Along the road

Getting ready for a day of vending vessels



Anyone in need of a leader Frenchie or any other type of boss?

Remember our neighbourhood coconut merchant/real estate agent? Sadly he is no longer in business, but I think this shop has an interesting combination of services to offer too. At least I take it he is selling tours and travels AND chicken and fish, not tours and travels FOR chicken and fish...

Zen

15

00:02 on 22/2/2014
Ruben (blue shirt) celebrating his 15th birthday at his friend's house

Our middle son, Ruben, turned 15 yesterday. He had a sleepover at his friend's house, so we couldn't congratulate him till the afternoon.
I can't believe our golden haired, easy going boy is 15 already. He is taller than I am and in hot pursuit to grow taller than his father and maybe even his older brother (who stands at 2 m right now).

Of course I can remember the day he was born like it was yesterday. We were living in Karratha, Western Australia at that time and my parents were visiting. He was born 22 months after Joshua, but was such a different baby than his older brother. I could never imagine beforehand that is was possible to have a child that looked and behaved so differently from his older sibling. He is still the only 'red head' on both sides of the family and he is unique in many ways.

Happy 15th birthday Ruben!

Joshua featured in the paper today!

The Times of India, Student edition 19/2/2014
click on the picture to enlarge it

No fun!

I have been silent blogging-wise for a while again, because I had nothing fun to write about. I still don't have, but decided to write a blog about things that are no fun at all. It is called 'What is going on with the Spaander family?' for a reason isn't it? Otherwise I should have called it "The picture perfect family" or something like that. We are not, I can assure you.

My physical and mental state have been below par for a while now. Menopause is a B#@*$!  It literally gives me headaches and makes me very moody. A great combination with 3 teenagers, NOT!
My boys are great, most of the time, but sometimes.... Especially my youngest little cherub knows how to challenge my patience, to put it mildly. I love him to bits, but he is not an easy person to get along with. He has a lovely caring and funny side and a scary explosive side too. Self control issues that we are trying to get under control, both at home and in school. I worry about him a lot (I write this with tears in my eyes, because I hurts me to see him struggle and I am afraid this highly intelligent boy will become a social outcast if we can't help him).



My dear 'Pluize-Kaboem'

On top of all the hormonal bliss I have also scored my second bulge disk, combined with a pinched nerve. Told you this blog would be no fun...
We spent quite some time at the clinic on Saturday, where I saw the GP, the Orthopedic doctor and had two CT scans. I went home with a bag full of medication and the advise to take bed rest.

This morning I went back to see the GP again: two more days of strict bed rest and some more medication. I have to come back on Wednesday and if things have improved I will get physiotherapy.
To be continued!

I will end this blog with a funny story that I also posted on my Facebook page. Have a laugh about it, it is always better to laugh than to cry!!!

                                                                  Ordering Pizzas

I must be mad/out of my mind/the medication has relaxed my 'thinking-muscles'!

Joshua got the home delivery number of the Domino's delivery guy last night, when he delivered pizzas to our neighbours across the road. We were all very happy, because Domino's stopped delivering to our area a while ago.

So I called them just now to order pizzas (doesn't that sound simple enough?).

First they said...: "No, we don't deliver there ma'am" so I explain that if they can deliver to our neighbours across the road they can surely deliver to us since it is only 20 meters further....

Deep sigh on the other side of the phone and "One moment ma'am" and another person comes on the line. The whole conversation repeats itself and I hear another deep sigh and a "one moment ma'am" and then I hear her say: "I don't understand her language!" (At this point I would like to stress that I was speaking English to the best of my abilities).

The third person on the phone finally understood my language and noted our address, my phone number and our order. Pfew, that's done.....

The phone rang 2 minutes later: "Ma'am, can you give me the nearest landmark?" so I said: "Shell petrol bunk" " Shhh? Shhhh? What ma'am?" I repeat 3 times in the unknown language that I speak, someone else asks the same question again, I give the same answer and she seems to understand. Then she asked me something I couldn't decipher, so I said "Sorry?" It was followed by a silence and then: "Thank you for ordering at Domino's, have a nice day!"

They called again, I tried to hand the phone to one of the men that live in my house, but no takers (weird that). "Ma'am we have no pepperoni" TG, not calling to say they won't deliver after all! So I pick another 'flavour' and he says "Ma'am your address is xxxxx? NOOOOOOOOO, it is yyyyyyy!" "O, ok Ma'am."

Two questions remain:

1. Will we get pizzas for dinner tonight?
2. Who will be mad enough to call them next time? (It won't be me!!!!) — feeling confused.

The answer to question 1: YES!!!!

PS

The picture shows my mind has gone indeed, right after this stupid idea of holding 5 pizzas for the photo I couldn't move anymore and had to spend the rest of the night flat on my back in bed.....

Today in pictures

Lunch at Chez Mariannick

Guys in the back of trucks on top of the load

Even taking a nap...

You can never have too many S's on your billboard!

Funny spelling leads to a scary lunch.....the wicked witch from the desert?

And what do you do all day?

Bangalore traffic: Holy Cow!

"And what do you do all day?", that is the question that every trailing spouse gets asked on a home visit. I am never too sure what to answer. My life is very mundane, even though I live in India, but it is far from what most people consider 'normal'. Take last Monday for instance, I only had to do two things: go to the bank and go to school. In the Netherlands that would have been done in a few hours max, but in Bangalore it took me a whole day.

My bank card didn't seem to work anymore, so I suspected the magnetic strip was damaged. When the card got swiped at a store it couldn't be read and I had problems getting money from the ATM. At first it was just occasionally, but it got worse and worse and last Friday it stopped working altogether. So on Monday I went to the bank to get a new card. Adriaan had the same problem about a year ago and he got a replacement card straight away, so I knew it was possible.

I explained the problem to the lady at the counter, she checked my details on the computer and then sent me to the Relations Manager (our personal banker). I explained the problem to him and he starts to laugh and says: "But you have to give your pin code!" I never got to the part where the code is needed, the card can't be read.... So he checked the system and tells me my card is activated. I know that, but it is not working.
To be sure it was indeed not working he asked me to go to the ATM next door and get some money out. If it didn't work I would get a new card.

I had tried 3 different ATMs on Friday without success, so you can imagine my surprise when I got money out of the machine without any problems... So I went back to tell it did work, but I was still worried about using it in the shops, because swiping the card gave a lot of problems.
We decided I would go to the super market down the road to try. If it didn't work I would get a new card.

Hyper City is a huge supermarket but I don't like to go there. They play the same music over and over again, there is something about the light that gives me a headache and things ALWAYS go wrong at the check out. I decided to man up and do my shopping as fast as possible. It took 45 minutes! Not because of HC messing up this time, but because I ran into friends and had long conversations with them ;-)

With a full shopping trolley, and enough cash just in case, I went to the check out and sure enough, the card didn't work.

Back to the bank it was and I was promised a new card. The choice was between a personal card (with my name on it) or a nameless card. The first would take at least 6 days (in India that translates to 3 weeks), the second could be issued immediately, BUT I had to go to another branch because they had no cards left in this one. My personal banker called their Relations Manager and the card would be ready for me to pick up immediately.

It was only a short drive to the other branch, but nobody knew anything about my card, so I had to explain everything all over again. Guess what their response was? "But you have to enter your pin code!"...........
I kept my calm and explained it all again and told them the whole action plan we went through that same morning and that I really, REALLY, wanted a new card.
Long story a bit shorter: I walked out with a new card after 20 minutes and with the promise it would be activated within 24 hours. That was Monday at 13:00 hrs. it is now Wednesday 15:00 hrs. and I have yet to receive the confirmation. I called my friend at the bank this morning and he promised me to look into it and call me back. I texted him a reminder just now.

So that was a visit to the bank and it took me from 10:00 till 13:00 to get that sorted. Just enough time left to drop the shopping off at home and drive to school for a meeting at 15:15.

From my house to the Canadian International School is a 50 minutes to 1 hour drive. My poor boys have to endure that twice a day on the school bus. I keep telling them they are lucky, because I had to ride my bicycle to school for 45 minutes one way and I always had head wind and the wind would always turn while I was in school, so I had to battle against it on the way home again. Those we tough times! ;-)

On the way back from the meeting I picked Adriaan up from the office and we arrived home at 18:00 hrs.

So the two errands took 8 hours altogether!!!

When you ask anyone in Bangalore how far away something is, the answer will not be in kilometers or miles but in hours. Traffic takes up most of the time. The roads in Bangalore are full at the best of times and congested most of the time. The condition of the majority of the roads is dismal, with potholes galore, there are speed bumps every 300 meters, cows stand or sleep in the middle of the road, buses and rickshaws seem to stop anywhere they like to offload passengers, trucks take U-turns and block all the lanes and two lane roads are used as 4 lane roads.

Yesterday we had to wait at a railroad crossing and as always I was surprised at what happened. There is this phenomena in India that drivers of any kind of vehicles can't deal with waiting in line when there is no traffic in the oncoming lanes, so what happens at a closed railway crossing is that the whole width of the road gets occupied by vehicles. This happens on both sides of the track and when the gates open again everyone wants to be the first one to cross. But both sides are fully blocked for oncoming traffic, so it comes to a standstill on the middle of the tracks. It takes forever to untangle this mess and nobody seems to realise that it would have been a lot faster had everybody stayed on their own side of the road... it blows my mind.

Waiting for the train to pass

I will never forget the time when the traffic got stuck in the middle of the track, with a big truck that couldn't move for lack of space amidst the chaos, and the booms went down again. The whistle of the train could be heard and nobody was able to move out of the way. Thank God I was only passing and we were able to drive along, but that is the stuff nightmares are made of!

So the answer to "What do you do all day?" should be "I spend most of my time in the car, stuck in traffic."

Two 'firsts' in one week!

On Thursday I had my first Starbucks coffee, a Toffee Nut Latte with whipped cream, and it was quite nice. I am not a great fan of flavoured coffees, I prefer black coffee or cappuccino, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The four of us had so much fun chatting away that we completely lost track of time. Those are the best times!

No longer a Starbucks virgin ;-)

My second first was last night. I went to a Armin van Buuren concert. I have been to concerts before, some memorable ones from Prince when he was still called Prince for instance, but never to see a DJ at work. I wasn't planning on going because I only know one 'song' and I was afraid the dance/trance scene was not really my cup of tea, but my friends convinced me to come along and I am happy I did.

Getting ready I felt like I did when I was a teenager: What to wear? What to bring? What to expect? Well, in the what-to-wear department I was anything but a teenager. I was wearing a lumbo sacral belt, a back support much like a corset. No way I would be able to stand and dance for hours if I had no back support. It also nicely tucks in the tummy, so it reduces some of the more wobbly bits that come with age. Added bonus!

Inge and I were ready to go to the concert

We arrived early to avoid long lines at the ticket counter and had lots of time to wander around the venue and warm up our dance moves with the Indian DJ that got the beat going before Armin started. In Bangalore all nightly entertainment involving alcohol closes at 23:00 hrs., so the concert started early and was finished by 21:45 hrs. another thing that is great for the 'elderly' among us (not to mention for parents who's children are going clubbing).



When we could still get close to the stage

The Indian DJ warming up de crowd

Armin van Buuren at work

The concert was great, I liked the music a lot more that I had anticipated and with my back support firmly in place I was able to dance the whole night.
We did have to put some effort into keeping enough space around us unfortunately. Not because it was overly crowded, but because of the Indian men that came too close for comfort. The alcohol consumption was high and the smell of a certain type of cigarette was at times overwhelming, so not everyone was aware of boundaries anymore (Indians have a different perception of personal space anyway and get too close for comfort at the best of times). Luckily for us it stayed limited to standing too close or asking us silly questions, but I heard others got touched (very) indecently.


So all in all it was an exiting week. Let's see what this week will bring us.