Nov

25

Thomy Tubes

Filed Under Business & Finance, Consumer Concerns, Mailbox | Leave a Comment

I’m sometimes amazed at what we see in our Swiss mailbox. Sure, we do get our dose of regular bills and all that. But there are times when we do receive pleasant surprises, like free products left by marketing representatives of food companies.

This week, it was a tiny box of gratis Thomy condiment tubes. Inside were three 35-gram tubes of Thomy mayonnaise products — the Thomy mayonnaise with olive oil (ideal for salads), the Thomy tuna mayonnaise (ideal for sandwiches), and the Thomy tartar sauce (ideal for fondues, salads, dips, and sandwiches).

I think this is an effective way to advertise new products to the consumers. It might be costly (i.e.. the production, packaging and delivery costs), but the return on investment would be great.

I can’t wait to try these new Thomy mayonnaise flavors — we always buy a bottle of Thomy regular mayonnaise for our salad and sandwich needs — and I have a feeling that I would like them all.

Nov

20

Burglary Case

Filed Under Home Management | Comments Off

Last Saturday, when my husband was returning the laundry key to the lady caretaker of our apartment building, he was informed that just recently, someone broke into the apartment of one of our neighbors whose balcony, like ours, is on the mezzanine floor — meaning, it’s very accessible because it’s located just a few feet from the ground.

He was then advised to take the necessary precautions like, say, purchasing a house light that would turn on every now and then (I’m not sure if that’s the one with the timer, if there is such a thing).

Apparently, the burglar/s entered the apartment of the victim — an elderly Swiss lady who lives alone — through the balcony door at a time when she was away. Much of her cash and jewelry were stolen.

I never thought that something like this could happen in safe Switzerland, and in our area even (but of course it can, but not as often as it occurs in the Philippines, though). Now that it has, I don’t feel that safe anymore….

Nov

20

Just Eggs

Filed Under Food & Drinks, Humor, Language, Travel/People & Places | 16 Comments


All we wanted was a dozen eggs. Nothing more, nothing less.

After watching the Hollywood sci-fi The Island, dubbed in Russian with Ukrainian subtitles (up until now, I don’t know the storyline of this film) at a posh cinema in Kiev, we felt like buying eggs at the 24-hour corner store. Eggs I could fry or boil for breakfast in our dusty, rented apartment in the capital city of Ukraine (paying lots of moolah to be able to sleep with dust mites is a historical event that should never be repeated in the future).

And so, from the Politekhnichnyi Instytut subway station, we headed straight to the corner store situated near our apartment building. Once inside, we approached the lady in her fifties, who was manning the store.

“We would like to buy a dozen eggs, please,” I told the shopkeeper with a smile.

She couldn’t understand what I was saying. So my husband said in simple, slow English, “Eggs. Do you have eggs here?” Clearly, it was not his intention, but he made it sound like he was talking to an idiot.

No clear response. Just the look of confusion.

To ease up the process of communication, the shopkeeper then started pointing at various goods stacked on the shelves at random. Pointing at the bread section, she waited for our response. We shook our heads and replied, “Nyet” (Russian for “no”). Then she pointed at the milk cartons, to which we replied, “Nyet.” Looking hopeful, she pointed at the meat products. “Nyet,” we chorused. A lot of “Nyets” were uttered that night.

I suggested to my husband to speak to the lady in German, or even in French. Just to give it a try and see if it would work.

He did. But we were greeted with the same clueless facial expression.

We then tried the unthinkable: we flapped both our arms wildly as if they were chicken wings and we matched it with a loud chicken sound (I was inwardly impressed with the power of our voice talents combined). I capped our “performance” with a pantomime showing that I was a mother hen laying an egg. I then showed to the shopkeeper the invisible egg, cupped in my hands.

While all this was taking place, another customer, a middle-aged man, entered the store and saw us communicating this way and watched us in amusement. The shopkeeper, meanwhile, was laughing hysterically all this time. Her face was red all over.

But my husband and I were dead serious. We wanted our eggs.

The newly arrived man then offered us his help. Semi-drunk, he told us he could speak a little bit of English. We felt a little bit relieved, but part of us doubted his capacity to do impromptu translation work in his drunken state. Just the same, perhaps out of desperation, we asked him to please tell the lady we wanted some eggs. He happily “translated” our order from English to Russian. The shopkeeper, who was still recovering from her fits of laughter, then went to the fridge to get an unopened bottle of water.

When she showed it to us from afar, my husband exclaimed, “Nyet! Nyet!” Funny, I could have sworn: my husband suddenly sounded like a frustrated child on a brink of having a tantrum.

So I had an idea. I got my mini notepad and pen from my bag, and tried to draw a picture of an egg. My husband praised me for my quick thinking, and told me that this would finally work. I felt, too, that this was going to be the cutting-edge solution to our current linguistic problem.

But when I showed my grade school sketch to the lady, she just nodded her head, smiled, and insisted in Russian that she understood what we meant. She finally handed the bottle of water to us over the glass counter. The man beside us seemed pleased with his translation.

“She thought you drew a drop of water, not an egg,” my husband whispered to me. He then tried to draw his own egg version, and then presented it to the lady.

“Da, da,” she replied. Da, in Russian, means yes.

Already tired from the lost-in-Russian-dubbing cinema experience we just had prior to the store visit, I let go of the struggle and told my husband to just buy the bottle of water. Not just one, but two. “Just to get it done and over with,” I muttered.

On the way out, my husband said in total disbelief: “How can they not see that we’ve drawn an egg?”

We just wanted a dozen eggs. Who would have thought that it would be that complicated? (Kiev, Ukraine/August 2005)

(Note: Cross-posted on Jayred’s Journeys)

*****

FIVE THINGS TO BE HAPPY ABOUT:

1. Travel adventures
2. Having bacon and eggs for breakfast
3. The chicken dance
4. This egg site
5. 24-hour grocery stores

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