The days are beginning to get shorter here 3-4 minutes at a time. If your notion of an early riser is tied to sunrise, then you can start counting me as one within a few weeks. This also means that when I step out of bed, I will always be in time for the drama unfolding in the sky.
A sky like that…
with tea like this…
The house is finally stocked with 3 kinds of tea:
1. Twinings English Breakfast
2. Lipton Earl Grey
3. Lipton Gold
Lipton Gold is a blend we had never tried before coming to Amsterdam but it has wormed its way into our hearts since then. It’s from Sri Lanka (update: and Vietnam) and has a slightly spicy (clove-like) edge. Plus, it goes very nicely with Dutch Speculaas. The supporting cast of other teas (which has been put together after many false starts) keeps things from becoming monotonous.
So while things haven’t been better on the tea front, those azure skies are becoming harder and harder to come by. I’ve spent more time in the rain in the last 3 days than all my days in Amsterdam combined. I don’t like being cold and wet – especially in the socks. A sturdy umbrella – the sort that doubles up as a walking stick – had to be summoned from a dusty corner of our store room, where it had been generously left by the last tenant. It did well against the strong winds but there is nothing it can do to keep me from stepping into a puddle of water.
Still, there is a certain romance about rains which this sun scarred boy from the subtropics refuses to lose. And I don’t know of a more legitimate excuse for a cup of hot tea on coming home.
The seasons in Delhi live inside a neatly organized chest of drawers. Summers get three drawers. Winters one. Spring and monsoons get a small drawer each. In The Netherlands, the seasons’ chest of drawers is differently proportioned and not very neatly organized. It’s as if it belongs to a careless bachelor. A crumpled shirt turns up in the same drawer as the underpants and the vests turn up with the socks. The numbers on the weather forecast gadget for this week could have been randomly generated:
When we came here in April, spring was well on its way out. It’s almost July and the warm and long summers we were anticipating haven’t materialized.
On some days I’ve been lured outside without a jacket by the bright sun and I’ve regretted my folly on almost all of those days. The double-glazed, rubber-sealed windows keep all the warmth in, making it impossible to tell the weather outside. I now rely on the weather websites ( 15ºC < temp forecast < 20ºC = carry a fleece jacket ) and a look at the people cycling to work early in the morning to judge how I should dress.
The last two days here were very warm. Temperatures of 32ºC at 6:00 PM feel completely out of place in western Europe. There might be no powercuts here, but there are no fans in the houses either. That, and the proclivity of the architecture to preserve every single degree Celsius worth of warmth, make you realize why every religion imagines Hell to be a very hot place.
Yesterday a big thunderstorm in Amsterdam brought the temperatures back into their teens. Rain fell in opaque sheets and the lightning kept dancing like a whirling dervish. Against this frightening yet beautiful backdrop, ships continued to sail calmly in the IJ before our house:
May is long gone, but may this non-committal summer linger on.
The light here in the evening, especially after a thunderstorm, is very beautiful. Everything looks washed clean (as indeed things are). If photons could sing, we would hear Bach.
Here is how it looked last night:
And if B&W is more of your thing:
No, the buildings weren’t damanged by the storm. They’ve been like this since we moved into our house and the rate at which the work is progessing, they’ll probably stay like this till we are gone. While the view from our living room has been spared, the bedroom and the guest room windows don’t open into anything that might pass for a view. I shouldn’t be complaining here, I am sure our building must’ve ruined quite a few views!
It was probably our rainiest morning in Amsterdam. Usually on a Saturday like this, we would just sit by our window, sip hot tea, and pity the poor, soaking wretches scrambling to their respective destinations (or as is often the case here, walking their dogs). I am sure it was someone else’s turn to do the same today, because we were out to catch the morning Kung Fu Panda II show.
These new fangled Senz umbrellas are very popular here. Never before has something done so right looked so wrong.
After my umbrella had turned inside out twice, I was beginning to see their appeal. Then I looked at my wife to see how she was coping with it. Each time her umbrella would invert, she would sagely point it against the wind and have the wind fix what the wind broke. Both our brollies survived today, although it was the sort of day when a lot of tattered umbrellas turn up inside bins all over the city:
Since the train we usually take to Bijlmer ArenA wasn’t scheduled to arrive for the next 10 minutes, we decided to hop on to another train which would get us to a station from where we would have two more choices to the ArenA. Except that we were so busy chatting that we didn’t get down at that double-choice station. We got off at the next station, took a train back to the double-choice station, (finally) got down there and caught the train to Bijlmer ArenA.
This icon on all the doors on the metro, looked especially relevant today (and kept reminding me of that Amitabh Bachchan – Smita Patil song from Coolie).
Despite the rain and the mini-adventure with trains we were there 20 minutes early. The wife used the time at the automatic booking kiosks to find out how crowded the morning show was going to be. Turns out that in a hall with a capacity of 534, only 17 seats were going to be full.
Now that I am off all social networks I can (somewhat) control the flow of information into my life. After a long time I was going to a movie without reading up anything on it or hearing what other people in my circle had to say about it. It makes the movie doubly enjoyable. In the same spirit, I will not say anything about the movie and give the unsuspecting readers a chance to go to the movie with a blank slate. Ok I will say one thing but it’s hidden so you should want to see it no longer hidden.
Lord Shen (the peacock), reminded me a lot of Irfan Khan – or rather the Irfan Khan in 7 Khoon Maaf. Most likely it is a combination of those bulging eyes and long flowing robes.
p.s. Indulgence of the day: A couple of unruled pocket Moleskines for jotting down ideas on the move.