For the past three weeks I have been jotting down wonderful things I see or hear, new foods I try (well, in all fairness, it is all new – haha) or simply differences in how we live here in India versus other places I have called home. Here is this week’s “Angela’s Top Five” list:
1. My big, new LG refrigerator has a lock on it! At first I wasn’t sure what the hell that hole in the lovely silver refrigerator was for and then it occurred to me that it was a lock. A lock on my refrigerator, seriously??? Never in my life have I seen a lock on a refrigerator. The purpose is to keep the groceries safe from the housekeeper and domestic help. I’m sorry but I have had a housekeeper now for 12 or 13 years and I have never had a single piece of jewelry or an expensive handbag or pair of shoes stolen, let alone a soda can or piece of chicken so this is just really odd to me. I truly believe it is more a statement on the Ma’m than the “Help” if you get my meaning. Needless to say, I am not going to be locking up my juice and paneer!!
2. Funky Chicken Sandwich from the hotel. I arrived back quite late one night at the hotel I was staying at and decided I didn’t want to suffer through a spicy dinner for a change. So I ordered a chicken sandwich thinking that it would be healthy and “impossible to screw up”. I mean how can you screw up a chicken sandwich, right? Bread, chicken, some sauce… haha Hmmm, not at my hotel. I lifted up an edge of the square white toasted bread to peek at the filling and I actually laughed at loud. It looked like a polka dot sandwich, white bread with super thin chicken hotdog slices inside it 🙂
4. A Man with Old Fashioned Style! One of my favorite work mates (who shall remain nameless) had a bit of a cold a couple weeks back. The poor guy was standing at my desk when he was hit with the sniffles. I started to open up my drawer to pass him a tissue and he waved me off. I looked up and what do I see? A man with a fabric, old-school handkerchief by my side!! I have never seen any man other than my Grandpa Carson carry a hankie! It was sooo awesome!!
5. Food Isn’t Labeled with Expiry Dates!! After moving into the new flat I headed out for my first trip to the grocery store. I packed my cart full, came home and started putting things away and then I saw it. Everything I had just purchased was EXPIRED. What the hell? The shop I went to was so nice, I couldn’t believe it (see the photo here). Then I took a closer look. Here in India they imprint all the food and drinks with the manufacturing date or packaging date, not the expiry date. After that each item is labeled with the amount of time a product can be consumed after the manuf/packaging date. I guess that works just fine!!
Soooo…as for me and my week, I am so happy to be settled into the flat finally. I put photos up (but desperately need to go print out some new photos and magnets to decorate the refrigerator), am almost sorted with the Internet and actually went down and worked out in the gym tonight for the first time. Today, I also signed up for a cool online DVD rental service that the apartment building manager turned me on to called SeventyMM.com. I signed up for the 1-dvd-per-day service for Rs. 299 ($6 ) per month!! I also found a coupon code online for one month free, so it turned into an amazing two month deal ending up with each rental costing me 10 cents each! Rock on!! My first DVD arrives on Monday….I picked the 80s classic Gremlins for some reason, haha. Haven’t seen it since the 80s so should be fun.
Feels great to start to feel at home now. This has also helped me refocus on work again 100%. Romi and I created all new brochures and a generic corporate PPT this week, which felt great to finalize. Next week we’ll start on the rebranding, the new website and a few other fun projects to start supporting sales and generating inbound leads — can’t wait!
XOXO from Bangalore
© Angela Carson, Angela’s Adventures in Bangalore blog and photos, 2011
Love the frock!!
Cookies and Muffins, Im sorry but did i miss something in the last years of you being in Sitges. Didnt you buy your muffins at Starbucks!!! Just buy the same flour as you did here….flourbucks Muffins and Cookies hahah.
Love it,
Its interesting, usually every place has names written in Kannada and English, but that grocery shop has the name written in Kannada (it says ‘Food’ literally, not the Kannada equivalent). I suggest you should try something called Google Goggles, it reads images, recognizes text and translates (can’t trust 100% time as it is in beta).
Ohhhh thanks for the tip. Love it!
Hello Angela,
I was checking a verse from my English lyrics on Google, and believe it or not, but it showed that the exact phrase “A Man with Old Fashioned Style” is found only in your blog, above.
In fact, I have the following verse:
“I know a man with old-fashioned style”, and then it occurred to me that the indefinite article should be put in front of the style, i.e.:
“I know a man with an old-fashioned style”
And Google shows no findings for the exact match to “a man with an old-fashioned style”.
So, which version is better — I suppose the one with the indefinite article, and you omitted it because it appeared in your (sub)title — correct?
I would very much appreciate your answer, because it seems that you are not only a woman of travel, but also a woman of words.
Hey Robert, what a way to connect 🙂 Thanks for your kind words. I definitely like the ‘with old fashioned style’ better but I’m not sure why to be honest… both work perfectly well, so I guess it comes down to what sounds better when you’re singing it. Omitting the ‘an’ also shortens it and doesn’t change the meaning, so perhaps economy could be your guiding light here???
All my best, Angela