It’s been a long time since I blogged! That I think is the starting sentence of every blog I’ve been releasing/ planning to release. It is two years since I started blogging and it still feels like yesterday! I haven’t been blogging as much as I’ve been wanting to. I now hope to revive my blog.
The past few weeks have been weird…I landed in a different country… and…
…the transition from being the pampered little one in the house who doesn’t care about anything other than the TV and PC at home (:P) to someone who I am now hasn’t been easy. From cooking my own food, finding a place to stay, overcoming homesickness and taking care of myself, and yes, talking more than before, I’ve come a long way in just one month.
I’m saving the heavier stuff for another blog post…this blog post is mainly about my major goof-ups regarding ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makaan’ in the past few weeks…
Roti
1: How ‘Spicy Veg Roll’ changed my life
We started off in the morning and went to Chatsworth house…the house would open at 10:00 am or so…and I wanted to have my breakfast. I went into a store at the entrance of the Chatsworth house. I looked at the display of food items and saw a label ‘Spicy veg roll’ and ordered that. The display was actually empty - all the items were in the oven. The guy at the counter went to the oven, took out a roll, packed it and gave it to me. I came out and started nibbling on it, but it was too hot. I nibbled at about 1/4th and it was time to go in to the House, and no edibles allowed inside.
After exploring the place, we came out, I took out my ‘Spicy Veg Roll’ and started nibbling on it again and I realized that the taste was very funny. I showed to the others and asked if it was veg…they too couldn’t tell and I finished it anyways.
Never did I think that the moment I ordered ‘Spicy Veg Roll’ would change my life so much…my colleagues-friends later started to say that it was chicken that I ate, and to this moment I’m not sure if it is really chicken or if they are just pulling my leg…and so began my tryst with non-veg and I cautioned myself to be careful about what I eat outside.
2: Bread, bread and bread
Bread 1: The second day I was in Sheffield (a Sunday), I bought bread as a proper English breakfast should have bread. I decided to make bread toast that afternoon!!! I popped the bread slices in the toaster and switched it on. The toast popped out, but it wasn’t toasted at all. Hmm…probably the settings are wrong…so I changed the settings on the toaster from ‘1’ to ‘6’ (the highest) and popped the same bread slices in again. I switched on the TV and was completely engrossed in it when the fire alarm went off…and it was from my apartment!!! I then realized that the toast was burnt and the burning ‘smell’ set off the fire alarm. Isn’t ‘smoke’ supposed to set off the fire alarm??? There was no smoke!!! Only the smell of something burnt…and the damn fire alarm wasn’t stopping….Images of people running out of the building, the fire engine arriving in a few minutes, and they fining me and warning me flashed in my mind and I ran out of the apartment, into the corridor, hey! what was I supposed to do in the corridor?, so I ran back in and looked at the fire alarm, it wasn’t stopping!...so I ran back in to the corridor…no one was there…(hadn’t anyone heard it?) and I ran back in…and was shivering and panicking…and the fire alarm stopped. Apparently my colleague-friend had also done the same thing, and the fire alarm goes off only in the apartment first :D
Bread 2: After successfully toasting the bread, I sat down to eat the bread and then realized something…what the hell do I eat with the bread? I bought bread…that’s it… and I was like *^%@&^@#$@#$%^ on myself, I did not buy any butter or jam or any such stuff!!!
Bread 3: I bought jam the next day…and proudly brought it home. Then I applied the jam on a slice of bread and heartily ate it. Then I chanced upon the word ‘Chicken’ on the bottle of jam and nearly jumped out of my skin!!!
After coming out of the shock, I read the label properly and it said ‘Redcurrent jam…tastes good with chicken’. I heaved a sigh of relief after reading the ingredients.
I now have mainly Chocos for breakfast…
3: Cheese burger….
The next trip I looked forward to after Chatsworth was York!!!
This time I had a full-fledged breakfast before starting off to York. I had some cheese sandwich for lunch…it had lots of cheese and lots of some leaves.
After a tiring day at York, I wanted to pick up something to eat at the railway station. I should’ve taken French fries - something I understood. But no! I did not…coz they were ‘oily’ and I wanted to lose weight (from half of my life!) So I took ‘cheeseburger’, imagining it to be a bun with cheese strips/ melted cheese between them…and I bought it and was about to eat it when I saw a ‘pattice’ inside it…hey that is not what I imagined! So I ask the guy at the counter if that is vegetarian and he says ‘No, sorry’, and I later found out what I almost ate :(
Now that two major non-vegetarian food groups have been covered, I’m just wondering what I’ll accidentally eat/ be about to eat in my next trip….Fish in Scotland???!!! :-O
Thanks to these goof-ups, the next time I say I’m a vegetarian, I’m sure to hear a snigger or two… For me vegetarianism is a choice, not an obligation. Even if I would’ve been born in a family that survives only on non-vegetarian food, I’m sure I would’ve shifted to vegetarianism.
I’d better be extra careful about what I eat from now on…not talking about dieting here…
Kapda:
Week 1 in Sheffield almost over and I wanted to wash clothes. I had a look at the controls on the washing machine and they were nothing like the washing machine at home (I looked at the controls on the washing machine at home once or twice…never really bothered about washing clothes at home you know ;) )
There was a round knob with all sorts of temperatures written around it. And there were words like ‘Prewash’, ‘Wash’, ‘Rinse’. Hmm, I knew basic washing-machine terminology, first is prewash, then wash and then comes rinsing…awesome…I’m a genius…so first…I have to do a Prewash, then let’s see what to do…so I turn the knob to ‘Prewash 30 degrees’, dump MOST of my clothes and select ‘Start’. I switched on the TV and got engrossed in it yet again and after some time came to have a look at the washing machine. To my utter shock…I realized that ‘Prewash 30 degrees’ had ‘90 degrees’ next to it. It then struck me that the washing machine does prewash, wash and rinse, all without my stupid intervention and that I was now washing clothes at 90 degrees, the prewash being 30 degrees. By then…it was too late and the color from my clothes ran and voila, I got multicolored clothes!!! Thank god most of my shirts are dark colored and hence did not change color…else… (gulp!)
Makaan:
The thing that had been haunting me before I even left Hyderabad.
From day 1, I called up numerous agents, googled like crazy and pinged almost all from hyd/pune who are in Sheffield. That I was looking for an accommodation was definitely one of the topics that was mentioned when two people from Hyd/ Pune met!
And people began to greet me with ‘Did you find an accommodation?’ Sigh!
Everyone I contacted had one of these answers ‘No, sorry’ or ‘We do have one from November/ December blah blah’, what about October then???
When I once went exploring around the city, I thought ‘Such a big city, so many buildings…isn’t even one accommodation available?’ (Sob!) And then I would see To Let boards for offices and would feel jealous of offices! :D
And then, when I had given up all hope, an agent called me up and said a flat was available, I went to see the place and was horrified!
It was a house, right on the main road, with a couple of ‘flats’ on the ground floor. The ‘flat’ was two rooms - a kitchen and a bedroom with extremely basic furniture. The place was very old and no security and I could hear continuous honking of cars from the bedroom. And the rent was outrageous for such a place! (I did see places rented by others.) I almost went into depression seeing myself living in that place! And it was nowhere near office!
Next day: I came back home from work and saw an email from a neighbor’s (who is in Hyd) friend (who is in Sheffield) with two contact numbers, I immediately called them up and both seemed God-sent. They asked when I would like to see the place(s). Though it was already evening by then, I so badly wanted to see those two places, I told them that I would be there right away and set off in a bus to see the first place.
Place #1: Three students staying in a house; room for one more. That they were from Hyd, and they were very friendly was a plus point. But one look at the accommodation and I felt sure I would fall sick if I stayed there for a week. Quite dingy and dirty and the room was too tiny…but still I did not want to leave that option…it was good enough.
Though a bit disappointed, I called up Place #2 and said I would come right away (it was 8:00 then), but the girl comes back from work at 9:00, so I thought I would start off anyways and was determined to see the place.
I boarded the bus and saw the place I wanted to go to, but no stop there, so the bus takes a few twists and turns and stops and I got off. Then I traced back the route of the bus to the place I wanted go to…or so I thought…but I ended up in a place that was completely new!
After wandering for sometime looking for some landmark I knew, I realized that I was completely clueless about where I was…added to this was that it was 9:00pm then and there was not a single soul in sight! I’m surprised that I did not panic, but when I narrated this later, others panicked :(
Then I saw someone coming in my direction and tried to approach him to ask for directions for a landmark, I seriously dunno what scared him, but as I was approaching him, he looked at me and started walking really fast in the opposite direction and literally ran away! (Did I look like a mugger? BTW I wasn’t wearing my stupid sweater and stupid cap then, else I would’ve been sure of it :P) Then I saw a couple and asked them for directions and they clearly told me the route…and at last I reached the landmark, where the person of Place #2 was waiting for me.
Place #2: A 2-bed apartment to share with a girl from Delhi. Saw the place, it was awesome, quite near to the office, awesome building and view from the apartment, and the girl was nice too.
I came out of the apartment and wanted to see the route from that building to the office (it was 10pm then) and then I started walking towards the office building, I walked and I walked and I walked, until I was lost again! :D
It took me a good half hour and multiple calls to my colleague-friend to get to a place I knew :D
Hoping not to fill up another blog post with more goof-ups….
[Update on Makaan: The occupants of Place #1 wanted me to take a decision by the next day, and then their tones started becoming ruder when I asked for one more day’s time! (I was very much warned about such attitudes by the neighbor’s friend.) The next day, the girl of Place #2 called up to tell that she talked to the flat owner later and she was told that the flat was taken by someone else. Apparently she had posted the ad on Orkut long long back.
And then, at last, I found a place to my liking, it does have its disadvantages, but it has more good than bad and right now, life is going on…]
