End of the Week

After my previously waffley email I thought I'd briefly let you know what we've been doing this week since Tuesday.

On Tuesday we bought quite a lot of our home furnishings for our flat, which has made it look a lot more homely. Although still no wardrobe (ARRR!)

It was the intention that Andy would go on a boys road trip to the bamboo plantation / factory site in the north of the country. However, the inevitable Delhi Belly finally struck at completely the wrong time, so at the last minute Andy had to pull out (much to his disappointment).

On Wednesday Andy stayed at home waiting for the internet people to come and nursing himselft back to health. I went into the office for the day. We were a bit later into the office as we had to drop our furniture off and Andy.

At lunchtime we had a team lunch, which they do every week and which was really nice authentic Bangladeshi food. Apparently the way to eat Bangaldeshi food is to have loads of rice on your plate and then you put a bit of the first curry dish on your plate. You eat that with some of the rice then move on to the next dish, which you eat with a bit more of the rice. There was then a final dish, whcih was more like a sauce and you use that to eat the rest of your rice (all eaten with fingers of course). There was also a plate of chillis and limes. Apparently you're supposed to squeeze the lime over your food, eat half the chilli and dab the remaining half in the rice to flavour it. I decided to save that for another week, despite the best efforts of the boys in the office.

In the afternoon one of the lovely people in the office took me to try and buy AC. We went to 3 shops, which was an exciting experience. The process of deciding on a unit and buying it took ages and I was definately a tourist attraction in the shop (being white and female). The manager of the shop is also an English teacher, so speaks pretty good English, which was nice. He told me that he was a Freedom fighter in the 1971 war (the Bangladeshi people are very proud of their origin and success in the war) and gave me a cup of tea, which was lovely. All the staff were very attentive and were keen to make sure that I always had a seat.

On Thursday we caught a CNG into the office with Jo (who lives round the corner). The traffic was really bad, although I'm told that's normal. We spent the morning in the office. I was mainly doing reading and meeting with the boss to plan the next few weeks. Andy was very excited to be let loose on some bamboo and tools and get involved in making candle holders with the workshop lads and his design colleague.

In the afternoon we went back to our flat to have our bedroom measured to see which AC unit would be best. We then went to the AC shop to buy it, which again was quite a long process. Having bought the Unit we went back to the flat and one of the shop staff took the unit on the back of a bike back for us and then loaded it on to the lift. The strange thing here is that they seem to employ a lot of people to do a job that 1 or 2 people could do but it's great to be able to give jobs to people and I think it comes down to them all being so attentive and wanting to work and help.

After that we went to buy a microwave and toaster and then we were left to our own devices. So, we went to the nearby market, which was very exciting. Full of fruit, veg, sacks of rice, spices, haberdashery, fish. The smell in places was revolting but the atmosphere was amazing and once again we were the star tourist attraction. We tried our first bit of bartering with relatively little success. Each place we went into seemed unwilling to barter but we were happy that we got a pretty good deal (although probably not as good as a local would have got).

After our adventure and having taken all our stuff back to the flat on a rickshaw we rewarded ourselves with a drink at a local cafe place. This place is wonderful; it's on the 4th floor of a building and is a women's restaurant but men are allowed in if accompanied by a woman. You sit on the floor on cushions and eat / drink at a low table. So, we sampled some lassi which was really refreshing and very cheap. Definately somewhere we'll visit again.

After that we returned home and ate our lovely Bangla meal that had been cooked by our domestic helper (yummm!)