Closed for business

Going...
Going... *

Gone!

Well...almost gone!

* Can you see a polished stripe on the wall above the table? Because our front room was a living room/quilting studio/office I didn't have much space between my quilting frame and the wall. That polished stripe is bum height. We're not going to mention that to the landlord...

How to make IT more appealing

This building alongside the NH8 always made us smile.
No disgruntled employees, everybody loves everybody. Great camraderie, and plenty of banging tunes. A motivated workforce...but possibly not the most focussed...

Farewell - the sequel

I was going to sneak this photo into the farewell lunch post but I thought the eagle eyed amongst us will have noticed that Eileen and I have changed clothes. And that the restaurant got an awful lot brighter!
In the middle of the sofa are Laurie and Kehi. They couldn't make it to lunch. So I made sure I snapped them when we were at Laurie's last week. She likes you to leave your guns outside too...

So Long, Farewell, It's not the Sound of Music!

Yesterday my quilting group, Garam Masala Quilters, took me out for my farewell lunch. We went to my favourite restaurant in Delhi, Fez. There's only one problem with Fez: What to do with your country made rifle...

Fez serves Middle Eastern/Lebanese/Moroccan food, and it's absolutely yummy! I had za'atar coated vegetable skewers. Za'atar is a mix of thyme, oregano, sesame seeds and other spices. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, but trust me, it's fabulous! And I had a creme brulee, which I know is not terribly Middle Eastern...

Here I am with Greta and Alison. I reckon if I only have my photo taken with short people I could look tall. Hey, we all look tall! Alison and her family are heading back to the UK over the summer too. Her daughter Rhiannon and Keir are quite friendly...she thinks we could even become mothers-in-law one day. Hopefully not too soon...

See I've already forgotten to only have my photo taken with short people. Actually, I'd run out of short quilter friends. Here's Eileen and Helen.

Okay, if there are no more short people to be photographed with, make the tall ones bend over! Here's Christine and her daughter Mina. Mina's shorter than I am...

And here's the rest of the gang who stayed to the bitter end. These are the gals with staying power! Alison, Leticia, Mary, Me, Linley, Suzanne and Anju.

Then we all went outside and collected our Glocks...

Loads a money!

We sold the car and the new owners came over to make the final payment. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a huge wadge of cash...and another...and another...

Okay, he didn't use the brown paper bag...but it makes a better picture!

Many high money transactions are conducted in cash here. In part that's because Party A wouldn't trust a cheque written by Party B, and also because cash can be "black money", undeclared to the tax department and sometimes obtained by dodgy means. Reading the papers here shows many examples of dodgy means - bribes, scams, bribes, facilitation fees*, bribes. We're assuming this money's not dodgy, because each bundle had a piece of paper from a bank around it stating how much was in the bundle. But then, you know what they say can happen when you "assume" things...

So Rod and I had to count it all. 320,000 rupees, not far from five thousand pounds. Being a law abiding Western girl, I've never handled that much cash before. Counting it was quite stressful... But it was correct, we gave the new owner our car registration documents so he could have it transferred to his name before our handover date just before we leave and off he went. Then we had 3 lakh 2, in cash, in our house. That was stressful still! So we called Peggy from the movers and asked her to come so we could pay her for the shipping. And I put the rest in my handbag (as you do!) and we walked around the corner to deposit it in our bank. The teller there gave us a strange look, as if to say we hadn't really grasped the Indian "black money" way... I'm all for not going down that route. Otherwise I'm going to need a bigger handbag...

* Facilitation fee: A sum paid by Party A to Party B, so Party B will award lucrative contract to Party A. For the uninitiated, or to use the Indian, for those who came in late, a bribe.

Hot Hot Hot

This is one of those times we're hoping you can't believe everything you read in the papers. Jon Bon Jovi thinks Tuesday just might go my way, it can't get worse than yesterday. Jon might not be right this time...

Spilt Milk

Thalia spilt some milk on the sofa today, and the last thing we really want on the sofa when it's 44 degrees is some mouldering milk. So we took the covers off to wash...

Under the cushions was the requisite smattering of small change and a pen or two. Rod shoved his hand down the side of the sofa, and pulled out another handful of change. But then he turned the sofa on its side, and shook. There was the tinkling of metal on metal... it sounded like standing next to a slot machine at Burswood Casino... so Rod shoved his hand down the side of the sofa again.

We found: the front door key Rod's been looking for for the past two weeks, a few more pens, two hairbands, 97 Indian rupees, £11.44 in British money, 32 US cents, half a Euro and one Thai ringgit. Crying over spilt milk? No way - we're rich!