Adventures in India

Yesterday we went shopping again. It seems like this is our new pastime. Conceptually, I understood that we would have to buy everything except clothes once we got here, but it's only now sinking in just how much stuff that amounts to.

Since Jason had beds here when we arrived, my first priority is the kitchen. In my previous post, I mentioned what our kitchen looked like upon move-in. Empty. Very, very empty. A few days before, we picked up a stove top, and a set of pots and pans, but we were still missing important things like mixing bowls, mixing spoons, and the ever-important food required to make a meal.

So yesterday we bought a dish drying rack (that's right Americans, dishwashers are rare here), a super large toaster oven since they don't have a lot of actual ovens here, a few microwave and refrigerator-safe containers, a vegetable peeler, mixing bowls, spatulas, and some Ragu spaghetti sauce (we had to buy this at the "foreign" store).

So my kitchen looks almost like an actual kitchen now.

About the shopping experience....shopping in Bangalore is quite a bit different than in the States. At home, if I needed lots of stuff, my first choice would have been a superstore such as Target or Wal-Mart. Those types of stores don't really exist over here - at least in terms of the vast array of items to choose from.

Here, it's much more likely you go to an appliance store for appliances, then a home furnishing store for pots and pans, then a grocery store for food. Which of course makes the excursion quite a bit longer. Oh, and I bet you've never seen one of these at Reasors -

Not sure whether the gift vouchers are for the frisking or not. Security is very strict here, and it's completely normal to walk through metal detectors for every store. Also, my purse has been searched so many times I finally cleaned it out, just so I would stop holding up the lines. In some of the mall-like buildings, you are not allowed to bring purchases from other stores into another. Instead, they have a "baggage check" where you leave your things and are given a card with a number on it to retrieve it later.

And everything comes in odd containers. Here's what our milk looks like:

And as far as we can tell, the milk is not homogenized, and it tastes quite a bit like it came straight from the cow. Since I generally bought 2% in the States, this is a little much for me, so we've started buying the "Slim" version shown above, which is still too rich for 2%, but at least it tastes like whole milk.

Another thing that has caught my eye lately....there is no such thing as being PC (politically correct) in advertisements. I noticed that almost every television commercial for home cleaners, laundry detergent, food, etc has a woman handing this "new improved" product off to a maid to use. They don't even pretend to do their own cleaning. And advertisements like the below are everywhere.