LIVING in De Nederlands

I thought I would post really nice photo-shoto blogs and other such regular stuff which shouts “Dekho-dekho, I am in phoren country and having a ball while you desi mortals fight your fates and toil away in cube farms”.

But NO, we all know its beautiful here. But did you know what all crazy things I am doing here for survival?

Sample a few …

• Have you ever tried cutting veggies with a butter knife? I have – The house has flute glasses, cappuccino cups, soup bowls and a chopping board…but no chopping knife. So, we had to make do with the butter knife to cut the tomatoes. If you are thinking ‘uh…arrey just buy a knife’, let me tell u another tale of misery.. CK and I braved the chilly winds and rains and went to buy a knife. After a lot of attempts to distinguish between the hajaar types of knives, we settled for one which looked close to what I use at home. At home, we realized that it was a no better than a butter knife…LOUSY! Maybe it is also a Dutch thing to keep the sharpness of the knife under a permitted limit or something of the sort or maybe it was just a bread knife. (‘Duh –uh’, you say? I know, but I never could imagine that buying a knife will ever be a complication.)

• Have you watched Radio on your TV?? – I have – The house has a TV with the most complicated remote control ever. To add to it is another remote for the DTH thingy. So, you switch on with one remote and change channels with another and then increase/decrease volume with the first one…etc..MINDFUCK..basically. So, in one such mindfuckedness I guess CK or I pressed too many buttons simultaneously and it resulted in the TV showing a channel with blue background that says Radio 1 and plays the most boring music ever. The automated music on ICICI helpline is more bearable.

• [On this note, I have to mention here that CK has lost it completely and is listening to Kumar Sanu!! SC, I miss you and how you would have taken CK’s happiness on this one ;-)]

• Have you ever made paranthas without a ‘belan’? – I did!! After an hour of all parantha-making preparation viz. kneading the dough, boiling/chopping the stuffing and getting the pan ready, CK and I realized this. As our stomachs had already waited long enough for some real aata to get in, we decided to give it a try with our own sweet hands! The initial couple of paranthas were appalling but expert CK stepped in with her patience and tactics to make better ones. Thank God! My stomach would have never forgiven me!

• Did you have to log on to the internet to figure out the instructions on the back of a toilet cleaner? – I have – or at least I asked CK to do so. As mentioned previously, the house has a cleaning agent for everything but as expected all the instructions are in Dutch on ALL the bottles. They all look fancy and all smell good but one said ‘bleek’ and I was guessing, it could be ‘bleach’ and did not want to mess up the floor in case it was. So, after a lot of searching, found out it was a bath-tub cleaner! What did I tell you? Too much of cleaning is expected here! SC, think about it again!

• Also, on the note of reading instructions, CK and I go quite nuts trying to figure out food in the grocery stores. To buy anything, first pick up, read WHAT it is. Then, match word-by-Dutch-word to the price tag on rack to see how much would it be. Choose the one that’s comparatively cheaper. Then, go a few counters ahead and see a similar thing at an even cheaper rate. Pick that up. Return previous thing at the previous counter. Then, realize the current thing is not actually the same that you wanted and so go back and pick up the previous thing. (Trust me, its even more complicated than it sounded.)

In the Thank God for small mercies section:

• We found out a Indian store here and it was extremely comforting to place a order in hindi and say ‘aadha kilo’ etc.

• After hours of cleaning and vacuuming etc, I first time had a bath in a bath tub, the way you are supposed to bathe in a bath tub!! There wasn’t any foamy thing called bubble-bath but what the heck! This was the real AAHAA moment of the month I guess. Sweet!!

More on my personal miseries next time!

PS: All expecting a nice travelogue about Amsterdam etc, please visit blog after a month…………………..maybe.