Being A Tenant worldwide

30 YEARS OF TENANT EXPERIENCE

I see things from both sides. Although I am both a home owner and landlord, in Singapore I was a tenant in 5 properties over a 30 year period. Our first flat was centrally located. It was brand new.

TENANTS' CHALLENGES - WILDLIFE

However,  it had cockroaches. In the kitchen. 

Which is worse, creatures you can see, chase, spray? Or creatures which come out at night and leave behind droppings, trails, holes, smells, or make noises behind the walls.

In England we hear the saying, you are never far from a rat. What about snakes in Singapore? In the USA we were told on a tourist trail though a national park that snakes are scared of noise. You can march heavily, sing, and throw stones ahead to frighten them off the path.

Snakes - invisible

A girl downstairs in our newly built block of lats near central Orchard Road discovered in her school bag a snake skin, which local snakes discard annually. Singapore has 70 species of snake.

 In 30 years I never saw one in the city, except a large one on the fence at a noisy party. It obviously hadn't read that small snakes are scared by noise.

Neither had the London snakes learned to beware of humans, noisy nor silent. My parents in London, England, had had a breeding pair of adders in their garden backing onto woodland in Stanmore in 1978. The snake basked in the sun happily beside our neighbour who had been snoozing in a deck chair. Maybe she should have played the radio, quietly.

Apart from wildlife, in Singapore, I had three main problems. 

TENANTS' Problems

1 Mould PROBLEMS

As  tenants in Singapore, we had mould, from tropical rain running from the flat roof down the outside walls of the skyscraper. 

Mould Solutions

Painting over was a temporary solution. The problem returned the following year. Another company had a more expensive but effective solution of removing plaster and adding a waterproof lining.

In the UK the maintenance company rep showed that a device for detecting damp could show the damp from the top corner, being a ceiling leak from pipes or broken guttering. A mould patch half way could be foliage or an overflow pipe from a kitchen boiler. 

Mould alongside a bed meant that the one pint of water which every adult, two children or two pets breathe out, was going onto an adjoining wall. 

Walls should be free of leaning furniture and furnishing to allow airflow. 

So curtains should not rest against windows and walls.

 Bedding such as headboards and duvets should be a gap away. 

Cupboard contents should be inside racks away from the back wall. Fifties style furniture on feet is best to allow air flow. 

CHAIRS

The oriental and Middle eastern style of living, with cushions around the walls and on the floor is fine for hot, dry climates, But the lack of air flow produces moisture turning into mould.

Also windows should be opened.

TENANTS PROBLEMS

2 Missing Furniture or furnishing

We went into the new property and a shelf was missing in a kitchen cupboard. 

My family said, don't complain, we don't need it.

When we moved out two years later, our leaving inventory showed a missing shelf, so the letting agent charged us for the replacement. Tenant's loss.

The new curtains didn't quite meet. My family said, don't complain. 

3 Street Noise - Tenant's Problem

DAYTIME NOISE

In little India we backed onto a busy street with an Indian temple. We could drown out continuous noise from traffic by playing music. 

However, we had loud intermittent noise from processions. Indian processions for example, Thaipusan. And noise from lion dances at Chinese New Year.

Night NOISE

In Singapore you can report noise at night. 

A friend of ours with a pilot in the family told us they had been disturbed by builders digging by the road nearby late at night. 

The family went out to remonstrate. 

The foreman shrugged, and lied. 'We have to dig now. It's a gas leak.'

The family retorted. 'We have already reported you to police who are on their way. It's not a gas leak. This street is on bottled gas.'

The workmen quickly threw their gear into the truck and drove off.

To conclude on Good Tenants' BEST PRACTICE  

For tenants

1 Pay on time and send a whatsapp saying you have done so.

2 Report leaks and other problems promptly. 

3 Preserve all guarantees, and fire safety stickers on furniture.

4 If you go abroad tell the landlord you are away and who nearby has the key if there is a leak, fire or other problem. 

5 Inform the landlord if you have anybody to stay longer than a fortnight. The landlord is legally obliged to check that he is not renting out to illegals. He or she needs to know that relatives staying in your flat are not squatters.

4 If given notice, leave. You might want a good reference. The landlord who wants to get rid of you might be tempted to give you a good reference but is legally obliged to tell the truth and risks a large fine by not doing so.

3 If you can, clean the oven or have it professionally cleaned. Hire a cleaning company to leave the whole flat as it was when you found it, including carpet cleaning.

-ENDS-

Egyptian Symbols Look Like Emojis! - Easy Egyptian

Those funny Pharaohs!
The Israeli Museum in Jerusalem has an exhibition making Egyptian symbols more accessible by likerning them to emojis.

This is the Egyptian symbol for life.

A fascinating article on Ancient Egyptian writing says that you could write in any direction, and faces were turned to show the direction of the writing. If the faces faced left you started reading from the left.

The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek words ἱερός (hierós 'sacred') and γλύφειν (glúphein 'to carve' or 'to write'), and it was first used to mean Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Greeks who came to Egypt saw the picture letters, which were often found carved on house walls, tombs and monuments.

Simple wiki makes it clearer and relevant to today's writing.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptians used pictures to make a phonetic alphabet, so that each sound could be written with a picture-word, a phonogram or pictograph. For example, a zig-zag for water

came to mean the letter "n", because the Egyptian word for water started with n. This same picture became our letter 'M' in the Latin alphabet, because the Semitic word for water started with m, and Semitic workers changed the symbols to fit sounds in their own language.

 In the same way, our Latin letter 'N' came from the hieroglyph for snake

Mark, Joshua J. "Ancient Egyptian Writing." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 16 Nov 2016. Web. 05 Feb 2020.

Useful Websites
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/israeli-museum-explains-the-emojis-of-ancient-egypt-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Museum

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

A quick way to learn Spanish for Mexico, Peru, South America, Central America and Spain

I was reading about Mexico on a BBC English language page when I saw a link to BBC news in Spanish. I followed the link and read some of the headlines and the opening lines of the stories. I was amazed how much I could understand from words which were similar to English.


Flag of Mexico

The flag of Mexico is similar at first glance to the flag of Peru, another country where Spanish is spoken. But flags have three stripes, red and white stripes and a symbol in the middle.

Look closer or keep them side by side and you will see that Mexico's flag is green white red. But, Peru's flag is red white red.

     

Flag of Mexico    

Flag of Peru

Look at the symbols.

Mexico's flat has an eagle eating a snake. The story goes that seeing that told the founder of Mexico city where to found the city. A handy reminder to me to watch out for snakes. I remember seeing snakes on the ground ahead on the steps of an archaeological site which was a trip when a cruise ship from the USA landed at the Mexican city and popular port of Cancun.

Going back to Wikipedia to check on Cancun, I was intrigued to read the its name Cancun is based on the word for snake:

There are two possible translations of Cancún, based on the Mayan pronunciation kaan kun. The first translation is "nest of snakes". The second version and less accepted is "place of the golden snake".^[

Returning to the BBC website I read:
Lo encontraron con 15 puñaladas en su celda, donde cumplía una condena de 13 años por tráfico de drogas. El exmilitar era considerado por las autoridades el nexo del Cartel de Sinaloa en el país.

I could easily see 13 years for trafficking of drugs, ex military (person) considered (by) authorities and Cartel.

Reading the news in Spanish was no effort. My automatic response was to check up on just one or two words in the three sentences which I did not know by using Google translate.

Finding Google Translate
Typing into google translate might bring up translation services which charge a lot of money to translate just one word.

Using the newspaper as your source of whole sentences has the advantage that you have a context.

Pinning Google Translate
I have pinned the symbol for google translate to the top of my screen, second left of my menu. That way I can find it fast.

How To Pin The Google Translate Symbol
To pin you right click on your mouse and when you do this up pops the multiple choice box f more actions.

Remembering How To Pin Google Translate
Click on pin and your favourite website is pinned or made semi-permanent on the left of all the sites currently opened or opened in the recent past. You could unpin it the same way. Right click. When the symbol is pinned, the choice offered is now unpin. If you change your mind, pin it again. If you want to remember how to pin, pin and unpin several times until the action is embedded in your memory and you can do it fast.

One of the words I checked on looked like peace but turned out to be country. Words which sound the same or look the same but are not are sometimes called 'false friends'.

You can then pin the Spanish news from the BBC, or any other new site, to have up to the minute news of your favourite country, or to follow a news story. A quick way to refresh your knowledge os Spanish, including technical and slang words.

Spanish - English
 años - years
celda - cell
con - with
de - of
donde -where
drogas - drugs
ellos - they (like the French elle for she and elles for they)
en - in
lo/Los/las - the (singular and plural, as in Los Angeles meaning the angels)
el país - the country (like the French, le pays)
paz - peace

English - Spanish
cell (in a prison) - celda
(the) country - el país
drugs - drogas
in - en
of - in
peace - paz
the (plural) - los (as in Los Angeles meaning the angels)
they - ellos
where - donde
with - con
years -  años 


Flag of Spain

You could also learn Spanish as spoken in Spain from a Spanish newspaper online.

Where You Can Use The Spanish Language
Countries where Spanish is spoken: Argentina, Bolivia, Balearic Islands (Majorca/Mallorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Formentera): Canary Islands: , Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Tenerife, Uruguay, Venezuela,

Learn Portuguese, which is similar to Spanish, as spoken in Brazil from a Brazilian newspaper. My family and others on a holiday in Madeira could recognize words on signposts from holidays in Europe in Spain and Portugal. Spanish is also a help when learning Italian.

BBC news in Spanish
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/topics/

USA
Notice the Spanish names of the cities Los Angeles (The angels), San Francisco (Saint Francis) and El Paso (The pass).


Duolingo
duolingo.com


Memrise
Memrise.com


About The Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, blogger, author of 20 books including an ebook on Improve Your English, from Amazon, and teacher of English and Business English and other languages to individuals, colleges and companies. For more information on learning languages see the previous posts. For information on sites to see in Spain and Portugal see the next post. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share the links with your family, friends and colleagues.

Falls and Burns, Sharks and Snakes, Survival Techniques, Warmings And Advice

Sign in Romania warning motorists of drunks in the road.

Problem
Some people are cautious. Some invite trouble.

I am the cautious sort. As a mother, a parent, a teacher, or a meeting organizer, you may find yourself resposible for the safety of others. As the road signs say: The life you save may be your own.

Home
Dangers are all around. Most accidents happen at home, because that's where most people spend more time. The most vulnerable people, babies and the elderly, spend more time at home.

Burns
Burns survivor Dorah, now Dorah Jones, was burned by a falling candle in South Africa when she was only 6 months old. She lost her sight and hands. She was later adopted by Bronwen Jones, who worked tirelessly to help Dorah and other visctims and prevent futher accidents. Bronwen founded Children of Fire in 1996, a non-profit organization educating communities on preventing fire-related accidents, and offers healthcare to those injured in fires.

Sight, Survivors, Feeling
At Toastmasters International at a meeting in Singapore I had to make an impromptu two-minute speech on whether I would prefer to lose my sight or hearing. I chose to retain sight. However, it is uplifting to learn that even without hands and eyes you can still find pleasure in life.

Dorah, who lives in Pinner in North West London, in the UK, enjoys walking to Pinner Park Farm. I remember reading how Helen Keller wrote of the pleasures of walking on grass and the sand on the beach. Dorah likes collecting wildflowers, perhaps feeling the petals, sometimes smelling the scents.

She likes to listen to birdsong and her children laughing.

She also likes stroking farmyard animals. She can rest her forearm and cheek against the side of a horse and feel its warmth, its softness, its heartbeat. Helen Keller used to enjoy hugging her dog.

Home Safety
What about safety in your daily life? At home, if you stand on a ladder you might fall off - if you have not prepared and the ladder is not secured. If I am alone and have to change a light bulb, I put pillows on the floor and cushions against walls and radiators in case I fall. And a biscuit and bottle of water beside me in case I should fall and need sustenance. I phone a family member to say what I am doing and keep a charged phone in my pocket.

Travel Safety

Motorists on long journeys, hikers and climbers also take precautions which sound similar. Food and drink, checking the situation at the destination, telling others where you are going and when you will be back, where possible travelling with somebody else, somebody reliable.

Seeing Weapons and Avoiding Trouble
If you see somebody with a weapon, keep away, don't attack them. Around your own city or a foreign city, if you walk towards a soldier with a gun, even push a guard, or obstruct them, you might get arrested, injured, or shot. A woman stood in front of a guard at Windosr in England. She learned the hard way that he was not stopping.

She apparently thought her photo was more important than his work of parading and protecting the area. He apparently thoght his job was to parade and protect the perimeter of the royal castle, not get distracted by tourists taking photos - or any potential attempt to invade beyond a barrier and distract him by pretending to take photos. The Americans have a saying: don't take a knife to a gunfight.

Snakes and Bears
When hiking, if you walk in the outdoors in a snake area, you might encounter a snake. Mothers usually protect their offspring. This applies to both humans and animals including bears.

Most other humans and animals are not altruistic but think of defending themselves first. Fight first, ask questions later. You might apologise if you step on your pet dog. But don't expect all wild animals to be so understanding of strangers.

What more can you do to save yourself and others? Be prepared. Be alert at all times.

Answers
Several people have survived dangers because they were forewarned about what to do. boy scouts and girl guides learn practical skills. A lot of the education you get at school, about far off countries, seems irrelevant. However, I remember a child who had learned about tsunamis in a geography class at school. The following week, on a beach, seeing the sea retreating, the ten-year-old girl knew it would be returning. The child alerted their own family and others to the danger and saved several lives, a hundred people.

Prevention
Prevention is better than cure.

Sharks
If in danger, some things sound obvious - keep your hand out of the shark's mouth.

Other advice runs counter to your instincts. Do not run away, because the instinct of the animal or fish is to chase after you. Every time I read that, I think about police chases and gang fights and the advice: 'Stand your ground'.

Safest Time and Place
The other advice I noted is to avoid areas where food is in the water attracting fish to eat.  Also avoid swimming at dawn and dusk, because that's when fish are looking for breakfast and supper.

If you are attacked, you can improvise a weapon, from a camera, a stick or a rock. If you plan to swim in a shark area, you could prepare with a gadget for defence, such as a Shark Billy, a long stick with a hook.

Advice could be wrong. I have books on survival from various military organizations. If you compare two books and find the same advice, it's probably good advice, and reading it twice helps imprint it on your memory.

Interesting Websites
Danger From Guards:
https://news.sky.com/video/queens-guard-shoves-female-tourist-11448156

Helping Prevention of Fire-Related Accidents:
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/dorahjones2018

Using School Lessons To Retreat From a Tsunami:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1480192/Girl-10-used-geography-lesson-to-save-lives.html

Story of a man who survived shark, bear and snake attacks and advice:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-41981379#_=_

Staistics And Preventing Shark Attacks (Shields, giant nets etc)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-39639387

Anti-Shark Attack Tools For Swimmers, Surfers and Divers:
https://gizmodo.com/5823322/6-tools-to-fight-a-shark-and-win-maybe/

SOS SIGNALS FOR HELP
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/27/us/sos-rescue-from-island/index.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Why you might visit Uruguay Urgently but postpone visiting Paraguay

Map of Uruguay from Wikipedia. See Fray Bentos on the left. 

URUGUAY
Why would you or I go to Uruguay? When I heard that Fray Bentos pies are named after a place in Uruguay, I was intrigued. I love Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies.

Sure enough, Uruguay has a Fray Bentos Museum. The old Fray Bentos factory no longer operates but the decaying buildings and machinery are a Unesco heritage site.  They shipped the goods out from the port on the river, making pies named after the place, and Oxo cubes.

That's number one on my list. I am sure anybody would find it fun. Maybe not if your group includes vegetarians.

Most people on Tripadvisor enthused. Tours take place twice a day. One reader travelled all the way from Colon in Argentina especially to take a tour.

Photo by DeCausa in Wikipedia.

Second visit? Also to visit, the museum of the artist who makes human figures with animal heads.

PARAGUAY
Skinning Snakes For Snake Snacks
What about Paraguay? Their biggest novelty is snake skinning lessons. Wiki warns that you must beware of two-headed snakes. One head can bite you whilst you are dealing with the other one.

That is a novelty. I have eaten snake in Shanghai, so I don't need to go to South American just to say I've done that.

Paraguay Procrastination
Another discouragement is their relaxed attitude to time. Your plane home is unlikely to take off on time. Just as well if your taxi is late, and so is your breakfast.

I understand procrastination. I understand being late. I don't mind others being late. If I have to wait, I can write a poem draw a picture, take a photo or learn Spanish or Portuguese.

However, it has taken several decades for me to learn to be early instead of late. I don't want to undo that effort.

As for language and practising your languages, Spanish is handy - or Portuguese in border areas, or a mixture of the two creating new words, a new dialect a new 'language' ... maybe I'll get around to describing that, some time - more later.

Travel Checklists

Useful websites
Visit Uruguay official tourist board:
https://turismo.gub.uy/index.php/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Uruguay (From the Wiki people, without ads.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fray_Bentos_(food_brand)

http://paisajefraybentos.com/pc/publico-y-visitantes-en-el-sitio/
Their website, mostly in easy to read Spanish, as you see the bit I copied reads 'public and visit to the site', with the occasional surprise of a line in English.

More will be added later. I am on Paraguay time.

Here's some more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Uruguay

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Zoo Reviews : Write Parody Animal Reviews For Fun Whilst Travelling + Cute Photo Captions

Problem
How to brighten up a visit to a zoo, or even sitting on a park bench, or seaside bench watching the birds.

Answer
Spoof  Zoo Animal Reviews
Oregon Zoo and Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens have been doing this. What a great idea. Amusing.

An amusement for teens and tourists. Rate the animals or species at a zoo. Some zoos have started this and got attention. Create a game for the family or a school trip or charity event. Give a prize or vote for the best caption or review.

Fun Photo Captions
You could even do it to brighten up captions on your holiday snaps. I find it easier to write an advertisement than a review.

Cat : Self-cleaning.
Cockroach: Pre-historic model.
Dog: Noisy.

Fox in garden in London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Elephant: Difficult to find a large enough parking space.
Fox: Runs well.
Magpie: Smartly dressed.
Rabbit: Buy one, get twenty free.
Robin: Very friendly.
Snake: Handle with care.
Spider: Useful for decorating corners.

Spider. Useful for decorating corners. Available in brown, black or mixed. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The old jokes are the best: Zebra - horse designed by a committee.

Use it as NLP to get over your fear and disgust - perhaps not.

USA
California Academy of Sciences
Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens
Monterey Bay Aquarium - @MontereyAquarium
Oregon Zoo - @OregonZoo ; rateaspecies
Tennessee Aquarium - @TNAquarium (On the Chatanooga riverfront)
http://www.tnaqua.org

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-5504799/Zoos-post-hilarious-Amazon-style-reviews-animals.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Informative and amusing. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How To Learn Welsh words for: pig, snake and tiger!

Croeso - Welcome
Welcome to my blog and page on learning welsh.


Problem
How do you recognize Welsh words when reading them?

Answer
Make up a sentence from the letter.

Welsh - English
mochyn - pig (M u n C H e s   any Y t h i N g;  Muddy not eaten by MOslems nO)
neidr - snake (Remember No I Do not Run, or N o t an a D d e R I hope)
teigr - tiger -(same letters mixed up, only the letter e is moved to make teiger; Gr! remember TeIGR, TeIGR, buRnInG bRIghT in the foREsT of ThE niGhT. )

English - Welsh
pig - m o c h y n
snake - n e i d r
tiger - t e i g r

Welsh - English
mochyn - pig
neidr - snake
teigr - tiger

Pronunciation
GOOGLE
Go to Google translate:
type in Google translate and up pops translate.google.com
Type in the word in English. Click on Welsh in the other box.
If you are translating from Welsh, click the reversing arrow at the top.
Click on the symbol for sound.
If I am typing in a lot of words and I am in a hurry I just type in the word No in English and up pops dim in Welsh.
After I have used this website several times, it remembers and the Welsh language appears second on the list across the top of the box.

DUOLINGO
If you want to learn Welsh pronunciation, you can find the pronunciation and hints on grammar and learning any language on the first page of Duolingo for that language by signing up for that language.

Snakes and tigers are scary, but you don't often see them in Wales except at a zoo, or in the books on Jungle in a bookshop in Fishguard.

What I find scary is the picture of people standing on a ledge which looks like a see-saw in Snowdonia.

Author
Angela Lansbury
Please share links to my posts.

Three more fun Romanian words

Romanian - English
f l u t u r e - butterfly (one which flutters by)
s a r p e - snake (cedilla or comma under the Romanian s makes the sound sh)
Memory aid: Look sharp, there's a snake in Romania.
vaca - cow (memory aid - they always look so vacant)

English - Romanian
butterfly - F l u t u r e
cow - vaca
snake - s a r p e

Tips
Duolingo.com Free language learning website.
www.romaniatourism.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and languages. Please share links to my posts.

Dishes I Probably Won't Try - Dancing Squid and Oysters in July

Dishes I probably won't try for the first time or again:

1 Oysters - eaten live. England and the USA and elsewhere.
2 Dancing squid (from Japan) just like what they sound like. Found in Japan. See YouTube.
3 Suckling pig.
4 Snails. (Escargot in France, also from some speciality restaurants in London, England.
5 Horsemeat (France).
6 Bird's Nest. Soup or otherwise.
7 Locusts. (All sorts of insects are available bottled for Christmas as novelties or gourmet gifts in speciality food stores such as Jackson's of Piccadilly in London.
8 Dog (China).
9 Wichita grub - actually I've had this in Australia. Ground up and white like potato soup or puree.
10 Snake steak. (I've had this in Shanghai. Looks like sliced up salmon, a circle with a bone or hold in the middle, but salmon has better flavour.)
11 Puffer fish. Poisonous if not prepared right with the poison removed. Why would you risk it? Admittedly whenever a restaurant prepares your food, you have to trust your chef to take every care.
12 Crocodile. I have a certificate framed on the wall which assures me that I ate this in Florida some years ago. As they say, the past is another country.
13 Durian. The fresh fruit tastes and smells dreadful. However, the ice cream or cake made with a tiny amount tastes delicious, like chestnut.

No thanks. No comment.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer 

Christmas treats: Oyster and crab photos; where to eat crocodile, grubs, durian, and exotic foods

In London all many restaurants are serving turkey and Christmas pudding and every office and club wants a group party, ideally a Friday lunch, finishing so late there's no point going back to work, might as well do some Christmas shopping. What exotic food can you buy? Maybe a hamper for the hosts? Or an exotic food for your friends who invited you for a Christmas meal or New Year's eve. Should you buy them a treat or taken them for a meal out? 

For some of the people you know chocolate covered insects these would be a gourmet treat. For other people they would just be a joke gift. It might be an idea to ask - and check prices.

What can you take? What would be a treat? Or maybe treat yourself? Or just enjoy window shopping.  Caviar? Real caviar from Russia is expensive. Caviar is the egg cells from a fish. I've tried real caviar and, don't tell anybody, but I prefer the cheaper imitation from supermarkets from different fish. Yummy. Many people will be happy with imitation so called caviar in little pots from the UK supermarkets. You can buy it coloured orange or black. 

Shellfish? Many restaurants such as Club Gasgon also sell bottled French foods.

Restaurant oysters.

Oyster photo. Courtesy of Trevor Sharot.

Crab shell. Supermarket crab.

I am afraid the crab has gone. Somebody ate all of it. Not me.

Crab shell. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

You can see from the fork in the lower left of the crab shell picture that the crab shell is about the size of a fist, much larger than an oyster. This is not news to people who eat shellfish. 

But my pictures will solve a mystery for people like me who never eat shellfish. Like me and some of my friends and acquaintances. 

When I was a child we never had frogs nor horsemeat (horse meat not horse men which spell check prefers), eaten by the French, along with snails and oysters. In England we regarded eating horse meat with the same sort of horror and suspicion that most people in the UK still regard these exotic fruits:

 1 DURIAN

I ate durians for the first time in a Thai restaurant in Singapore in the 1990s. D u r i a n s (spell checker, horror of horrors, corrected this word to drains), are eaten in season in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and now available from some restaurants in London. 

Durian? It smells strongly of sulphur. It is banned on the Singapore MRT underground trains and buses and taxis. You will see signs.

The durian fresh fruit I can't eat. But the flavour in ice cream and cakes is wonderful, like mashed banana and chestnut puree. Green. Like pistachio.

2 ANTS 

Chocolate covered ANTS and other insects.

3 LOCUSTS 

(All kinds of insects available at Xmas time from the major food department of big speciality department stores such as Fortnum and Mason, until stocks run out,.

4 CROCODILE 

(I have eaten this in Florida, in the USA.  I have a souvenir certificate which I was given on a travel press trip in the USA, somewhere stored hidden behind something more important in one of the 100+ picture frames in my home.) 

5 WICHITY GRUB SOUP, Australia.

Soup eaten in a restaurant in Perth, Australia. The grubs are not wiggling around and leaping like tiny dolphins, nor china depictions of the Loch Ness Monster, as I had feared. Just a thick white soup rather like potato soup. Neither disgusting nor delightful.  As they say, try anything once. (If I appear to have written nonsense, it's because Spell check thinks W i c h i t a  is more likely than w i c h i t y.)

6 BUFFALO meat. USA.

Buffalo or bison were a mystery to me, a visitor from London to the USA in the 1980s. Not to be confused with Buffalo wings, which are chicken wings in sauce, first served in a brain Buffalo in bad weather when chicken and sauce was available and not much else so the cook created a new dish from what was to hand.

7 SNAKE from China. Mescal from Mexico.

Eaten in Shanghai and many parts of China and Asia. Also seasonal. A snake steak is slides so a portion looks like a piece of salmon, circular thick white or pale pink meat, texture of cod, with a circular white bone in the middle.You also see snake inside large glass bottles of wine and flagons of wine. 

Mescal from Mexico is a drink with a larva inside. It is sometimes called a worm. Not a worm. Not live.

9 EXOTIC NUTS such as macadamia

Thinking back, when I was a child, most nuts were peanuts, which aren't nuts at all. W, almonds and hazel nuts were an expensive treat. Chestnuts only appeared at Xmas. Pistachio nuts appeared much later in the first Asian restaurants probably in the 1960s. Cashews were a treat. 

I had pecan nuts for the first time in the USA in the 1980s, and pecan pie. Now you can get pecan pie in American restaurants in London, and often in the bakery sections of supermarkets.

Then I tried macadamia nuts, for the first time, on a side trip from the USA where we were living, to Hawaii.

Chestnuts were a favourite Christmas treat in England, roasted chestnuts sold from stalls on cold days in November and December. In previous years they were sold outside the World Travel Market in London, outside Excel on the passageway to the Station. 

When we went on holiday to Jersey in the Channel Islands  we discovered that tins of chestnut paste imported from nearby France were much cheaper and more readily available than the same tins in London supermarkets.

We bought half a dozen tins and had chestnut puree on vanilla ice cream for a quick self-catering lunch on holiday. We took two leftover tins home and enjoyed our holiday treat for a fortnight (two weeks) back in Britain.

10 EXOTIC FRUITS -  such as mango

Mangoes were also exotic. Now orange mango juice and transparent red or pink cranberry juice are everywhere in supermarkets in the UK. Hotels buffet breakfast in the UK and Europe, as well as the USA and Asia, often serve in addition to the class orange juice, apple or pineapple juice.

Exotic Foods

Back to shellfish. Now shellfish is in every supermarket in the UK. We can even eat durians from Asia, foods from all over the world. When I was a toddler for several years after WWII ended in 1945 you could not even eat a banana. We still had food rationing until 1952. Yay mother told me you had to queue for bananas. 

For more on oysters, see my previous post on oysters.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Author and speaker.