Scotland it is....

Went to the market side yesterday, I guess I shouldn’t say market coz that conjures up a very different image than what is reality. By market, people here tend to refer to streets lined up with stores of not vegetables, fish or any such but of Marks and Spencers, Debenhams, Boots, BHS and the like. To the one side of the street were stores that ran on and on, however, what interested me more was the opposite side of the street. There at the other side were old structures built atop a small hill and try as I might I was unable to capture the entire beauty or the length in my camera.

It was lovely to say the very least. Again I wanted to desperately just go in and see but then everything closes down by 6 pm here and it was already 5:30pm. We went to a bus office to get monthly passes done, while Shaiwal was busy with the mundane I started picking up from the hoards of leaflets available on where to go and what to see. People here are talking about the easter break that’s coming up (April 2nd to 5th) and I gather that they have been planning trips from just after Christmas. Translated that means that if Shaiwal and I were to do sightseeing during those days then we should restrict it to the local ones since accommodations are all out elsewhere. :)

Before I digress further, remember I said shops all close off by 6pm, well slight correction, not all, the ones run by Asians remain open till 9pm and more often than not, these shops are small supermarkets with eatables, mobile recharge coupons, magazines, etc. Asians in origin but perhaps more UK since they talk and look as if they were born and bought up here. I guess despite being bred here, we Asians still carry the thirst for money, maybe to send back home or maybe in reminiscence of the underprivileged deprived days that we have seen.

While I see foreigners looking at me on the street as I pass and nodding to say hi or giving me a slight smile, I notice that Asians tend to look down, up sideways, i.e, anywhere else other than at me or any other unknown Asian so that they can avoid greeting or acknowledging. I wonder if this phenomenon is just Asian to Asian or is it Asian to Europe as well.

Yesterday a middle aged Asian came to clean the room and he wasn’t able to understand English so I tried in Hindi and he was well relieved. Seems he thought I was a Sri Lankan and normally Sri Lankan’s do not know Hindi and he was scared if I would complain. Well he is from Bangladesh, been here for 3 years now, came here to make enough money to wed his daughter off and set his son up in business. Unfortunately hasn’t been able to learn English so far. Gets by doing all cleaning jobs but gets scared when he has to take interviews for visa and the like.

Yesterday we also did some house hunting, saw two flats, one was outright rejected and the other is under consideration. Have circled on 4 more flats and if we get appointments to see them today then we are done with our house hunting exercise hopefully and move on to house finalization a.k.a house moving in exercise. :) All flats here seem to be handed over to property dealers and people like us call up and fix appointments to see the property with these dealers. At the appointed time one of their salesman comes up opens the place up, gives us a tour, hands over some forms and instructs us to get in touch with the office for further procedures!!! What a cool job is that. You wear a suit, drive to different places, take 10 minutes time to show a place and then you are done. I guess it might not pay too well, but hey no stress and total division of labour. This guy doesn’t do any smooth sales talk, his job is to just show you the place which he does!!!

Kinda liked that process, not like a business analyst who doubles up as a project leader, project manager, test lead, testing manager, onsite coordinator……..lets face it almost everything other than the sweeper….well fear not the days not far for that to happen!