The weekend – what do you think?

I’m sure I speak for most people when I say that the weekend is probably one of the things that is most looked forward to during the week. It’s usually the two days of the week where one can throw caution to the wind, let your hair down and have some fun after what is usually a long week at work. It is also the time of the week that is earmarked for all those little odd job around the house that need doing such as hanging that picture that’s been lying around for months, mowing the lawn, changing the sheets, washing the dog, ironing the cat and polishing the car (ok, so I don’t do all these things but you get the drift). It is also the time of the week that most people do their grocery shopping and those that feel inclined to also use the weekend to do DIY.

In most of the world this seems to work quite well – people work hard during the week and do all their chores/DIY/partying at the weekend. The weekend usually tends to be too short for everything that people would like to do/need to do, but this is a point that I will come back to later. However, in Austria and Germany, things work a little bit differently.

Take grocery shopping for instance. As much as people would like to, it’s usually impossible to do any grocery shopping during the week. You don’t finish work until about 5 or 5.30pm so by the time you come home and make a list of what you need, the shops are all closed (they usually close as 6pm in the part of the continent). 24hour shopping or even late night shopping here is as common as seeing a talking cow in the pub on a Saturday night (andwe know how common that is!). So, logically, people tend to do their shopping at the weekend. To be more precise, people have to do their shopping on Saturday because (yes you guessed it), the shops are all closed on Sundays! Actually, it tends to be Saturday afternoon because most normal people use Saturday morning to recover from Friday night (they couldn’t go shopping because the shops were closed, but the pub was open ....) Thus, you have the vast majority of the population cramming into the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon trying to buy enough provisions to last them the whole week, which if they didn’t, would mean that they probably would have to starve until the following weekend.

For doing DIY, the story is a little bit worse. As those of you who are that way inclined will know, DIY usually consists of going to a DIY store, buying what you need, coming back home, starting to do your DIY, going back to the DIY store ‘cos you forgot some thing or ran out of something, coming back home etc etc. It’s the way nature intended. If one were a little bit organised, you could usually make sure that you purchased enough DIY provisions on Saturday so that you wouldn’t have to go back on Sunday (of course, this would mean having to buy double your weekly groceries the previous Saturday so that you have the time to make the obligatory 3 or 4 trips to the DIY store on Saturday afternoon). Even if this were possible (which in most cases it isn’t necessarily so), and one worked around having to go to the DIY store on Sundays, there still is a problem – German law prohibits doing certain things on Sundays and DIY is one of them (washing your car on the street is another – in fact, in Germany, I think it’s illegal to wash your car on the street on any day of the week). So the general rule of thumb in Germany and Austria is if you want to do any DIY, you need to plan it at least 3 weeks in advance. In my opinion, this kinda takes away some of the enjoyment of DIY, which comes from the spontaneity of it across most of the rest of the world.

To return to my point about the weekend being too short, I think it really is. I reckon that weekends should be 3 days and the working week should be 4days. I truly believe that people will probably be a lot more productive at work if this were the case. When I worked up in Scotland, we used to work a 9-day fortnight – Monday to Friday one week and Monday to Thursday the next week. I.e. we had every other Friday off. To compensate for this, each of the 9 working days was slightly longer than normal but this was morn than made up for by having three-day weekend every two weeks. It meant that you didn’t have to fight the weekend crowds when shopping, it meant you could actually go into the bank (and see all the lovely people that look after your money) and it also meant that you could have a late night on a Thursday and not have to worry about going to work the next morning.

I think the concept of a 9-day fortnight should be extended and implemented in Germany and Austria to make it an 8day fortnight. Yes, it means that you’ve got to work a little bit longer during the week, but hey, there’s not much else you can do as everything is closed by 6pm. What it does mean is you can do your groceries, DIY and anything else that you need to do and still have enough time to enjoy the weekend – What say you?

IKEA – Friend or Foe?

How is it that when one goes shopping with a view to buying a few specific things (usually on a list), one often arrives back home with far more stuff than one intended to purchase and far less money in one's pocket?

It was my belief that the only shop that had the power to do this in any significant way was Hamleys, the toy store in London. In my case, this is understandable - I've got a psychological age of 12 and a half (certified by Dr. Kanika Sharma) and anything that moves, makes a noise or has flashing lights always grabs my attention (N.B. My pshchological age used to be twelve, but this was re-evaluated at the wedding I attended last week - thanks Kan!).

This was a belief that I held until I moved to Vienna. Now I think there is a new contender - a Swedish, home furnishings retailer that promises to create a better everyday life for people by offering a wide range of well designed function products at low prices, known to you and me as IKEA.

I hate to admit it, but in the last few weeks, IKEA has managed to get the better of me every time I've been there. On average, I've managed to spend aprox. double the amount of money I intended.

Take yesterday for example. I walked into the store with the intention of buying a small, foldable table and a couple of chairs which should have set me back no more than 150 euros. What did I end up buying? Here's a list

Small foldable table 149 euros
Two chairs for the small foldable table - 60 euros (there goes the budget of 150 euros!)
Chest of drawers for the guest bedroom - 79 euros
Clothes rack for the guest bedroom - 14.50
Hangers for the clothes rack - 9 euros
Two NABBEN cushions - 22 euros
Covers for the cushions - 8 euros
Desk chair (for my office at home) - 69euros
Two desk organisers - 8 euros

This makes a grand total of approx 420 euros - so much for my little trip to IKEA to buy a small table. It can be argued that I need the other stuff that I bought (and yes, I do need it). However, what I object to is the fact that I didn't intend to buy most of this stuff when I stepped into the store. Am I the only person that IKEA has this effect on? Please let me know if you have had similar experiences at IKEA or somewhere else.

I wonder how many people in the world IKEA does this throughout the year? Well, IKEA operates in over 25 countries and had a turnover of 15billion euros. On average, that's about 600million euros per country.

Assuiming that the average punter (like you and me) spend aprox 100 euros per visit, that's about 6million people that were screwed out of their hard earned cash last year - that's about 16,000 people per day in your country (and IKEA have been doing this since 1958!)

Having said all this, the figures speak for them selves - 16,000 of us in each of the 25 or so countries where IKEA operates willingly walk into IKEA every day and donate the contents of our wallets and plastic in exchange for boxes, usually no more that a few inches tall, which we use to furnish our homes - I guess we must really like doing it - IKEA - what would we do without you?

Mum’s Forthcoming Visit.

It’s been six and a half weeks since I moved to Vienna – and what do I think? Well, it’s difficult to tell really …. I haven’t been here that long. In fact, of the 45 days that have elapsed since I moved to this eastern corner of western Europe, I’ve not been here for 13 of them. What I hear you ask, have I been doing in the 32days that I have been here? Well, I’ve been out dancing, making new friends, opening boxes of my stuff that I haven’t seen in almost 9 months and donating lots of my money to IKEA. Oh yes, and I’ve also been working.

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t really seen any of Vienna. That I’m saving for when my mum gets here in about 10days. She’s expected to be here from the 2nd of June until the 17th, and I’m sure I’ll see a lot more of Vienna in those two weeks that I have in the 32 days that I’ve already been here.

My mum, being the organised, methodical person that she is, has created a list of 13 things that she wants to do while in Vienna. Consider this: she will be here for 15 days. I guess she will be rather tired the day she gets here. She will be busy packing on the day she goes away. That leaves 13 days to accomplish a list of 13 items – Coincidence?

There are still quite a few things that I need to do before my mum arrives.

Somewhere to sleep.
A bed perhaps? It’s rather lucky that on one of my many trips to IKEA to make a donation of my entire pay packet, the lovely people at IKEA were kind enough to give me a bed. Not just one, but two of them. I’ve been using one of the beds that I got, and it makes sense that my mum uses the other one. There’s only one problem with this – the lovely people at IKEA gave me the bed in a series of boxes which are no more that 2inches tall. The implication here is that I’ve got to construct the bed before my mum gets here, so that she has somewhere to sleep – If this doesn’t happen by then, I suspect I will be sleeping on the floor!

Somewhere to sit down and to eat.
Ok, this might be a bit more tricky – I have already bought a table and chairs as well as a sofa (funnily enough, this wasn’t received as a gift from IKEA in exchange for my pay packet – this will be a gift from Leiner – a furniture shop that already has my pay packet, but hasn’t given me anything in return as yet – 8 weeks from the date of donation to the date of delivery (which means I will have my table and chairs at the end of June and my sofa won’t be here until the middle of July!). So where’s my mum going to sit when she arrives? I feel another trip to IKEA coming!

General tidy up.
This is one of those things that one generally does the day before guests arrive. However, I don’t have that luxury. I’ve got to go to Frankfurt on the 30th of May and will be returning on the 2nd of June – the same day my mum gets here. In fact, my flight is scheduled to arrive approx. 35mins before hers. Does this give me enough time to do some last minute tidying up – somehow, I don’t think so. It looks like I’ll be tidying up and cleaning my apartment before I go to Frankfurt – I think I better start now!

The Wedding ...

The wedding itself was very simple and very moving. The bride looked gorgeous. The ceremony itself was partly in Dutch and partly in English. The couple had written their own vows, which I thought was quite lovely. The registrar recounted the story of how the couple met, how they got together and how the bride broke the news of their relationship to her father.

Once the formalities of the marriage were done and the couple had signed the dotted line, I made it my mission to take a photograph of the bride and groom. Not just any old photograph, but one with the lovely couple having an intimate moment – tongues and all ! I told Thush that I wanted to take such a photograph but every time I thought there was an opportunity to do this, there was always an excuse: “too many people around”; “not sure where my husband is”; “my mum might see us”. In spite of all these excuses, I persevered and I managed to get just one picture of the kissing couple, but unfortunately there were no tongues! Needless to say, I was very disappointed!

The champagne reception was pretty lavish. It was held at the groom’s mother’s house where there is a very spacious garden. And the champagne reception was just that – lots of champagne! It’s amazing how little champagne one needs to drink before the bubbles start going to one’s head – in my case, it think it was about 1.5 bottles! Wearing a penguin suit did give me the added advantage of being able to walk around with a bottle of champagne in my hand and not look too suspicious unfortunately, it had the disadvantage of people coming up to me with empty glasses and expecting them to be magically filled. I didn’t mind this too much because it gave me an excuse to go and get another bottle.

After the champagne reception was a sit down dinner at a castle. This too was rather nice and I sat at the table not really sure whether to use the cutlery or whether to take a photograph of it. Even if I did use it, which ones was I supposed to use for what? This was the first dilemma of the evening and after much debate, Udayi and I agreed that we needed to start from the outside in and that a food fight or a moonie would not be appropriate. Now that the ground rules were set, we proceeded to enjoy the food.

My second dilemma of the evening was the wine. Red or White? I decided to go with the white, which was a little bit too sweet for me. Isabel, who was sat opposite suggested I tried the red. And so I did, and it went down rather nicely although it did leave a bit of an aftertaste. I continued the evening drinking both the red and the white but I never seemed to be able to finish either of the glasses (although I did manage to spill a bit of the red wine on the table). I honestly believe that the waitress (who’s name I did ask, but I can’t remember now – I’m sure it started with an M) was trying to get me drunk. I did, at one point, ask her if this was the case, but I can’t remember what her answer was – I think it might have been a yes!.


The rest of the evening went on quite merrily. There were the usual speeches (with the father of the bride describing the moment when his daughter asked him what sex was for the first time!), more toasts, some dancing (even by Kugan who usually avoids nightclubs and dancing like the plague!), more wine (both red and white of course) and even a chorus of Santa Lucia by Uncle Lloyd. All in all, a jolly good show and it’s certainly will remain in my memory for many years to come. A special mention needs to be made of the bridegrooms mother, who did a splendid job of organising everyone and everything, especially the wedding reception.


There are a few things that I’ve learned at this wedding.

(a) Sex is only a small portion of London – there is Sussex, Middlesex and Essex as well
(b) Lipstick on your collar can be disguised as a splodge of red wine.
(c) The little Village in Belgium (where Villa Christina is) closes down completely between 12:30 and 2pm. During this time, the village turns into a ghost town.
(d) Specially flown in Hair Stylists can be very cute.
(e) There is a variety of yogurt in Holland that is sold in containers that look very similar to milk. However, using this stuff in a cup of tea doesn’t help you make any friends.
(f) Photographers at weddings are a real pain in the ass – they always get in the way of the pictures you want to take (I learned this at the last wedding I went to, where I picked a fight with the said photographer, but this lesson was confirmed here).
(g) Friends from Uni don’t change – deep down, they are still the same!

The Day of the Wedding.

Thush got married! Thush got married! Hooray! Hooray!

It was a gloomy Thursday morning in Belgium and it looked like it was going to rain – what a day for a wedding. The gentleman proprietor (who lived with his life-partner) of Villa Christina (the lovely little house that had been rented for us) assured us that he had lit a candle the previous night and that the weather would clear up.

Having woken up about 7.30am to a rather quiet house, and having duly completed the morning rituals I found my way to the living room, put on a little bit of light music and decided to pick up my book of Sudoku. I thought it rather strange that a house full of 10 people (my self included) could be so quiet, especially on the morning of a wedding. The wedding was due to take place at around 15:15hrs and we were due to leave Villa Christina at 14:30hrs. I guess 7.30am was still rather early – and I guessed right.

5mins later, Udayi appeared in the living room wanting to know if I wanted a cup of Tea. It made me chuckle. Udayi and I shared a flat for two years while we were at university and he asked me the same question every morning to which he got the same polite answer “No Thankyou”. What you need to understand is that Udayi used to drink at least 4 or 5 cups of tea every day and when he got the munchies, he would open the fridge and nibble away at a raw green chilli. How or why he did this, I had no idea, but he seemed to enjoy it !

The rest of my housemates started to appear one by one and within 30mins of me having started my sudoku puzzle in the calm of the morning, the house was a buzz with all of us awake apart from Chaminda … and I had only got as far as getting two numbers in my puzzle.

Breakfast was at 8:30 (I think) and there wasn’t much of a variety of food. It had been a while since I had sat down with more than 3 people for breakfast, and it was made especially nice that some of the people were friends that I hadn’t seen in a while. The people round the table were :

• Thushara The lady of the moment; the bride to be; usually known as Thush.
  
  
• Uncle Lloyd - Father of the bride.
• Aunty Chithra - Mother of the bride.
• Chaminda - He was a friend of the family who I think I’ve met once before.
  
• Kanika - also known as Kan – uni mate, mother of two.
• Kugan - another uni mate – quiet, reserved but also very nice.
• Udayi -chillie eating, tea drinking mate; ex-partner in crime.
• Isabel - Thush’s ex housemate; Nurse; recently returned after spending quite a few weeks in SriLanka doing Nurse-type things.
• Harriet - Hairdresser from Guilford – quite petite and pretty – flown in specially for the occasion.
• Daksha – Beautician.
• Laxman – Beautician’s boyfriend.

After breakfast, we retired back to the house where everyone began to prepare themselves for the wedding. The house was busy with the 9 people fighting for the 3 showers and one ironing board which there was access to.

We didn’t need to be ready until 2.30pm and it was still only ten fifteen. Seeing all the commotion I decided to chill out and finish my sudoku. I had ironed my penguin suit the previous night so all I had to do was to have a shower, shave, answer the call of nature, and get dressed. By my estimation, this would have taken approx 22mins, but given that I had to be extra careful not to slaughter my face while shaving, half an hour was plenty of time.


By 1.30pm, the house was really buzzing – it felt like something out of big brother where the housemates had been set the task of getting ready before everyone else. I was still in the living room sudoku-ing, while being constantly reminded what the time was by everyone that passed through – it was better than the speaking clock !


Thinking about the events of the day ahead, it dawned on me that I probably wasn’t going to see any food between now and the champagne reception after the wedding. Would there even be any food at the champagne reception (wedding cake perhaps, but there’s only so much wedding cake one can eat) or would I have to wait until the sit down dinner at 7pm. The thought of not having anything to eat until the evening made go to the kitchen and make myself a sandwich. This gave me a bit of a dilemma. My mum told me that I should never eat before going swimming. I think she also said the same of having a shower. Would I take the risk of eating my sandwich before having a shower and suffering the consequences (what every they may be) or would I be better off leaving the sandwich and coming back for it after my shower (the risk being that my chilli eating ex-partner in crime might come across it while making a cup of tea and that would be the end of my carefully crafted sandwich). Experience suggests that mum was always right and at the risk of never seeing my sandwich again, I went upstairs for my shower, but not before wrapping it up and hiding it in the fridge so should anyone (being careful not to mention any names here) look in the fridge, it will not be that noticeable.

Having had my shower and shave I returned to the kitchen to be reunited with my sandwich – luckily for me, it was still there and my chilli eating, tea drinking friend hadn't noticed its presence. Sandwich eaten, penguin suit on and I was ready to go. We stepped out side and guess what – Glorious sunshine – the gay hotel owners candle lighting trick really did work !!!!

Getting to the Wedding ....

She was really going to do it - my friend Thush was getting married on Thursday last week and who am I to turn down an invitation to a good party, even if the party was out in Holland (or was in Belgium - I'm not sure which !)

The flight out to Amsterdam was not straightforward. I arrived at the airport in Vienna with what I believed was just a bit of hand luggage. I was informed by the pretty, young check in assistant that my bag was too heavy for hand luggage and that I would have to check it in. Having decided that I didn't really want to argue with this girl, I proceeded to rummage though my small bag trying to quickly think of what I wanted to take with me on the aeroplane and what I wanted to leave in my bag. In my wisdom, I decided that the following were useful items to keep with me
(a) Passport
(b) Flight Schedule (I was flying to Amsterdam via Zurich, so it made sense to have some written information about the details of my flights.
(c ) My laptop computer (There was no way I was going to let my laptop get checked in, primarily because I’ve seen how baggage handlers throw bags around and I didn’t want my laptop broken – it’s been less than two weeks since I broke the last one !)
(d) By Sudoku book (yes, I admit it – I’m an addict !)
(e) A pen (so that I could pass the time on the plane doing sudoku).


Having taken these items out of my luggage, checked in, and gleefully accepted my boarding pass from the pretty checkin girl, I slowly made my way to the depatures lounge, carefully balancing the items listed above. I decided to buy something typically “Austrian” for my friends I was to meet in Holland, and the one thing that sprang to mind was “Mozart Balls” (for those of you that don’t know what these are, I suggest you look it up http://www.allesoverballen.com/engels/MOZART.html

So now, with even more things to balance, I proceeded to board the aeroplane. It did occur to me that I could have purchased a small back pack to carry all these items with me, but I wasn’t going to part with anything more than 25 euros for a bag – and the cheapest one I could find (which I wouldn’t have minded being seen with) was well over 70 euros !

The flight arrived in Zurich about 10 mins late, which wasn’t really a problem as I had approx 40 mins before my connecting flight. Little did I realise that I needed to be at the gate 25mins before the flight which gave me approx 15min to go the transfers counter, pick up my boarding card and find my way to the gate. I got to the transfers desk and the pretty lady there (who wasn’t as pretty or as young as the previous check-in person, but still quite pleasant) looked at my passport and gave me my boarding card. Armed with my boarding card, I continued to walk towards the gate, when I decided that it might be wise to answer the call of nature. Having completed this now trivial task, which I’ve been trained to do all my life, I continued on my journey towards the gate.

Do you know that feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something or that something is missing but are not sure what that something is? Well, I started to get that feeling. I stopped to make sure I had everything I was supposed tohave: passport –check; flight schedule-check; laptop-check; sudoku book and pen-check; MozartBalls-check; newly collected boarding card – SHIT – where’s my boarding card ? I doublechecked, triple checked, quadruple checked, but I couldn’t find my boarding card. The last I remembered having it was when the pretty lady at the transfers desk gave it to me. Was I sure she gave it to me? Perhaps she didn’t. Could I have dropped it some where? Where have I been since the transfer desk? SHIT, how long do I have before my flight?

Figuring out that the best course of action not to retrace my steps but to go back to the transfers desk and throw myself at the mercy of the pretty lady there, I hot-footed it back there, making sure that I didn’t lose anything else on the way. The pretty lady asked me to check once more to make sure I didn’t have it on me. I assured her that I have already checked a number of times, but I checked again anyway (I seem to remember that one of Murphy’s Laws stated something like “ that “When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly” – it kinda made sense, and I was hoping that this principle might apply here). But alas, no boarding card. The pretty lady at the checking smiled at me, pushed a few buttons on her keyboard and out popped another boarding card with my name on it. She handed it over to me with the words “You’re lucky that this is an e-ticket - this would have cost you a lot of money if it wasn’t”. Armed with my new boarding card, I dashed through the security points, dodged as many fellow travellers as I could and ran to my gate, still being very careful not to drop anything, especially my boarding card. I made it to the gate about 15mins before the flight was due to depart, where there was a farily orderly queue of about 10people waiting to board the flight. I composed my self, stood in the back of the line and when I got to the front of the queue, handed my newly acquired boarding card to the girl at the gate. It’s true, I hadn’t been in possession of this card for more than 3 or 4 minutes, but in the moment just before I felt a slight sense of sorrow and a lager sense of relief. The rest of the joruney to Amserdam and the onward train journey to Eindhoven was uneventful, but I had had enough excitement for the day. The taxi ride from Eindhoven to Villa Christina (where I was staying) was a bit worrying as the taxi driver didn’t seem to know where he was going, but I am thankful that he got me to my destination in one piece – BRING ON THE WEDDING !!!!

My first Blog

First, Sanith had a blog for his trip round the world; then Tash had one when she moved to the island that is Singapore …. so what about me? Am I blog-worthy? Will people be interested in the life of Janith? Well… there’s only one way to find out

WELCOME TO MY FIRST BLOG