First sewing steps

I've actually done some sewing! Unfortunately it wasn't anything terribly exciting, just shortening and lining the curtains in Thalia's and the master bedroom. While it might not have been exciting it was really useful, as it kept Rod and my bedroom darker this morning so we were able to sleep in! I'd bought the lining fabric at Shankar Market back in September, in anticipation of my DSM arriving later that month. As we all know, that didn't happen. Lining the curtains took a little longer than it should have. I haven't managed to unpack my sewing stuff yet because we're using that room as Mum's bedroom while she's visiting. So all the boxes are stored under my quilting frame. I set my DSM up on the dining room table, and had to go and search the boxes for the footpedal. Then I had to go and search for a multi region power board so I could pin my British plug into a power board that I could plug into the wall. Then I had to find my pins and dressmaking scissors, then I had to search two boxes for my spools of thread. Of course all these things were in separate boxes, and never the box on the top of the stack!

Lighting up!

The biggest Hindu festival of the year is almost upon us. Diwali is the festival of light, and many of the balconies around us have been adorned with tinsel and twinkly lights. It's really beautiful.

Keir's class had a Diwali assembly on Friday. Mum and I attended, so we now know exactly why everyone lights candles and decorates their homes with sparkly lights. Many years ago there was a good old king who had a number of sons by a couple of wives. The king chose his son Ram to take over from him, which upset wife no.2, who wanted her son Bharat to inherit the crown. Wife no. 2 had something over the king, and forced him to send Ram and his wife Sita into exile in the forest for 14 years. But Bharat wasn't as conniving as his mother and went into the forest to ask Ram to return to take the crown. Ram wouldn't disobey his father and opted to stay in the forest for the 14 years, so Bharat (played by Keir) asked for Ram's sandals to take back to the palace which he put on the throne. Then Sita was kidnapped by a bad man (we knew he was a baddie, he was wearing black), Ram befriended a monkey king and Ram and the monkey king went to rescue Sita. So not much different to the Days of our Lives or the Young and the Restless really. When Ram and Sita needed to go back to reclaim the throne they could not find their way, so the people lit candles along the path to show them the way. Hindus commemorate this by lighting up their homes, eating barfi (condensed milk cooked with sugar and coated with edible silver. It's lovely, but you can make yourself sick if you eat too much), having big parties and playing lots of loud Bollywood songs. Diwali day is on Tuesday, which is also Rod and my 13th wedding anniversary. I'm led to believe there will be fireworks too that day. So kind of the Indians to put so much effort into our anniversary, don't you think?

Sofa, so good

Well, we've certainly had a busy couple of days here. Almost everything's unpacked, just about every piece of furniture we had in the living/dining area has moved (at least once) to accomodate our sofa, which was a large part of the shipment. Why would we ship a sofa halfway around the world when India actually makes really quite nice sofas? Well, we love this sofa, it's incredibly comfortable and it reminds us of home. Rod's parents gave us this sofa when we moved into Marina Avenue in 1997. But it was not new, they were downsizing in Edinburgh, and it was fortuitous that we were able to make use of it at a time when we were expanding up from a one bed apartment to a three bed house. The sofa was not new in Edinburgh, Rod remembers it from his childhood home. By his reckoning, the sofa is nearly 40 years old. I asked David, his Dad, how old the sofa was on his last visit down to us before we left, and I found out Rod is wrong. Yes the sofa was in his childhood home, but it wasn't new when his parents got it. It had actually been bought by Rod's grandparents, so it is even older still! It certainly was too old to stay in Marina Avenue when the house was rented out, because it seems the authorities were less concerned about fire regulations in the post war years, and it wouldn't pass fire safety tests. We don't care about that, it now has pride of place in our living room, in front of our big flat screen TV. We are happy bunnies. Happier still once we buy a bookcase to hold the books, CDs and DVDs that haven't yet been unpacked.

Another reason we were so desperate to get everything sorted quickly was my Mum, Marcia, arrived yesterday to stay for six weeks. We had chosen late October so she could be here for Diwali, and to allow us time to unpack all our stuff and get sorted. We had been planning on having at least a couple of weeks to do this, not a couple of days. But she's seen a cardboard box or two before, and that's not what she's focussing on anyway. So we're off to do some shopping!

It's here!

Just thought you'd all like to know. Can't talk - I'm unpacking!

Suited, or what?

The past week and a bit have been quite hard here. Rod and I have both spent a great deal of time trying to get our belongings, and while we seem a little closer to getting our stuff at the end of each day, it doesn't seem enough of a step forward considering the time and effort we've put in. So on Tuesday, while I was at one of Delhi's 5 star hotels, I walked past a cake counter and spotted a blackcurrant topped cheesecake. Rod loves cheesecake (who am I kidding, so do I!), so I decided to buy a couple of slices as a treat for him, to show that I appreciated all the efforts he'd been putting in.

Rod came home around 10 that evening, what with spending the day with shipping companies etc, he's having to do his proper work later. He was carrying a fancy paper bag with the logo of one of Gurgaon's top end hotels on it. There's a french stick poking out of the top, and in his other hand, there's an enormous box with the same logo on it. I looked at the unopened box and said to him, "you bought me a cake."
"Yes", he replied, "how do you know?"
"Because I bought you a cake. Because you've worked hard trying to get our stuff, and it's all been a bit hard, so I thought you deserved a treat."
Rod told me he had been walking past the bakery in this hotel and thought exactly the same thing. What's really funny is that neither of us spend very much time in 5 star hotels, nor have we ever bought cake from one before!

Rather than buy a couple of slices, he bought the whole thing. So like Marie Antoinette and the hippo on top of our caravan roof*, we're eating cake. We both decided that my cake looked stunning but was actually rather disappointing. The crumb crust was lovely, as was the blackcurrant topping. But the cheesecake itself wasn't cheesecake, it was a light fluffy mousse. Rod's cake was much tastier - a good thing, because we've got a lot of it. It's thin layers of sponge spread with a cream-like (but not cream, and not buttercream icing, not sure what it is) filling and topped with chunks of grape, melon and kiwi fruit. I'm enjoying it, quite a lot!

Yesterday Rod and I spent the entire day trying to get our shipment out of the container freight depot. At 10, when the banks open, we went to get a bank draft (bank cheque) for the shipping agency. The bank wanted to know where the draft would be cashed. As if we're expected to know where the shipping agency does it's banking! Then we drove to the agency in Hauz Khas (12.15) to give them the cheque and pick up the delivery order showing we'd paid the shipping charges. Sweety had called ahead and asked them to have this ready for us, so it only took 35 minutes for them to provide this single sheet of paper. Then we drove to the container freight depot (2pm) and waited in a warehouse while they unloaded our two pallets from the container. Sweety had arranged a man to expedite us through the process. Either he wasn't very good at working fast, or, if that was him working quickly, I feel extremely sorry for anyone who is depending on his usual pace. My fingernails grow faster. At 3.20pm, they locate the container with our goods. I can't tell you how excited we were to see two pallets of heavy duty black shrink wrap plastic with decent ties and packing seals with "Fairweather" on them. I'd been seriously unimpressed with everything to do with the shipping of all our goods - I mean, we were told there would be a transit time of 33 days for this stuff. They left our house in London on July 30th. I'm not sure what calendar they're using, but mine says that was 77 days ago. The way they have been packed is the only positive comment I'd care to pass on the subject.

So it's now 3.20. The truck Sweety's guy had promised hadn't materialised, so Rod sent me with Raju to collect the kids from school. We picked them up and drove straight back to the container depot and waited outside. Rod appears at 6.30. We've gone as far as we can today, and guess where he has to go tomorrow?

* from one of Keir and my favourite bedtime books

One down...one to go

My mobile rang last night just after 11. I assume it was the delivery guys telling me they'd arrived. I assume this because a man rattled off some quickfire Hindi of which I could not pick one identifying word out as a clue (Pizza, furniture and plumber are the same in both languages. So is tractor, but bizarrely, I've never been expecting delivery of one of those). Then he hung up. Then Rod's mobile rang. I could tell the person on the other end of that was at least using some English. Rod told them the guards would let them in at 8am and we both went to bed.

7.41 the internal phone rings. It's the front gate. Lots of Hindi, but this time with the clue word, delivery. We give the usual reply "Send them up to A151". They have to open the crate to carry the contents upstairs. This has an added bonus - as the wooden crate never comes off the back of the truck we don't have to work out how to get rid of it. Supervisor lady calls at 8am to make sure everything is going to plan and I'm pleased to be able to tell her it is. It is such a shame we were only passed onto her at the last moment. Of course, if we hadn't been passed to her when we did, it might not have been the last moment!

The quilting frame is now in bits in my quilting room. Can't put it up yet because the tool box is in the other shipment, which has just arrived at the container freight depot. But I don't need it up yet, because Samantha, my quilting machine, is with my tool box :-)

still not...addendum

Okay, just because the supervisor lady promised the table would be here by 6.30pm you didn't really think it would be, did you? She called just after 5pm to say the table was loaded on the truck and ready to go. Unfortunately, the truck wasn't going anywhere for a couple of hours. There's a law which prohibits heavy goods trucks travelling through Delhi during the evening rush hour, so the truck was unable to leave the depot until 9pm. Actually I think this law is a good thing, so I can't complain. However I think the customs inspectors really ought to start work earlier in the day to accomodate this. She tells me the truck will leave at 9pm, and should get to my house around 11pm tonight. She then says it will park alongside Westend Heights for the night, and deliver my goods as soon as the guards will allow in the morning. I've checked the Condominium rulebook, and that's 8am. So I will be able to go to bed tonight knowing my table is here. I might even sneak out to gaze at the truck!