Late Night Tesco

H and I had a really fun midnight trip to Tesco the other night for beer, sponges and disinfectant.  We really enjoyed people watching to see who else shops at that hour on a Monday night.  Thankfully we had a hot pizza to eat the car before going into the store; otherwise we might have missed the dozen or so loitering ‘almost 18s’ who were waiting for the 18 year old friends to exit the store with booze / already drinking with their 18 year old friends in the parking lot.  Awesome way to make me feel young again.

We also enjoyed the older man checking out behind us with a shopping cart overflowing with potato chips and ramen.  Seriously?  I think we can all guess what he had been doing earlier that evening.  Then there were the people picking up soda and chocolate, probably on the way to their own night shifts, not so entertaining.  Lastly, we had the twenty something year old couple who appeared to actually be doing their weekly shopping trip.  That was fairly depressing; I almost went over to them to remind them that Tesco does deliver.  H may or may not have accidentally thwacked one of them with our shopping basket though so I felt it was better to keep my distance.

All I can say is that Tesco > Carrefour for late night grocery shopping.  Carrefour was always out of milk late at night but Tesco was fully stocked.  The real trump card though is that unlike Qatar’s Carrefour, Tesco sells all kinds of alcohol.  Now if only the beer was refrigerated, late night grocery shopping would have the potential to be the perfect date night.

Expat Dictionary 101

One woman recently told me that she loved Anonymous Third World Country because for the first time, she “truly felt like an expat.”

Definition: she had a driver, cook, maid and nanny.

I’ve never had such an experience.   For me, feeling like an expat has been more a feeling of displacement, not belonging, and difficulty.  Don’t get me wrong, I love living overseas and there are thousands of wonderful things about this kind of life, but it is often difficult and unglamorous.

With the excitement of a transfer and getting to live in and explore a new country and its environs comes a lot of stress, hard work and waiting.  Every new visa means more than getting to be a tourist in a new country.  It means among a hundred other things:

• Quitting a job
• Selling a car
• Disposing of food / alcohol / cleaning products
• Saying goodbye to friends
• Closing a bank account
• Cancelling a lease, internet, utilities, insurance
• Filing a second set of local country taxes
• Packing a container to ship and two suitcases of belongings that you can’t live without for 1-3 months
• Updating an itemized inventory for container insurance
• Finding a new place to live
• Finding a new job
• Finding new friends
• Buying a car
• Getting a new driver’s license
• Setting up a new bank account
• Getting insurance
• Setting up internet and utilities
• Waiting 1-3 months for your belongings to come
• Finding your way around and locating grocery stores, dry cleaners, doctors, restaurants, hair salons etc.
• Living out of suitcases

My particular favorite circular reference is that you can’t set up a local bank account without an address and you don’t get an address until you can pay your deposit and first month’s rent.  Wiring money from another country takes 2-10 business days and when you have 30 days to get yourself into ‘permanent accommodation,’ it means you have a maximum of 18 days to find where you want to live, in case the wire transfer actually takes 10 business days.

H and I just moved into our new ‘permanent’ home after hours at the leasing office trying to locate our wire transfer.  And we were the lucky ones; the other family at the office had the same problem and went ‘home’ to their hotel room for another night, without the keys to their new rental ‘home.’  Unfortunately, H and I showed up at our new home to find that it hadn’t been cleaned, as specified in the lease, nor were there any linens for the bed or towels in the bathroom, also as specified in the lease. 

So H and I had an amazing night sleeping on the couch in the unclean apartment because a used rental couch without sheets seemed a lot more sanitary than a used rental mattress without sheets.   This was after a late night trip to the (thankfully) 24 hour Tesco to get beer and disinfectant to make one bathroom usable enough for the evening.  We either didn’t get enough disinfectant or beer though because we started to clean one toilet and stopped when we found dried vomit/excrement on the outside of the toilet bowl; needless to say I’m posting this from the closest coffee shop with internet and a bathroom.  Sadly I haven’t chosen a new gym yet or I could also be writing this freshly showered.  I know, I know, this blog should really be renamed, The Glamorous Life of Anonymous Expat. 

Guess I Should Have Celebrated Mum's Day

Hold your horses, there is not a Bitty Anonymous Expat on its way.  There's just a very nice Tesco check-out woman who thinks I have kids.  And she might think that because when she asked, I told her I did.  You see, I might have gone a little bit overboard playing supermarket sweep this morning.  I went to the register with such an overflowing cart that everything wouldn't fit back in it once it was bagged; the cashier had to call for a second cart.  So when the cashier asked if I had kids [for school vouchers], I said yes.  I really didn't want her to think that I was that crazy woman who buys a cart and a half of groceries for two people. 

What can I say?  I don't like empty cupboards and there are oh so many delicious foods to sample here.  I promise not to go back to Tesco for at least two weeks.  Maybe.

Great Success!!!

For the second time today, I shrieked inadvertently.  Unlike in Perth, the screaming was not a result of the squatting roaches in my apartment.  The first shout was in the wee hours of the morning when my very hot shower turned very cold, in the already ice cold bathroom, in the already frosty new location.  Sorry H, I know your shower was even colder, but I disagree that it was a 'good way to acclimatize to our new home.'

Perhaps the universe knew that after starting my day off like that, I was in need of some extra warmth.  I was starting to believe it didn't exist, but I finally found the very elusive Pimm's Winter No. 3, accidentally in the last of about a dozen stores I went into today.  Cue second round of shrieking:

I might have confused the checkout boy when I refused a bag and stuffed the bottle excitedly into my purse.  Or maybe he was confused that I was shopping laden down with about 30 pounds of groceries.  Little did he know that I had a half hour walk ahead of me...or that it was totally worth it for the bags full of baby carrots, biscuits that are more chocolate than biscuit, buttries, Fanta Zero, black beans, Savanna Dry, Cookie Crisp, Muller yogurt, chocolate covered Hobnobs, onion rolls with holes and Ben and Jerry's frozen yogurt.  Who needs Whole Foods when there is Marks & Spencer and Tesco? 

Now if only H would stop working long enough to share some Pimm's No. 3 with me.  Perhaps I should try a little first just to make sure he'll like it.  Continuous iPhone photos of the ever decreasing bottle might encourage H to leave the office a little earlier so he can have some warm Pimm's + apple juice deliciousness.  It's a win, win situation.