I'm proud of my home. My home is my sanctuary. My home is in Beijing,
also home to millions. Like most people here my home is an apartment,
shared with my wonderful family on the 29th floor of an orange and brown
90's style building. After arriving from New Zealand with little more
than our suitcase and hand luggage to call our own, we entered our white
square box of a home here and set about making it comfy. Provided with
"modern Chinese" landlord owned furniture, (sofas, beds, cabinet, tv
stand, tv and bed side tables)in non-descript browns and creams, we
promptly set off for IKEA to reinvigorate the eerie clinical, minimalist
(not in a good way) look of our new pad.
IKEA on a Saturday and Sunday
in Beijing really is an experience to be missed. Think packs of people
jostling for aisle room, toting young babes in arms, scratchy screaming
toddlers, grandma and grandad and the lady of the house, teetering on
high heels (seriously!) on a buying mission from hell! Times that
picture by 10's of thousands and you've got some sort of reality of our
shock and dismay at making a gigantic newcomer mistake. Our plans of
whipping through the aisles grabbing pillows and styley cushions in
bright hues, modern prints for our walls and cool kids stuff was
scuppered in one foul blast of sheer humanity.
So... if you can't beat
'em, join 'em I always say...firmly planting my two year old in the
trolley to wail to his hearts content, dragging my four year old and her
assortment of picked up off the shelf "isn't this pretty
Mummy?"goodies, searching in vain for my seven year old, who had decided
to park up on one of the cosy-looking kids bunk beds for a power nap,
and cajole my less-than-happy, moaning husband to continue following the
seriously ridiculous yellow arrows that were like some sort of holy
grail towards the exit. Said holy grail happened to take the form of a
queue like no other that, like most non-existent queue's in China, took
an organic form consisting of shoulder barging, elbow prodding, back
shoving and dinky maneouvering to shuffle towards the check-out girl -
who most definitely did not greet us, (or anyone else) with a friendly
smile. By this stage my now very vocal family,(and not in a good way!)
were well over it and ready to snap.
Options buzzed through my
brain...dump all and escape, be mature and patient and super-mom like
and distract my kids with technolgy (cue i-phone goodness!), eye-ball
the check-out girl with "my family are going to snap and it might not be
pretty for you girly" look or just simply turn around and blame my
husband for as many things as I could think of, which turned out to be a
really silly, but oh-so-satisfying option! I believe my slightly OTT
tirade consisted of something like this: your idea to drag us to IKEA on
a Saturday...dragging us to China... your idea not to not send more of
our house things over... leaving the toilet seat up, insist on wearing
your ugly brown clodhopper boots to work...so got to get your hair
cut...hey....come back here while I'm trying to blame you for
everything...!!
There are many morals to this story: definitely don't go to IKEA in
the weekend, don't take your children, do rely on technology to pacify
your kids when your back is against the wall and always be nice to your
husband!
Read h
ttp://inmycabinet.blogspot.com/2011/11/little-bit-of-pretty.html
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