New India

Yet more adventures with Indian technology. Went to the bank day before yesterday to try to get some cash for my trip with my bank card at the ATM machine. No luck, transaction times out. This can just be an international connectivity issue, happens sometimes, but I have a secret fear. Brousing through the support material for my new phone I have seen a warning to not carry it in the same place as bank cards or anything else with a magnetic strip with data on it. Of course I read this is after carrying my phone in the same purse as my bank card.

No panic yet, another lady tells me the machine wouldn't respond to her credit card. But it could be a real hassel. Lost my card to purse snatchers last trip, had to get my daughter to send me cash via Western Union for the rest of the trip, very inconvienent and expensive for both of us. My bank is so paranoid about identity theft they will not issue a card unless I go to one of their bank tellers, and it better be at my home branch because it takes them days and days to validate a request from out of town. Went through all that in North Vancouver when I got back last time! No chance of them couriering a new card to India.

Next day, back to the ATM. Same result. Now I can start to panic a little. I have a low daily limit on my card so I was planning to take out that limit for three days prior to the trip because where I am going is pretty rural and there is a good chance that there are no ATMs. So I have lost one of those days now and it's the weekend, not much chance of anything being done to the bank machine until Monday, if that is where the problem is.

It's a bad time for this to happen. Remi took off for a yatra in Chennae yesterday. He has an account in the same bank as I do in Edmonton, an interbranch transfer on the internet would be easy and he could just get me the rupees with his card, but he is out of town and won't be back until after I leave. I haven't found any machine yet which will accept my card from another Canadian bank. I don't have a credit card and basically only enough cash for food and walking around money till I go on the train.

It's not really the end of the world. I have my rail ticket and can probably buy a few rupees from Ram via a Canadian bank transfer when I go up to his wedding, but I may have to scrub my trip to Goa. I can just come back to Puttaparthi and set up a State Bank of India account I can transfer Canadian funds into via Paypal and get an ATM card from them. There are State Bank ATMs all over India and they even pay interest on depositors funds. Bonus. But it takes weeks to get the card so I will have to get Remi to get me some funds with his card to tide me over or just go in and make a withdrawal at the counter. That should be ok, he'll be arriving back here a couple of days before I get back. It's all just nerve racking. Here I am again in a third world country with $40 Canadian in the local currency in my pocket and machines blandly telling me "operation cancelled", on a weekend.

Anyway, I'll go down to the ATM and try again today.

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