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| The market is next to a police station and has a small scrap yard. |
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| Fast asleep in the midst of all the noise and chaos. |
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| Silly calves on a busy road |
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| Collecting plastic from the road side garbage to make some money. |
Sunday, 28 September 2014
HAL market (part 3)
Ok, the last few photos, just because I like them so much ;-)
HAL market (part 2)
I love the colours of India, it makes taking photographs so much more fun. At the HAL market we met a lot of very colourful people, not only because of their vibrant clothing but also colourful in character. A lot of people were asking us to take their picture. They were wondering if we were from a newspaper and were surprised and a bit puzzled when we said we were just taking photos for ourselves.
Saturday, 27 September 2014
HAL market (part 1)
Close to my house, along the Old Airport Road, is a little market. It is only there in the afternoons, when the HAL shift ends at 15:00 hours. {HAL stands for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited}
Every time I pass I think I should stop and visit the market one day. Yesterday my friend Sheri and I did and we brought our cameras. There were lots of carts with fruit and veg, but also with spices, underwear, glasses, watches, posters etc. etc. We arrived when they were still setting up their stalls and it was relatively quiet. From 3 o'clock it became very busy and very hectic.
Every time I pass I think I should stop and visit the market one day. Yesterday my friend Sheri and I did and we brought our cameras. There were lots of carts with fruit and veg, but also with spices, underwear, glasses, watches, posters etc. etc. We arrived when they were still setting up their stalls and it was relatively quiet. From 3 o'clock it became very busy and very hectic.
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
Today in pictures
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| There was a nail in the tire, so we had to go to a 'punchure shoppee' to have it removed and the hole pugged. |
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| Teddy out to dry |
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| Food stalls |
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| The usual chaos after the trains have passed: a blocked road because both sides occupy the whole width of the road |
Thursday, 18 September 2014
?
What to write about? There is nothing much going on, but at the same time a lot is going on. Our day to day life is quite normal, even with the fact that Adriaan is travelling a lot and will only be home for 3 days in 3 weeks.
The thing that is going on is the thing that is typically going on in the last year of an assignment: thinking about where we will go next.
Things have gone a bit different than we thought a few months back. We were set to add another two years (from 2015) to our time in India. It took some time to get used to the idea that, instead of being almost at the end, we were suddenly only halfway through our time here. Once used to the idea, we saw all sorts of advantages in staying. The boys are in a great school, with all the support they need. Joshua will move to the Netherlands next summer to start University, so with everything already organised here I would be able to settle him in without having to move house and country with the rest of the family at the same time. Lots of win-win situations.
Unfortunately the reason for signing on for those extra years does no longer exist, the new job that was going to be created has not survived the reorganisation, so all of a sudden we are thrown back into the situation where this is our last year.
Adriaan has been throwing possible new postings at me over the last few weeks and every time I go and search the web to find information about IB schools, health care and living conditions to see if those would be feasible options. Mind you, these are only possibilities he is thinking of, we don't even know if there will be a job for him that would match his aspirations.
Every posting has it's specific challenges, even more so when you have children and even more so when you have children with special needs. I guess it comes natural to every mother to worry about the effect it will have on the child(ren) when you move, so you can probably imagine the worries I have had (and it have only been 'what if we go there MAYBE?' situations so far).
The funny thing is that the possible move that has worried me most so far is moving back to the Netherlands. Schooling is the main issue, especially finding the right school for our boy with Asperger's. Would he be able to cope in a regular Dutch secondary school? Will we be able to afford putting him in a good international school? He is a typical, naïve, expat boy, with an English accent and no knowledge of what is 'hip and happening' because he lived abroad for 10 out of his 13 years.
I think I would like to stay abroad for our next posting and to have our boys finish their secondary education in an International IB school. The only problem with that, is that my eldest boy will be far away from us. Something he doesn't seem to mind, but I do....
So at the moment I have a quiet life and a restless mind.
The thing that is going on is the thing that is typically going on in the last year of an assignment: thinking about where we will go next.
Things have gone a bit different than we thought a few months back. We were set to add another two years (from 2015) to our time in India. It took some time to get used to the idea that, instead of being almost at the end, we were suddenly only halfway through our time here. Once used to the idea, we saw all sorts of advantages in staying. The boys are in a great school, with all the support they need. Joshua will move to the Netherlands next summer to start University, so with everything already organised here I would be able to settle him in without having to move house and country with the rest of the family at the same time. Lots of win-win situations.
Unfortunately the reason for signing on for those extra years does no longer exist, the new job that was going to be created has not survived the reorganisation, so all of a sudden we are thrown back into the situation where this is our last year.
Adriaan has been throwing possible new postings at me over the last few weeks and every time I go and search the web to find information about IB schools, health care and living conditions to see if those would be feasible options. Mind you, these are only possibilities he is thinking of, we don't even know if there will be a job for him that would match his aspirations.
Every posting has it's specific challenges, even more so when you have children and even more so when you have children with special needs. I guess it comes natural to every mother to worry about the effect it will have on the child(ren) when you move, so you can probably imagine the worries I have had (and it have only been 'what if we go there MAYBE?' situations so far).
The funny thing is that the possible move that has worried me most so far is moving back to the Netherlands. Schooling is the main issue, especially finding the right school for our boy with Asperger's. Would he be able to cope in a regular Dutch secondary school? Will we be able to afford putting him in a good international school? He is a typical, naïve, expat boy, with an English accent and no knowledge of what is 'hip and happening' because he lived abroad for 10 out of his 13 years.
I think I would like to stay abroad for our next posting and to have our boys finish their secondary education in an International IB school. The only problem with that, is that my eldest boy will be far away from us. Something he doesn't seem to mind, but I do....
So at the moment I have a quiet life and a restless mind.
Friday, 5 September 2014
What happened to safety first?
There is something I don't understand, well actually there are a lot of things that I don't understand but let's pick one thing that has surprised me over and over again: What happened to safety first?
Why do so many expats 'forget' to wear their seatbelts when they are in a country that doesn't enforce wearing them? Why do they allow their children to sit on their lap in the front seat, or to stand while the car is driving? Why do expats ride (on the back of) a motorcycle without wearing a helmet? Why do expats allow their drivers to call while driving (not hands free)?
Most of those expats do use the above mentioned items when in their home country and when I ask why they don't do it here the answer more often than not is: "Because I don't have to by law."
I was under the impression that seatbelts, helmets and hands free kits were invented for our safety, not for the police to be able to give us a fine if we don't use them...
Shouldn't your children be safe in traffic wherever you are or is their life worth less in Indian traffic than at home? Doesn't your skull split open when you have an accident and you fall off your motorcycle in India?
I know most Indian drivers have only one hand on the steering wheel at any given time, but using the other hand to hold a mobile phone and concentrating on the conversation instead of on traffic must be even worse.
In Libya I drove the company car, which meant that I had to do a defensive driving course every year. Part of that course was a series of horrible videos, showing how people fly around in the car during a collision, even with slow speed. It wasn't the fact that they got injured or killed themselves that shocked me (sorry, I know it sounds harsh, but if you are too stupid to wear a seatbelt it is your own fault I recon), it was the fact that they killed other passengers. When a person, young or old, flies through the car and lands on another passenger he will badly injure or kill the other one(s).
That is why my driver is not allowed to drive if not all passengers wear their seatbelts. It is why I stress at school that all the children on the bus should wear their seatbelts. It is not to please the police, it is for our own safety!
Check out this clip on you tube! (click on the link)
'A Mumbai public service initiative has taken an unusual approach to getting
motorists' attention - by hiring a group of transgender men known as The
Seatbelt Crew to perform a demonstration of how to use the safety device.
The transgender group, known as “hijras” in India,
are viewed as sacred and touched by God. They are traditionally identified
by their clapping, and bless motorists in return for cash. However this time
their presence in the rush hour traffic was to make motorists aware of the
dangers of not wearing a seatbelt. '
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCU6_Y_Kyo
Why do so many expats 'forget' to wear their seatbelts when they are in a country that doesn't enforce wearing them? Why do they allow their children to sit on their lap in the front seat, or to stand while the car is driving? Why do expats ride (on the back of) a motorcycle without wearing a helmet? Why do expats allow their drivers to call while driving (not hands free)?
Most of those expats do use the above mentioned items when in their home country and when I ask why they don't do it here the answer more often than not is: "Because I don't have to by law."
I was under the impression that seatbelts, helmets and hands free kits were invented for our safety, not for the police to be able to give us a fine if we don't use them...
Shouldn't your children be safe in traffic wherever you are or is their life worth less in Indian traffic than at home? Doesn't your skull split open when you have an accident and you fall off your motorcycle in India?
I know most Indian drivers have only one hand on the steering wheel at any given time, but using the other hand to hold a mobile phone and concentrating on the conversation instead of on traffic must be even worse.
In Libya I drove the company car, which meant that I had to do a defensive driving course every year. Part of that course was a series of horrible videos, showing how people fly around in the car during a collision, even with slow speed. It wasn't the fact that they got injured or killed themselves that shocked me (sorry, I know it sounds harsh, but if you are too stupid to wear a seatbelt it is your own fault I recon), it was the fact that they killed other passengers. When a person, young or old, flies through the car and lands on another passenger he will badly injure or kill the other one(s).
That is why my driver is not allowed to drive if not all passengers wear their seatbelts. It is why I stress at school that all the children on the bus should wear their seatbelts. It is not to please the police, it is for our own safety!
Check out this clip on you tube! (click on the link)
'A Mumbai public service initiative has taken an unusual approach to getting
motorists' attention - by hiring a group of transgender men known as The
Seatbelt Crew to perform a demonstration of how to use the safety device.
The transgender group, known as “hijras” in India,
are viewed as sacred and touched by God. They are traditionally identified
by their clapping, and bless motorists in return for cash. However this time
their presence in the rush hour traffic was to make motorists aware of the
dangers of not wearing a seatbelt. '
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCU6_Y_Kyo
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
Mundane
My life is back to the mundane. Husband at work, boys at school, me at home/at the slum/out for coffee with a friend/having my nails done.
Nothing much to tell, unless you want to hear about my 2 hour root canal and the fun dental treatments that are awaiting me? Or would you like to hear about the boil that has taken residence on my chin? If I was Iceland there would be a diversion of flight paths in fear of the outburst... I am on antibiotics now... the crater could easily house a small family... There is no way to hide or camouflage the disaster area...
I could also start a rant about the ants that occupy my kitchen in the millions.... or the fact that my husband will be away on business trips for 3 weeks... or our neighbour who can't take a shower without singing loudly and VERY off key.
On a less mundane note: I have booked us a week at a 5 star resort on the Maldives during the Diwali break in October. We will be enjoying the ocean, the reefs, diving, snorkeling, sailing, lounging on the beach, the luxury and the food, while escaping the madness of 4 days continues fireworks (it is like bombs are going off) in our neighbourhood.
All is well, all is mundane. How are you?
Nothing much to tell, unless you want to hear about my 2 hour root canal and the fun dental treatments that are awaiting me? Or would you like to hear about the boil that has taken residence on my chin? If I was Iceland there would be a diversion of flight paths in fear of the outburst... I am on antibiotics now... the crater could easily house a small family... There is no way to hide or camouflage the disaster area...
I could also start a rant about the ants that occupy my kitchen in the millions.... or the fact that my husband will be away on business trips for 3 weeks... or our neighbour who can't take a shower without singing loudly and VERY off key.
On a less mundane note: I have booked us a week at a 5 star resort on the Maldives during the Diwali break in October. We will be enjoying the ocean, the reefs, diving, snorkeling, sailing, lounging on the beach, the luxury and the food, while escaping the madness of 4 days continues fireworks (it is like bombs are going off) in our neighbourhood.
All is well, all is mundane. How are you?
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