mummy, mummy, where's my mummy?

[Warning: caps ahead]

Boo, Mum has returned to Toronto and we are now grandparent-, mom-, and m.i.l.-less. Wah wah wah!

We had a marvellous time with Mum and really, what a treat it has been having first Emma come for such a long visit and then to have Mum come for nearly a month. We are very, very lucky to have the chance to hang out with them. If only they had more free time. Wait...Mum's retiring! How handy will that be? Apparently it should be SUPER handy. She's already agreed to come and babysit the first week of February when both Phet and I will be out of the country. If only it didn't get up to 44' celsius here, I'd kidnap her for good. Speaking of good, Mum got to fly home via the motherland. No, dummy, no Ireland...UKRAINE! How about them perogies? She got there before me OR Emma and we're the actual semi-eastern europeans. Apparently she was the only passenger in business class on the Kiev - Toronto leg and she was very well taken care of. Meanwhile we have to fly by stupid, rotten Frankfurt this winter. (I'm starting to think / hope that maybe since now I have such incredibly low expectations of Frankfurt that maybe it will seem slightly better in comparison. I just always remember being there when Ji was still little-ish and I think Seung Yi was a wee infant, and there weren't enough SEATS at the airport for all the passengers to sit down, and so we went to the horrible, awful, ugly, dirty McDonalds "play area" and I kind of deliriously propped my head up against a tube slide while Seung Yi lay in my arms and Ji got grimy from the never-wiped surfaces that sixty kids had already drooled on that morning. Oh, and on top of all that? Smoking is allowed in Frankfurt airport in "designated areas" which are totally UNseparated from the rest of the airport. Like, if you stand in one spot and smoke and blow smoke all over everyone else, there's NO PROBLEM. Frankfurt = Poopy).

While Mum was here we mostly took it easy. We made an effort to cook more at home, although Mum did just fine with food outside and even ate at the outdoor market, Dilli Haat. She had a crappy cold, very sore hands, and a headache on one occasion, but no double kidney infection so we scored the trip as a winner. Aside from the jaunt to Hyderabad, we stuck close to home. Mum made a couple of touristy forays with Ji, but our main outings were to go shopping. And we did great shopping! My closet is stuffed to the brim with christmas presents, yay. Mum went to Khan Market, Santushti, Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar, and many shops and handicraft fairs. We hit the great American Women's Association fair at our school, the German christmas fair, and also the International fair at the Ashok Hotel. The latter was definitely my favourite. I didn't actually buy any gift items - I was a little gifted out by that point, and the fair was really heavy on sparkly spangly stuff - but had the most awesome bowl of chicken pho there. I was walking around the stalls in the embassy-run section (opposite the spangly side) when I suddenly caught the scent of broth. It wafted over and I couldn't take a step in the direction I'd been headed, I had to go to the Vietnamese booth. Ooooooh, it was so good! It was real Hanoi-style pho, which I have never had outside of Hanoi. In Canada the pho is all southern style, and while southern style pho is certainly delicious, it just isn't the same, and the first pho I really came to love was Hanoi-style pho. It was so good that I actually got teary-eyed slurping it up. And it came with little side bowls of garlic marinated in vinegar. Ah, Hanoi pho.

Back when I was teaching in Hanoi I wrote textbooks for our tourism faculty and then I recorded the reading portions with Phet, Emma, and some friends. They still tease me to this day (yeah, I know, that's so unlike my family to tease someone about something for, like, more than ten years) about this one bit where I said, "I've had pho in Paris and pho in America and pho in Saigon, but nothing compares to pho in Hanoi."

It's getting late and Seung Yi is still yapping and yapping away to herself..."Dat funny! Oh my gosh! I'm bald. I'm Zuko. I fighting. Ha ha!" She is a very amusing child, that one. But she goes to sleep way to late.

In honour of Mum's safe departure, I'm putting up my top three favourite product packages here in Delhi. Two are from last year when Mum was in the hospital, and one is from my kitchen cupboard. I actually had one even favourite-er box, but it's gone now. It was also from the period of Mum's illness, and it was a big brown cardboard box on it and it was printed in huge block letters: LIFE SAVING DRUGS. I think Phet kept his stash in it for awhile. (Just kidding if you're reading this, Phet's boss!)

Exhibit 1: Woodward's Gripe Water
This just looks so very soothing and old fashioned. I love the paper packet around the bottle, and it really lets me know that there must be SOME alcohol in the product. I like the engraving-type picture of the happy baby on the top, and the fonts are all excellent. Plus, the gripe water smells amazing. Points off only for the snickety-snick sharp metal band near the cap that will cut your hands as soon as you try to open this up for a swig.

Exhibit 2:
"Solar" Active Dried Yeast packet. Nothing says homebaked cakes like a...OH MY GOD! Like a crazy Kung Fu actor in baker's drag from nineteen sixty eight! With some kind of massive graduation-style bling around his neck and a sparkly look in his eyes! That is gonna be some angel food cake with lemon chiffon icing, baby. "Best for baking"? You bet!

Exhibit 3:
And now, my all time favourite (after the LIFE SAVING DRUGS, of course), the Sat-Isabgol psyllium husk. Check this out. No seriously: check it out. In detail. Not only does it have a truly great colour scheme (honestly), it has the best layout of any package I've ever seen. It's called "telephone brand" psyllium, and check out the telephone on the front. Woah! It's like, I've had daily BMs since great-great-Grampaw George stepped in for tea after placing an order for his first Model-T. And the, the factory in the back with smoke a-sweeping from its chimneys. How many companies do you know that put their factory on the packaging? Not many I bet.

But really, the piece de resistance is not even a graphic at all. It's just two simple words. And here they are (this punctuation mark is for you, Adam):

Hm...I'm here, at the shop, at the pharmacy looking for something to help regulate my bowels, and I'm wondering what to buy...I look at the Metamucil...nah, too dull...I think about getting some of those new fangled, fancily-named laxative products, but they're not what I need...what I really want is...yes...this is it, here it is....PSYLLIUM HUSK! Score!

I think that all foods should come with an exclamation mark. It would make opening the fridge or cupboard so much more exciting. Enthusiasm previously set aside only for describing the actions of really awesome superheroes and supervillains now available for use on your groceries. Dairy aisle...YOGURT! MILK! CHEESE! Holy crap, I LOVE buying food. Down at the bulk barn...CORNSYRUP! BAKING POWDER! FLOUR! No kidding? Really? Flour? Yes, FLOUR!

Wicked.

[Delhi-10-December-2008]