Sweden here I come!!

Hej!
Summer holiday and time to go to Sweden. Everybody leaving India as soon as possible because of the monsoon. We will live on an island called Malmön outside Örnsköldsvik ( 600 km north of Stockholm) . It's not modern at all but we love it. We'll have a sauna every second day and swim in the ocean. I am looking forward to meet relatives and friends, have some fresh air and drink water from the tap or the well. No Internet! I will also do some SAILING!!!!!!!!!! I love to sail!

Navigare necesse est , vivero non est necesse! To sail is necessary, to live is not necessary!

Happy girls talking to husband/dad left behind in England telling him that we won the sailing race!!

My wonderful parents and my son!

Our beautiful summer island Malmön 5 meter and you're in the ocean! Wonderful!

I always try to sail to this gorgeous island Grisslan with pittoresque little houses along the small harbour. My sister got married in the white chapel!

Thank you all of you that followed my blog and I wish you a nice summer!

I continue my blog in August.

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Luck for the new building!

Great and exciting! Our first religious Indian adventure!
The start of the building of a new factory at my husband's work.

A priest is singing,praying, giving red dots in the forehead, putting a band around the arm and giving flowers and fruits. Everything to bless the start of the new building.

Indian sweets!! Taste very strange and very sweet!!

Bread the coconut into halves and the luck is completed!

Scary experience and markets

Namaste!

I changed into a shirt being on the toilet and all of sudden I felt something on my back. I thought I had a paper or something in my shirt. But then IT started to crawl all over my back. I screamed out very loud and quickly removed my shirt and there on the floor...........................................................................
was a cockroach. It was huge!!! I kept on screaming for another minute and then running out from the toilet. My housekeeper took IT away and I am sure she was laughing behind my back. It's fun to make someone happy isn't it?

Then I went to Sarajini Nagar Market with my cook to buy an oven. ( Some weeks ago I bought cleaning stuff for my oven and when I came home I didn't find any oven!!).
This is a great market to stroll around, here one can find export surplus/reject clothing for the whole family at bargaining prices. One you have visited here a few times, you will get the hang of it. Whether you love or hate this place, it does have everything, and well worth the effort. I bought four under bed sheets eight pillow cases and two pillows for 74 pounds or 840 SEK. These sheets and pillows were the best quality and of course the most expensive. When I was paying with my card he asked for my PIN code. He just laughed when I told him to turn away! Indian people are very friendly and seldom thinks about crimes. It's amazing being in this big capital and finding it so innocent.

Sale t-shirt 7 pounds or 8 kronor each!

Garbage ubiquitous! It's awful! No environmental thinking at all! Plastic bags in every shop. England started to get people to bring their own bags to shopping mall by giving them extra points on their shopping card in Sainsbury. I wonder how they will deal with this in India. In Sweden we bring our own bag most of the time.

My favourite market Sarojini Nagar Market. It takes a lot of time to buy things as you don't find everything in one market.

I always smile seeing these men running along upon the desk to be able to reach things on the shelves.

Last week when I tried to buy shoes one men was on the attic throwing down shoes from a small hole and one man was putting the shoes on my foot.
In another shoe shop an Korean lady was helping me but the manager came and told us:

"No business now it's prayer time."

India is different and I love it!

My India

Namaste!

I have become an addict of Indian vegetarian food, but it will of course be best when eaten here. I like eating dal and rice. Dal is a preparation of pulses (dried lentils, peas or beans) which have been stripped of their outer hulls and split.It is regularly eaten with rice and vegetables in Southern India, and with both rice and roti (wheat-based flat bread) throughout Northern India & Pakistan. Dal is a ready source of proteins for a balanced diet containing little or no meat.

Our cook is very hard to understand as he is speaking with a strong south Indian accent. Now when I got used to him speaking I more often know what we are having for dinner.

First time I heard the noice of the steam cooker I thought something was going wrong in the kitchen. A steam cooker is a kitchen appliance used to prepare various foods in a sealed vessel that limits the escape of air or liquids below a preset pressure.
Due to their health aspect (cooking without any oil), food steamers are used extensively in health-diets as Cuisine minceur, the rawfood diet, Okinawa diet, macrobiotic-diet and the CRON-diet.
Food steamers release less heat to the kitchen environment, therefore helping keep the kitchen cool during hot summers. It's 43C degrees!!!



Religion and spirituality plays an important life in the live of Indians. It's nice to see how they are so secure in their beliefs. Pictures and small sculptures of their gods in the cars and all over. One day in a shop the manager told me to get a Ganesha for my house.Ganesha is a god of luck and of "opening the way." I didn't even buy anything at the shop and still he cared for me - a total stranger for him.

Indians are extremely friendly and helpful. The namaste is the most wonderful gesture. Namaste (Sanskrit: नमस्ते,) is a common spoken greeting or salutation used in India and Nepal. It has multi-religious or else common usage where it may simply mean "I bow to you." Hands are held together at the palms in front of the heart or brow chakra. Head is bowed slightly downward. Eyes are sometimes closed. Namaste should be used only for people your equal or above. By other words I don't greet my servants this way.

Always you see smiling faces! There is a gesture that me and my husband caught ourselves using very often - waving our heads sideways (the universal "no") while agreeing on something. It looks quite sweet especially when my husband doing it!

Not everything is good with India.
I dislike how garbage is handle here.
I would like to see more homes and free medication for aged and poor.
And the most important thing: Try to get begging children away from the streets and into school. Education is such an important way to deal with poverty.

My son likes Indian food and most of all the wonderful and tasty fruits!!!

Hospital appointment and trees!

Namaste!

The temperature dropped. It's only 39C today and very windy! Still it is very dry some of the trees looking gorgeous and it is mango season!Great time!

Mango tree! We love mango. It's lots of different mangoes here. Our cock often gives us a bowl of mangoes for dessert!

I tried to ask my driver what kind of tree it was but he had no clue at all!

These flowers smell fabulous! They look very similar to the purple ones I had in my back garden om Middle Bourne Lane.

Many people from the Swedish group are moving from New Delhi and guess what they are doing now. They go to the doctor because they know how difficult it is to see a doctor in Sweden.

As Carl is having problem with abdominal pain since food poisoning in England and yet had to have another endoscopy I called a doctor at Max Health Care. He (the doctor)answered immediately and I got an appointment three days later. We did the capsule endoscopy on Friday. On Saturday evening 19.30 I called the doctor on his mobile to get the results!!!
Sometimes the service is very good in India!!!!!!



As you see in the picture the room was filled with people. It was the first time they had a capsule endoscopy in this way at the hospital. Carl was going to swallow a capsule with a camera detached on it. He had a monitor for eight hours following the small intestine. When we came back to the hospital one doctor wanted to take a picture of Carl and himself!! It felt like Carl was kind of a movie star.

In England you could easily get an appointment with you GP doctor and they referred you to a specialist if necessarily. All medicine were free for children under 15 years old.
It didn't cost you anything to go to your GP!!

Great to know many are reading my blog!! Please feel free to give some comments on anything! What would you like me to write about? Is anything missing? I am taking an English course in August so I will improve even more.
Love to all my English friends!
Kramar till mina svenska vänner!
"Moj" till båda mina finlands svenska vänner!

I just had to tell you I went to a Swedish lady that I had never seen before. She opened the door and hugged me! It felt a little bit odd and I was thinking:
"I had been in England for a long time!"

Home yet abroad

Namaste!
"Doic ac foris" meaning "Home yet abroad".
Vasant Vihar in New Delhi has been our home now for several weeks and yes it feel like it is home. But home is also Sweden. Carl and I are flying to Sweden end of May and we will stay for two months. It will be nice to see family and friends. I also looking forward to some fresh air and sailing. Carl is looking forward to take a sauna and have BBQ at our summerhouse located on an island not far from Örnsköldsvik (600 km from the capital of Sweden Stockholm). We are also excited to attend two weddings this summer!!

Lot's of people lives like this in India

I have been very busy two weeks trying to sort out problems with the telephone and electrical power cuts during night time. Lot's of time when you are trying to solve problems in India they always telling you:

No problem "mam"!

We are now registered in India . After three attempts we succeeded. It's always a paper missing or you have three copies and you 'll need four copies. I have never seen so many frustrated people as I saw in FRRO /registration bureau) last week. This is some of the bad things with living in India. Things that you wouldn't suspect will be difficult could be really hard to sort our here. Our friends have tried to prepare us and that is good!

Afraid or not afraid

Namaste!

Yesterday I read about terrorist threat in New Delhi:
There are increased indications that terrorists are planning imminent attacks in New Delhi,” the statement said. “Terrorists have targeted places in the past where U.S. citizens or Westerners are known to congregate or visit,” it said, warning that markets can be “especially attractive targets for terrorist groups.”

I have to admit that it really feels scary to read about this! After talking with my landlord's wife I feel a little bit better. You can avoid the markets when it's very crowded on weekends, late evenings and on big holidays like Divali. Life has to go on. But you don't need to push your luck if it's not necessarily.

After the bombs in the metro in London I was very impressed by the people that said that they were not going to be scared of the terrorists. They are not going to win. We continue to live our life's as before.

Four weeks left until me and my son leaving for Sweden. I am looking forward to my "basic" life on an island far up north in Sweden in a small town called Örnsköldsvik. We don't have any warm water and taking a sauna every second day and swim in the ocean. The air is clean and I can drink from the tap ( or the well)It will be a big contrast New Delhi and Örnsköldsvik. Both cities have their advantages and their disadvantages. I like them both!



Many women are working along the road making pavements. They carry a lot of heavy bricks on their head using a round cloth on their head.


Men also works in Delhi.....