Picture Postcards

They say you can't describe Amsterdam, you have to experience it. When have I ever listened to what they say. And who's they?

yeah.. you can see all there is to see by Bike... at least that how the locals do it. Plenty of rentals, plenty of bikes... in fact there are more peolpe than bike in the city... and apparently you have shady characters sliding upto you and trying to palm off stolen bikes. For 10 euros! We kept a sharp lookout for such characters so we could slide upto him and demand our 10-euro bike. NO such luck!


Nope, didn’t visit the cheese farm, but did try out some of the cheeses for Breakfast. Yummmm! And those clogs- well, don’t know why they sell em, actually- can’t wear ‘em- and where the heck will you display shoes in your house??


Now this is something that would sell in this city…we turn on the telly, and what’s the first thing we see? The free porn channel! And the red-light district is awesome! The window mannequins stand ramrod straight, and the women at the windows are unbelievably curvy! Oh, and the toys… wouldn’t know what to do with half of them, actually.


This is a laugh. Shopping is tax free. Porn on the telly is free. So is homosexuality. But a trip to the loo costs you 50 cents to a Euro. And in the city of canals, water certainly isn’t free!


You really think I wasted the weekend visiting this? Come on! you ought to know me better by now.



Here’s One place I wish we could visit actually, but with Pickwick in tow, we didn’t think it’s was too clever. Even in Amsterdam.


Again, with the museums… really, now.This is me we’re talking about here. OK. So we did visit One museum. But this wasn’t it.


Nope. This wasn’t it either. Try again.

Nor this.



*snort* C’mon! you’re not trying hard enough.

See what I mean about the Sex? And this poster has nothing to do with sex. It’s just about shopping!


Ohh- our neightbourhood bar. Great ambience. You can sit out right by the canal. And gaze out at the gay convention taking place in the street. Host of Pink-tees, extreme leather and some lovely drag queens. Pickwick really loved the hot Pink Balloons.


Finally. This is the one museum we did visit. It would be blasphemous if we didn’t.


Ohh… and this one, I did want to visit, but I was veetoed.


No thanks. We have one already. We call him Pickwick.

I'm a Legal Alien

There are things that are endemic to each country that other people find inexplicable. Here are a few ads and announcements that have me flummoxed.

- Trains will not be stopping at Victoria station today due to excessive dust on the station.
Really?By that logic, the Virar local can only stop at the coach shed. maybe not even there- God Forbid, there might be Excessive Dust!

- And Ad on the Telly: 'Oasis- The chuggable fruitiness for people who don't like water'
Hasn't their mother ever told them of the millions of people dropping dead in third world countries because they don't have clean water to drink??? What kind of people are these? are you sure they are the same species as us???

Children who opt for eduation above the age of sixteen get paid by some boroughs to stay in school!

The cost of a litre of ice-cream and a bottle of mineral water is about the same.

Pureed tomato (in a tube) is cheaper than whole, raw tomatoes.

An ad on the telly asks you to contribute 3 pounds a month to keep some dogs in kennels, but another wants just 2 pounds to stop prevention of cruelty to children. (and guess which ads are played more frequently)

and Oh- Flash Floods! They make headline news... just to be clear what the idea of a flash flood here is: ten minutes of heavy rains (the kind we get for two continuous day in july in Mumbai)

Shall keep everyone posted as more googlies are thrown my way.

Everyday Heros

Original can be viewed here

Dekho Dekho Dekhooooo an Evening in....

Two days in Paris have turned me into a massive snob- NO, it’s got nothing to do with the french- who were quite nice, by the way, and eveyone simply adored Pickwick (except for a few old fogies- the Gall! – Actually they are the Gauls, but still, The Gall!), its just that now I’m looking at everyone condescendingly, tsk-ing at their french and go about aggravatingly correcting their pronounciations! Yes, I used to go about aggravating correcting speech anyways, but I restricted myself to the english language (occasionally Hindi, when it came to Hubby- who still pronounces ‘Khar’ like a cross between an automobile and a Ludhianvi reminescing about home), but now it’s gone and spilled over to the french language as well. Not that I know French. Far from it. I wouldn’t know it if it jumped up and bit my behind. The only French I was familiar with (apart from the fries) was the high school vareity where all pronounciations had their heads bitten off and spat back in the face of the harassed teacher. So why have I suddenly turned expert? Simple… I have unlocked the key to ALL prononciations french. And I shall divulge this knowledge now. The key lies in Imagining that your mouth is full of marbles. Seven, if you want my opinion. Now try and read what is written, and voila! We have ze perfect accent. It also help if you mumble and speak as if you’re hiding in a closet and you don’t want the psycho with and axe on the other side of the door hearing you. The other things I picked up in Paris- the ability to appear supremly confident, even if you have a toilet seat hanging around your neck ( the way they beg for money here, you’d think they were doing you a favour by taking your money), bomb hoaxes exist in France as well (and this time Pickwick was no where close to the scene), red light districts can peacefully co-exist with places of worship outside of Kolkata, Piped music played on buses is still cheesy, even if it is in French and even a baby’s full-throated wail cannot take away the romance of a night cruise in the Seine. I shall now let you get on with ogling at the photos.

* photographs Courtesy Mr. Sensorcaine – you might know him better as the baa-lamb.

Juggler at the Flea market

Rainy day

night Cruise on The Seine

The light show every hour!

Le D'artagnan. Great Breakfasts.

Notre Dame de Paris

Inside the church

cheesy 'dils' exist even in Paris. :D

View from the first level at Eiffel
Seine from the second level

The monolith

L'Arc De Triomphe

More of L'arc

...and the Eiffle
A rainbow in Paris!

Le basilique du Sacre-Coeur (thanks Brad!)



also Sacre-coeur



and this one too.




Champs- Elysees

L'arc- ceiling details

Croeso i Arddunol Caerdydd

Cardiff Bay

The sculpture outside the Visitors' Centre

View From the Visitors' Centre

Cardiff Castle

The dragon- synonymous with all things 'Cardiff-ean'

The town crest

Cardiff Bay Visitors centre

Pickwick having fun at the millenium centre

Looking up from the castle well

Peahen decided to investigate the food scraps with her chicks

Fort entry

Duck swimming at the bay

Little Britain

Stonehenge. Stones. and nothing much else around for miles. Except wooly sheep.

Yes. So there are no 'Parag heart Simmi' s on the monuments

Richmond Park

Deer sighting at Richmond park

Sighting of a different kind of beast at our apartment

Inside Victoria Quarter, Leeds

Mural opposite the Market, Leeds

Corn Exchange, Leeds (lovingly restored, as the plaque puts it)

Leeds Skyline

Leeds Church

Great Expectations

Oftentimes in life, what you expect in life is very different from what you come to accept.
What you expected (WYE): (on hearing hubby has a very mobile career) Lots of fun travelling and new places to see
What you've accepted (WYA): The 'yay' factor wears a bit thin when no sooner have you finished unpacking the last box and settled down for a cup of tea, than hubby breezes in to announce that we've got to pack up coz we're moving again!

WYE: New Places - new friends, new hang-outs...
WYA: New Places- New maid servants to break in or *shudder* no maid servants to break in.

WYE: ooh... expecting! Darling baby movements in you belly
WYA: Ooh! someone needs to tell that baby to stop stomping on my bladder

WYE: Smart baby
WYA: Smart baby using his brains for destructive purposes

WYE: (judging by our sizes) Chubby baby
WYA: baby that won't sit still long enough to become chubby

WYE: Me playing with baby and being fit enough to keep up with him
WYA: Baby running circles around me.

WYE: Me being super mom- having a neat house, clean baby and super chef, while I dazzle colleages at work with my keen business acumen
WYA: You won't die from eating slightly charred meals, you can work you way around the mess, and babies will become filthy exacly 4 .8 seconds after you've bathed them. And work? you think I have time for work after all this???

WYE: Blogs. Will read all blogs, post like there's no tomorrow, leave scintillating comments on others posts.
WYA: there's just barely enought time to publish in a post, without even bothering to run a spell check on it, before baby tries for the umpteenth time to burn the house down.

WYE: a good end to the post
WYA: To end is good enough.