The Essentials: Wine Glasses, Candles and Corkscrew

I was talking over lunch (very hot curry of egg and chicken bones) with the team and when I said my plans consisted of me shifting my stuff tomorrow morning, then IKEA in the afternoon, then bedding in Isetan Saturday evening they all laughed (hysterically behind hands!) and explained that it would probably take me all day in IKEA just to get through to the car park.

Oh.

I then change the plan and think I’ll go over in the afternoon, pick my basics up and store them all before I move in tomorrow.

The IKEA here is exactly the same as the one in Croydon – with the exception that the café sells Curry Puffs instead of meatballs! I love Curry Puffs – little Cornish pasty shaped puff pastries filled with curried chicken, egg, vegetables etc and delicious.

Anyway, do the usual routine of wandering through the showroom, putting essential things into the yellow basket, thinking “oh yes, I really need some of those plastic thingies and some more candles/cable tidy/energy saving light-bulbs/etc” and then head down to the market place to kit me out with crockery, pots and pans, cutlery, lamps etc. I had to stop myself putting the whole of Ikea in the trolley, and found myself thinking "I don’t even like this" 

Some of those items made their way into the Impulse Buy Graveyard just before the till, but even after discarding my third electric extension lead, box of cable tidies and cutlery tidy, I still managed to spend 1450RM and fill Ali’s car boot and back seats. It was really good of her to do this, as doing this in a cab would have been impossible, especially trying to get it all into and out of the hotel room later…

I head out tonight to buy some bits that I missed in IKEA – corkscrew and tin opener being two, but I also need some towels, kettle etc so I wander round the (rather tatty) Jusco Department store and pick those bits up. Most of it I can ship back to the UK, or just throw away  / leave it here when I go – the kettle, for example, only cost me about £10.

It’ll probably melt when I turn it on.