Umbrella shopping

It rains alot here.  This is what one would expect in an Asian country, especially on this side of the dry season.  So it rains every day.

 

Some of you may know that Nathan is quite...frugal.  He resists buying anything.  ANYTHING.  Except food, of course.  He makes an exception for food.

 

However, it's been raining a lot.  I brought a small umbrella with me, but as broad shouldered people, we can't both fit under it, which we discovered on our way over to the department store.  We walked in with wet clothes...we each had a dry shoulder and a dry head.  I had convinced Nathan that we needed another umbrella on the walk over...surprisingly easy it was, too.

 

We started opening collapse-able umbrellas (to see the colours and to make sure they work) and closing them again and putting them back into their cases, like the good citizens that we are. The security guard came up to us.  He was an older Indian gentleman with a wide, white smile.

 

"Let me show you how to put away the umbrellas", he said, very nicely.  You could tell he was being friendly and trying to help.  We had been folding the umbrellas and putting them back into their sleeves so that they fit, but were perhaps not being as careful as we could have been.

 

He started kind of ruffling the nylon and kind of folding it while it was upside down and then he rolled it, as you do an umbrella, and presto! Perfectly flat and neat.

 

"Are you an umbrella expert then," I asked.

 

"No, I used to sell umbrellas, but now I am a guard," he smiled. 

 

"So what do you think of these umbrellas?" I asked, "they seem quite thin to me".  The material DID seem thin - kind of porous.  They had lots of colours though. The people here use umbrellas for sun as well as rain, so they use A LOT of umbrellas here..

 

"They are nylon.  They are good umbrellas, but the material is not thick.  They are just for normal rain.  If it is raining harder, you should wear a rain coat, but if it is raining very hard, you should stay in," he said in his lilting Indian accent..

 

I laughed.  It is the way of people in rainy countries everywhere - if it's raining too hard, stay inside. 

 

He showed us again how to fold the umbrella and said, "If you fold an umbrella well, it will never spoil".

 

We are now proud owners of a new blue and grey collapse-able umbrella. Goes with Nathan's eyes.  Nathan's very proud of his new purchase.   We have still not mastered the technique of folding though.

 

And when we went outside again, it had stopped raining.

 

ACDB