A couple of weeks ago ...

I had one of the busiest weeks in ages! We had to 'puja' the cars (all three!), the oven, the microwave, the fridges (both), the cooker, the TVs (all but My Darling's pride and joy - woe betide anyone who tries to puja - or anything else - that piece of equipment!!!) etc etc. You get the picture. Any piece of equipment (big or small) that is used as a tool in our lives needed to be blessed in order for it to work efficiently in the future and to take away any bad vibes of the past and present. This involves buying puffed rice, Indian sweets, banana leaves, small, pale green watermelony pumpkins, more Indian sweets, a lemon to place under each tyre of each car, some white pieces from a larger block of a substance that catches light easily and burns in a big bright flame! we also needed flower garlands for each car, leaves etc for the front of the house and tonnes of turmeric, sandal paste and kumkum (the red powder).

We successfully finished the puja, then came Madras Kids (all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey....). Finished singing and dancing, raced home, quick lunch and back to a friends house to start the Double Decker Club - a small pilot prog for a club for Brit kids in order to help them learn about British history, geog, culture and way of life. It went fairly well, but the age range is 2-12 and the kids all did their best but The Ray and her little friend disappeared to play princess dress up as soon as they could! Traditional jam sarnies and lemon squash were the snack of the day and went down extremely well!

Home again for a quick shower and change and off to the Apparao Galleries in Nungambakkam for the launch of a book that Nikh, The Ray and I were a part of by recording voices for the characters. It turned out to be one of this company's other books (a spectacular Very Hungry Caterpillar with the most incredible tactile illustrations and braille lettering). We did get the CD of our recording and are still waiting for the book. What a great experience - a blog for another day!!

then race home, another shower, new clothes and My Darling and I are off to the Park for the General Manager's pre-Diwali party. The ambience was amazing. All the downstairs banquet rooms had been draped with white shimmery fabric and lit up to look like we were in the ice hotel in Sweden. There was a big bar in the middle of the reception room with tonnes of crushed ice and bottles staked into the ice. The next room had three serving bars, one with olives and other nibbles, one with Japanese food, one with Italian food and the other side of the olive buffet was the dessert display. Home made truffles, chocolate horns of plenty, cakes, mousses and all manner of exotic, enticing sweet stuff.

My issue was with all the guests who showed up late, acted as though all the people who came relatively on time were the ones at fault and then they proceeded to dig into the dessert before some of us had managed to even try one olive!

the music was loud but good and the service as always was excellent.

All in all a lovely day, but as soon as we came home, I fell asleep in the chair! Zzzzzzzz!

Roll on Halloween, Diwali and all the craziness that goes with both of these!

catching up

I have been so very busy that I do not even have time to sit down and write! On the one hand that is definitely a good thing as too much time on my hands turns me into a really moany, graony old woman!! My Darling really, really does not want that!! Neither does anyone else who comes into contact with me...

On the other hand it is not such a good thing as I spend less and less time in the house - things very quickly go to pot and then stress/tension ensues as My Darling (not so much at these times!!) yells at me because the house is a tip, and then I in turn yell louder at the staff for slacking off for days at a time and turning the house into a pit!!


Questions to the two young women, who are supposed to clean the house, make the shopping lists, cook the meals, squeeze some fresh juice, cut some fresh fruit, play with The Ray (a bit) and do the ironing month on month, result in odd smiles, awkward silences and sideways looks at each other. When I ask what they have done for a whole day when The Ray was out with me they have no answer, but the fact that one of them has coconut oil and cucumber pulp in her hair and the other one has a new complicated, intricate mehendhi design on both hands almost up to the elbow speaks volumes!! It speaks to me of people NOT doing what they are supposed to, but doing what they want to do on MY time!! Their cell phones are always ringing, and they seem unable to ignore a ringing phone. Whenever I go looking for them, one or both are always on the phone or in the bathroom - how many times can a person go to the loo in a day - I ask you????!!!!


Well, after a bout of yelling the house is always really gleaming for about a week and then we start the whole cycle again! Do you think this is part of the expat cycle?!!

over the next few blogs, I am going to attempt to catch up with my last couple of weeks. Wish me luck!



However, last weekend was one of those increbible ones where almost every minute of everyday was .... see next post!!