moral of the story?
Living in India Tip #1
Those of you foreigners living in India – best advice anyone can give you to surviving longer term in this country is get a good honest CA.
One you can continue to rely on even after you leave… (if you leave)….
As something you thought was done and dusted years ago can come back to haunt you!
Like a tax issue from 2008/09 still being unresolved in 2017!
Related posts:
Everyday Asia 