I saw this at Schipol airport on my way back from Amsterdam the other week.

Incidentally, Schipol is my favourite aiport anywhere. Is it poncy to have a favourite? Probably, but when you travel as much as I do, you really notice what makes a ‘good’ airport and what doesn’t.

Schipol has the easiest access from plane to train to town of any airport I have ever used. It is a joy, I wish they were all like this.

If you’re hand luggage only, you can be off the plane and on the train in about 10 minutes and in town fifteen minutes after that. Even if you get held up in a queue for passport control, it’s unlikely to be more than an hour after you land before you’re strolling past a canal and feeling marvellous.

But I digress. As always.

So, what took my eye about this sign is that you would never see it in India.

There’s no public kissing, though lots of public affection. And when someone goes to the airport, the whole family turns out. So the saying goodbye area is usually massive to accommodate all the aunties and cousins waiving someone off back to the US for a few years or a tearful fairwell to a beloved father going back to the gulf.

But in Amsterdam, it’s a breezier more casual affair. And I like it!

Not that anyone saw me off, I breeze straight past it and then had to breeze back to take this snap for your gentle reader.

See I’m always thinking of you. Even when my mind could have been on duty free. There’s selfless for you!

-:–:-

Part of our series of ‘Signage Sundays’. I’m slightly obsessed with signage in this country.

You might enjoy these other ridiculous signs:

Do not pick the lotus

Not so secure

India can be confusing

Or do check out the complete Signage Sunday page

If you’ve enjoyed this do please comment below. And of course share with your friends.

So, I’ve been promising this forever… well at least since last October last year, when I visited after my lovely yoga retreat in the Punjab.

The video is shot from the same hotel which bizarely had a tree situated in my room. Yes, that’s in my room. Not near it, not by it, but in it.

A strange place.

But as you can see, a place very handily located to the Dalai Lama’s home in exile. And sunrise was beautiful in the foothills of the Himalayas. I confess I’m not got much experience of mountains, and these look pretty big to me… but apparently nothing compared to the actual Himalayas. Nice.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the early morning birds doing there thing. And from an Indian perspective, it’s extra quiet, as it’s so early, cars, trucks, honking, beeping, dogs barking, shouts from traders… all not there. Which makes this early morning silence, all the sweeter.

There’s not even the drone of the chanting from the temple teachings that start later in the days that the Dalai Lama is doing his thing. They’re projected all over town on a public address system – very holy I’m sure. And probably deeply enlightening if you speak Tibetan: which sadly I don’t.

Anyway, I’ll be doing one of these little holiday videos each week now. I’ve got lots of them from the last year I’ve been itching to share and now they’re all stacked up and ready to go.

I think you’re going to enjoy them… we can stand on a rope bridge at treetop level in Costa Rica, check out London, see the waves in Sri Lanka and look at sculpture in India. All sorts of things.

So grab a coffee and settle in for a tiny mini holiday every Friday.

-:–:-

This is going to be part of the shiny new 1 minute holiday series – a new one every Friday.

But in the meantime, check out the videos that gave me the idea earlier in the year:

Video : A little bit of monsoon for you
Video : The crow chorus at dusk
Video : Sometimes life is simply good

Do let me know what you think of this new one and all the others as they unfold in the comments below.

Short and sweet for you this week.

But we’re returning to one of the aims of this blog – which unlike how it might appear, was not set up to whinge about my maid’s lack of dusting – but instead to champion the charm of Indian English over Standard English.

So the charming word for this week is ‘roam’.

In India it’s used much more frequently than I’m used to at home. Here it means no more than ‘to walk about’. Which technically, is of course, what it means in Standard English. But there it has an element of distance, or itinerancy and general vagueness.

In India, it has none of those shades of meaning and really does mean no more than walk about. So you get lovely formations like ‘I like to roam about the neighbourhood with my son’ – which conjures up for me images of adventures and pastures new, rather than perambulating a small child for the purposes of getting fresh air, which was the specific meaning.

And a lady at my last work told me once, ‘I like to roam about in a dress at home’.

Obviously she meant that she likes to wear a dress at home when she’s being relaxed (I was telling her I mostly wear yoga gear at home, as it’s so comfortable). But ‘roam about in a dress’ filled my mind with intrepid adventures ‘roaming’ far from home.

Yes, you’re right. Quite possibly I should get out more.

Incidentally, since I’ve been working from home – I may, quite possibly, have let myself ‘go’ a little. These days I don’t so much wear yoga gear for comfort, as get a bit annoyed when I have to wear ‘outside’ wear. You know, the sort of clothing that it might be respectable to be caught in by the neighbours – rather than fabulously comfy, stretchy clothes suitable for the gym.

There was one week when I was working spectacularly hard and hadn’t managed to leave the house very much (a terrible habit of mine), and when it came to laundry day… the entire wash was just five pairs of yoga pants, seven stretchy tops and… well that was it.

Hmmm, maybe I should roam about at home in a dress sometimes…

-:–:

If you’ve enjoyed this post you might well like these very tenuously linked other posts about English usage in India. Which is actually what this whole blog is supposed to be about (focus Liz, focus!). Read more here:

It’s not take out, it’s a parcel
Your friend is waiting?
Seatbelt is broken Madam, no problem

And as ever, do please comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Check this chap out!

I was in Amsterdam last weekend, visiting the newly refurbished Rijks Museum. Which was looking stunning after it’s 10 year refit.

But not quite as stunning as this feller.

Not only is he looking utterly resplendent in his outfit – complete with sash above his beer belly – but he is part of an active militia. So that’s a soldier boy, right there.

Look at the look on the bloke carrying the gun behind him. A look, he must have held for each one of the sittings for the painting. Marvellous.

And the socks – check out the flounces round the ankles and calves.

And for that matter, the serious chap, him with the gun and the look of disgust at Mr Flouncy: he’s wearing a nice t-bar sandal with a flounce and very fancy socks himself. Very military

And lets not forget that the Dutch were in the height of their naval ascendency at this point. It’s not long after they’d sailed into Chatham harbour in the UK and stolen the Kings’ ship. From his own harbour! And as a sign of their strength, they towed it home and… scrapped it.

That must have ticked off Charles a smidge.

And that kind of cockiness is probably what brings a man to wear this bold outfit to the battlefield. I say again, marvellous.

And as it is so marvellous, I hope you’ll forgive me for not bringing you a sign today – but instead a ‘sign’ of the times (oooh, did you see what I did there?!)

-:–:-

This is part of the Signage Sunday series where much that is sign based, and some that is not, but all that is foolish is brought before you for your delictation.

Check out some of these other sign based posts:

Signage Sunday Movie Madness : What is going on here?
Signage Sunday: Does that really say bowel?
Signage Sunday : Beware falling tiles

Or course, do stop by the Official Signage Sunday page and check out the whole collection.

Smirking Liz again, you’ll note.

But then I was rather pleased with the final result.

And I was at quite the most fabulous wedding I’ve been to in years. With all of my very favourite people there as well, so no wonder I look particularly pleased with myself.

Anyway, this is part 3 of a 3 part post.

As I mentioned in the last post, when you buy a saree, it comes with a special piece of material to be made up into a matching blouse.

If it’s a fancy saree, these will have embellishments on them that match the main decoration – perhaps something fancy round the neck line.

Or, as in the case of the one I bought, some sparkly stuff one the sleeves.

My plan was to have long sleeves as it would be winter in the UK. I’m not good at the cold at the best of times, let alone having lived in India for years. I get very, very chilly at home.

I don’t have a tailor in Bangalore – my fabulous chap is where I used to live in Kerala. Which means he’s known me for years, is cheap as chips, but not what you might call local. He’s south of Trivandrum, and Trivandrum is an hours’ flight from Bangalore…

But Goldy to the rescue and she fixed me up with someone she knows. We hatched a plan for long sleeves, a wide slash neck and a longer line to hide my stomach. It may be a saree, but I’m in my forties, white as the driven snow, and wobbly round the midriff. Frankly, no one wants to see that over dinner.

So over all, the whole look was very slightly reminiscent of Grace Kelly. Chic, lovely and rather fetching.

Well you know, if Grace Kelly had ever actually worn a saree blouse. Ahem.

The tailor assured us she was on the case. But somehow I had my doubts – it didn’t feel like she’d quite ‘got’ the concept. There was some tension over the length I wanted… it all didn’t feel quite right.

But either way, she was also going to stitch the saree so that the complicated folding bit at the front was permanently held in place and there would be no unfortunate unravelling at the wedding. Again, something we can all be thankful for.

Time marched on and as the time to come back to the UK got nearer, Goldy very kindly picked up the finished items and drove it out to my place. Really she is one of the kindest people I know – as it’s an annoying and horrible drive.

Anyway, she arrives and has me practise putting on the saree. Even stitched it took a bit of getting the hang of it all. There’s a lot of wrapping and tucking.

Incidentally, all that is managed by cunning use of the petticoat as an aid to tucking in and holding it all in place. Bet you didn’t know there was a petticoat in there as well, eh?

So, all is good in the tucking department. Now time for the blouse. Goldy takes it from the bag and we stare in horror at it.

It is not long, it is short.

The sleeves are reassuringly long, but the neck is not wide.

And although the sparkly stuff at the wrist looks good – it is joined by a totally unasked for silvery edging stitched through the long seams round the neckline.

As there is a slight sheen to the material, it looks like a slightly sparkly bin bag.

Grace Kelly it is not.

Dolly Parton it could quite easily be.

We are dumb struck. Or rather I wish I had been – as the utterly ungracious ‘that is fucking hideous’ falls from my mouth. This is particularly unfortunate as Goldy has gone to such incredible lengths to help me, to find the tailor, to ferry the thing out to me.

She wants me to be as fabulous at this wedding as I do – I am being rude. But really… it was hideous. Really, really hideous.

Poor Goldy looks crushed (she really is the most fabulously caring person I know). But ever upwards and I had been formulating a plan to wear a fantastic evening going out corset anyway. Very Marie Antoinette (well in my head anyway). And certainly something that is going to suck in middle aged wobbly stomach.

And that’s what I did, soon as I got home I rushed to this beautiful retro lingerie shop where I got this amazing silk corset with a long line and a high sided front so there was no risk of unwitting boobage escaping. Threw the saree over the top of it and frankly apart from a little farting about with the pallu slipping off my shoulder every thirty seconds (as there was nothing to pin it to in my corseted outfit), all was remarkably good.

I had some lovely compliments, I clashed with no-one else there, as I was indeed the only one in a saree. And as it was lovely (thank you Goldy!), no-one commented on it’s last season-ness.

Frankly the whole thing was a triumph. And it’s converted me to the form. I’m ready to try another. Though I confess I don’t really have that many events to wear really dressy sarees to. But I’m ready for the next invitation when it comes my way.

Next step, learn to wear heels with them – I was too much of a coward to risk 9 yards of silk and heels on the first trip out. I was concerned trip would be the active word…

I can utterly see why foreign ladies get hooked on them. It’s a beautiful form and when you’ve got some idea how to wear them, they look astounding.

-:–:-

This is part three of three
Read part one – Finally, I try my first saree
Read part two – No, I really would like it in black, please

-:–:-

If you’ve enjoyed this post why not read another ever so vaguely related one:

But Madam, aren’t you very lonely?
Things you don’t expect to find round the corner in India
If your maid’s so rubbish – why employ her?

Or share your thoughts on foreigners in local dress below…

And do hop over and read Goldy’s fabulous style blog I am the nice girl

This is part two of a three part post.

One of the best places to buy a saree in Bangalore is the marvellous Mysore Saree.

Two floors crammed with amazing materials – you can buy suiting material, beautiful scarves and dupattas and everything is unfurled and thrown on the floor in colourful arcs for you to inspect.

One of my first memories of being properly abroad at about 12 years old, is sitting in a Zainab Market in Karachi and watching my mother being smothered in hundreds of unfurled table cloths. If you’re not used to it there’s a strong urge to ask them not to, to slow down to let you look.

Apart from anything else, there’s all that folding up to do afterwards. but of course there are people who do that. professional folders at every store in fact.

Goldy, my style blogger accomplice, of course, being the consummate host, was concerned I’d get overwhelmed – as often happens to foreigners in places like this – you see them standing in glassy eyed horror as bolts and bolts of cloth are unrolled in front of them.

Not me, I’m used to it now and I like to have a proper look at the length of fabric as you have to with a saree.

Sarees are sold as the main length of fabric – traditionally 9 yards – which comes in a plainer bit that goes closest to your body as you wrap it round, and then gets fancier for the outer bit to very fancy for the bit that goes over your shoulder and then really fancy for the end, which is called the pallu.

Then you also get a matching ‘blouse piece’ that is the same fabric, or similar that you make up into a the blouse that you wear with the saree. All very matchy matchy. Or you can take your saree to a matching shop and get something there – but good quality sarees usually come with something already. Particularly in the case of fancy going out wear – they’ll have some of the embellishment for the sleeve and neck line.

So under Goldy’s direction we made a couple of good choices – a white one that was from the ‘designer’ section, and two black ones. Both glittery as glittery things, of course.

Next stage after you’ve narrowed it down a bit, is that a lady from the shop ‘drapes’ you so you can see how the saree and blouse might look.

Witness the picture above of me looking rather smug in my first ‘draping’.

And why pray tell am I looking quite that smug? Well what you can’t see in this picture is that as Goldy was taking the pic, the very small lady who had wrapped me and tucked the sleeve of the blouse piece together was utterly thrilled that I was trying it on. She kept indicating the fashion model in the picture of the style book and saying ‘madam, you are more beautiful’. Well no, but thanks for saying it.

And as I was being photographed, there this tiny lady stood, bobbling her head at me and pointing at the book and saying ‘yes, Madam’ meaning that she was disagreeing with me, and I was every bit as lovely as the drop dead gorgeous Indian super model in the glossy pics.

Hence the liz shaped smirk.

But, lets be honest – it does look pretty good, eh?

No sign of looking like laundry in that lot.

Thanks to Goldy, I felt confident to face a room full of gay men dressed to the nines and clutching champagne. Bring it on.

Next stop – getting the blouse made up…

-:–:-

This is part two of three part post
Read part one – Finally, I try my first saree
Part three – The saree goes live… – will be published on Friday

-:–:-

If you’ve enjoyed this post why not read another ever so vaguely related one:

Matchy matchy is a good thing
The object of much staring
Signage Sunday : No hair style

Or share your thoughts on foreigners in local dress below…

And do hop over and read Goldy’s fabulous style blog I am the nice girl

Ok, so I live in India, I don’t speak any of the languages.

I’ve never worn a saree.

And I’m likely to leave at the end of the year.

I’m never going to learn a language before November, so I’d best get on with wearing a saree.

Fortunately I had a very posh and very glamorous wedding to go to in the UK in March, so it seemed the perfect moment to get my ethnic on (and no, that does not mean going head to toe in Kelly green).

Oddly Indian people are always complimentary, even thrilled, by foreign ladies wearing local dress.

But for me, I tend to think most white girls look either completely ridiculous, or like a pile of laundry.

Personally I wanted to be neither laundry or ridiculous, so it’s fortunate that I have a client who’s a style blogger – the lovely Goldy – so I asked her to help me out in the tricky matter of a white girl in a saree.

The dress code for the evening do was very clear that it had not only was black tie, but only black, white or black and white. So deciding white would lead me closer to the ‘pile of laundry’ style than I wanted, a black saree it would be.

Last season black sarees were all the rage, but that’s passed now (fashion in sarees is a fast moving thing), and Goldy was naturally concerned I’d be judged by the high fashionistas at the wedding for wearing last season.

I assured her, that no-one at the wedding was up on this seasons saree look and I could probably wear something three years out of fashion and no-one’d notice.

However, buying something that was last season meant there wasn’t too much of a choice – and it’s all about choice in India. And colour. So it rather perplexed the people in the shop that we only wanted black and silver, nothing else.

Frankly they couldn’t quite believe it and kept bringing us black and purple, black and gold, black worked all over with little bits of red. Out and out blue. No, black and silver please.

But I’m getting rather ahead of myself here, I’ve yet to tell you about the joys of saree shopping.

But so I don’t overload you with saree facts, I’m going to break this post into three parts…

-:–:-

This is part one of three
Part two – No, I really would like it in black, please
Part three – will be published on Friday

-:–:-

If you’ve enjoyed this post why not read another ever so vaguely related one:

You’re not really Indian at all!
The object of much staring
The unexpected joys of the Ladies queue

Or share your thoughts on foreigners in local dress below…

And do hop over and read Goldy’s fabulous style blog I am the nice girl

From time to time, I like to return to the original theme of this blog – namely the joys of Indian English.

Yes I know I’ve wandered fairly far from that sometimes, but frankly; my blog, my rules.

Oh yeah, check me out, I can be a tough guy if needed. More importantly I will eventually be moving on from India and I’d like to think you gentle reader, will be just as interested in reading about the joys of Sri Lankan English, or wherever I land up next…

Anyway, there are certain things that still catch my ear now even after being in India for years.

One of the main ones is that there are no motorcycles here – only ‘two wheelers’. Which, lets face, it is an accurate description of the machine, but rather low tech in reach.

Incidentally, cars are occasionally described as ‘four wheelers’. Not as often it’s true, but there is certainly one security point outside a big business park that has a sign pointing two wheelers to one side and four wheelers to the other.

I shall try and curb my thoughts on the uselessness of the business park and hotel security. It’s an entirely pointless show of looking for things by utterly unskilled personnel. As you drive into many, if not all, fancy public places  three or four young men appear and stop the car, so that they wheel a mirror about to look under the car; they open the boot, they inspect the passenger foot-wells. Men who patently wouldn’t know a stick of Semtex apart from a pack of butter.

I can only assume that they’re looking for the Wiley Coyote bomb – the one with two sticks of dynamite, a curly wire and the helpful label ‘bomb’. Because they sure as hell don’t look capable of spotting an actual modern bomb.

And it’s not as though they don’t need security in major up-scale public places – there really are terrorist threats here. Look no further than the ever nervy relationship with Pakistan and the repeated hotel bombings of the last few years.

But no, security is not run at a close level by people trained to identify threats.

No, it’s a couple of listless boys and a mirror. It doesn’t exactly make you feel safe. Though to be fair – I didn’t exactly feel unsafe before hand. But watching limp security – particularly if like me, and most of the UK, you grew up seeing proper serious anti-IRA security in Britain during the troubles of the eighties… well suddenly your mind does start to wonder if you’re actually safe. After all, pretty much anyone could get through this level of security…

Ah, look at that, I seem to have come rather adrift from my usual happy Signage Sunday theme.  Sorry about that.

Lets leave it at this – motorcycles are called two wheelers.

And on this sign there’s a rather nice use of ‘avail’.

There seamless return to theme. Ahem

-:–:-

Part of our series of ‘Signage Sundays’. I’m slightly obsessed with signage in this country.

You might enjoy these other ridiculous signs:

Do not pick the lotus

Not so secure

India can be confusing

Or do check out the complete Signage Sunday page

If you’ve enjoyed this do please comment below. And of course share with your friends.

I’m calling it research.

No, really. Research.

Remember last year, I published a book of healthy cakes over on the Not Got Much In blog? We called it ‘Cake! 12 Healthy Cakes’ – as that seemed to cover the salient aspects of the book.

Well we’re doing another one this year – coming out in October it’s going to be called ‘Easy Cake!’ As you can tell naming things is a simple art form at Rethink Central. Anyway, the new book is all about cakes you can make very, er, easily – in fact our guiding principal for choosing which recipes to include, is how much mess the recipe will make.

I quite often think ‘I’ll bake’ then equally quickly follow that with, ‘but I can’t face the mess’. And as I am keener on cake than most people, I assume this is a common problem. So our new book is entirely defined by how much washing up any particular cake will make.

We’ve got cakes you can make in one bowl, cakes you can mix in the thing you bake it in and even cakes in a cup you can do in the microwave. I think it might be a stroke of brilliance. Never again will the hungry cake enthusiast be forced to abandon thoughts of baking due to fear of washing up.

Genius.

Anyway, as we sift through which cakes to work up for the book… well I’ve got to be up on the latest cake trends, now haven’t I?

And as the cupcake has finally well and truly arrived in Bangalore – well it would be churlish for me not to be out there testing the waters, or rather sampling the latest flavours.

Mango madness? Thank you kindly. Pistachio mint with a side of chocolate? Don’t mind if I do.

Book research is terribly difficult.

I should also point out that I had three pals with me on this recent sampling trip. So although it looks like I’m about to scarf down more than my fair share of cake – well I’m not.

For that, I took a box home. Entirely for research purposes of course.

Ahem.

-:–:-

If you’ve enjoyed this post, why not check out these other vaguely food related posts:

Signage Sunday: Does that really say bowel?
It’s not take out, it’s a parcel
Iconic architecture rendered in chocolate

And hop over to Not Got Much In the food blog and get your free version of Cake! We’re going to be putting it on Amazon very soon, and will be only giving away a cut down version on the food blog.

But if you go right now, you can still get the full 12 recipes for free for about another month. Just check it out and you can download it for free right now. Nice!

As I’ve already admitted, I don’t speak any of the local Indian languages.

Terrible, eh?

But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the utterly vicarious thrills of Bollywood movie posters.

You really don’t actually need to know the titles to have a reasonable guess at most action movies.Tough guy in a moustache, stand off between protagonists, mayhem in the background. So far, so like most Hollywood blockbusters. Except for the prevalence of moustaches of course.

That said though… what on earth is going on with this second one?

Patently it’s some kind of romance, but beyond that I really can’t fathom it.

I love the graphics style – the over the top images – the supersaturated colours – the mugging for the camera. Fabulous.

One of my French colleagues at my last work was besotted with the movie poster art form – in particular the many ways dead bodies and murderers with wild eyes were portrayed.

I’ll see if I can snap a few of those for you, dear reader, next time I’m out.

In the meantime, I leave you with a tough guy blowing up a bus of some sort and a dancing fool in love. Magic.

-:–:-

This post is part of our regular series, Signage Sundays, where I indulge my obsession for all things sign related (and, I confess, occasionally, a few things that aren’t sign related like this post – but it is mostly signs, and mostly Indian signs at that).

Have a look at some more great – or just plain strange – signs:

Signage Sunday: Does that really say bowel?

Signage Sunday : A taste of indian soil

Signage Sunday : This place for kids alone

Do please comment below, sign up for the newsletter, so you don’t miss anything sign related, or tell your friends all about it till they feel compelled to sign up to the newsletter. Ah go on