After finalizing my accommodation, it was time to move in now. I was sad about leaving my temporary luxurious and spacious accommodation and move to my permanent flat. And that’s why I wrote a very nice review about the place on airbnb through which I had booked the place. I booked an Uber and moved to my current accommodation, which is in Liberty Severn Point in Blackwier Terrace. I moved into my flat, and it looked so dead. There was no noise in the whole flat as if it was empty. I put my stuff in my room and went to the kitchen to get some water, only to realize that I had neither a glass nor any bottle to drink water from. And I was thinking where to buy stuff from as I had no idea about the place. And then one of my flatmate- Becca walked in. We introduced ourselves and got talking. And then another flatmate- Shannon came in. And the three of us got talking. I picked there advise on where to buy stuff for myself. And both of them suggested that “Tesco extra” will be a good place for everything I need.
So I emptied my suitcase and decided to take it along as I had a long list of things to buy. Now here is where this blog will be useful to you if you are moving to the UK, particularly Cardiff. I will try to describe the things that you can buy here, and the standard of the items. This will help you decide how to buy things, what to get from India and what to buy here.
So I took my suitcase and wheeled it along the Taff river to the Tesco extra. Now all you folks, remember. You get duvet and other home stuff only at Tesco Extra. Not at Tesco metro, Not at Tesco Express, but only at Tesco Extra. So only go to Tesco Extra. I reached Tesco Extra, also commonly known as the big Tesco, and took a trolley and put my suitcase into it. You don’t have to leave your packets/bags at a bag drop location like Big Bazaar. People are more trusting here. Also, to get a trolley, you MUST have a 1 pound coin with you. You get a trolley only when you insert the coin into the trolley slot. The coin gets stuck in the trolley, and you get it back when you return the trolley.
The first thing I looked for was a Duvet. It is the equivalent of “Kambal” or “Razai” as we call it, except it is very light in weight. Now here is the thing. Before you go out for buying your bedding, have a quick look at your bed. If you feel that the bed is too large for a single bed, but not equal to double bed by Indian standards, then you have a double bed by the UK standard. However, if you think the bed is a double bed by Indian standard, then its a Queen size bed by UK standard. And if its larger than the Indian double bed, then its a King size bed. But you are more likely to get a single or a double bed by UK standard. So just gauge your bed. And that’s the size you want to pick for your Duvet, Duvet cover and bed sheet. Another important thing to remember while buying the duvet is its warmth. How warm of a duvet do you want. This is measured in “Togs”. The higher the tog, the more warm the duvet. I would suggest not to pick anything lower than 10-10.5 tog. Go For 13.5 tog or above. According to the size of the duvet, buy the duvet cover and the bed sheet and bed cover. Again, Tesco has a range of all these items. So you can browse through the aisle and decide on how cheap or expensive stuff you want.
The next thing was picking up pillow. This was a simple pick. I picked the cheapest option and it has done well so far.
The next item was buying the cutlery, containers and cooking utensils. I would say, save this shopping for another store on city road called City Home Store. I will talk about that later in detail. They have a wide variety of cutlery and knives and forks and cooking utensils. More than Tesco at least. I dint know at that time and bought myself a non-stick pan from Tesco. Which was not a bad deal, but it was a compromise on the size. Tesco also has cutlery, but I found them to be expensive and very heavy in weight. But you can buy the soda glass from Tesco. They are cheap. As well as the water bottle. The quality is far superior than the other bottles that you will get in other stores.
I also bought a big plastic box to keep my dirty laundry. But I would suggest you get the flexible foldable ones from India. They are dirt cheap in India and wont be a hassle to bring. I also bought myself a metal wire bin as a trash can. That was a splurge as I didn’t really need it. I bought it just to play paper toss.
From there, I moved to the health and beauty section to buy soaps and shampoo. I couldn’t find any soap bar and realised that body gel is the go-to soap for body. So randomly picked up a nice looking body gel bottle and a shower sponge/loofah. Also, I couldnt find the lifebuoy bar 😛 so bought a handwash bottle. I also realized that I did not have to bring a hoard of toothpaste, shaving foam, skin cream, etc (basically toiletries) as they are not very expensive in the UK and have a big overlap with brands available in India. Which reminds me, if possible, get stationery with you from India. Notebooks and pens are very expensive here when compared to India. Moving on.
Once I was done with these, I moved to the food section. And I bought the few basic things like vegetable oil, salts, spices and vegetables that you need if you are planning to cook Indian food. I also bought a packet of cereal and a small can of milk for breakfast. You will notice there are many different flavours and varieties of almost all the packed items that you buy here. It is all a matter of taste. You will have to taste different flavours and see which one you like the most. I personally buy skimmed fat free milk and natural set curd. Natural set curd is not very popular, so not available all the time. When that happens, I pick Greek style yogurt. In bread, I buy the toasties. These are closest products you can get to products back home in taste. When buying spices, I looked through the isle of spices and herbs and realized that the Tesco brand spices was very expensive and insufficient in quantity for Indian food. But when I came to the international food isle, I spotted the packets of coriander powder, turmeric, cumin powder, etc by the brand “East End”. These were perfect for my everyday consumption. And these are available at Tesco express and Tesco metro as well. Keep in mind that these spices are not available in other popular supermarket chains like Lidl and Sainsbury. Now with spices added to my trolley, it was time to buy pulses (which are called lentils in the UK) and rice, aata, and vegetables.
To my dismay, I was informed by one of the employee that Tesco does not keep yellow daal. However, you can find other kinds of daal in the international food isle. I also realised, that rice in the UK means Basmati rice. So you will mainly find Basmati rice packets everywhere. I picked up a 2kg packet of Laila brand Basmati rice. I dont make chapati/paratha myself and picked up readymade roti of the brand Nisaan. There are two option – Nisaan Chakki Roti and Nisaan Tawa Roti. They do not vary in taste by much. You can pick anyone. I picked up 4 packets of Nisaan Chakki Roti.
Next I moved to the vegetables aisle to pick some vegetables. Now the most bizarre part of vegetable section was that the English do not use the “English” name of the vegetables. For example: Baigan, which is supposed to be Brinjal, is actually called Aubergine in the UK. Bhindi, which is supposed to be ladies finger, is called Okra. I picked up a few pieces of aubergine and a few packets of okra along with a 2.5 kg packet of potato. When I came to the onion section, there were regular onions and red onions. The regular onions did not look like onions to me. So I went with the red onions. You should get both and try them both. They have a slight difference in the taste. I don’t mind either and now go for the one which is cheaper. Then I picked up a cucumber which did not look like the cucumber that I was familiar with. But it turned out to be ok.
While passing through the isle, I also picked up canned red kidney beans, canned baked beans for breakfast and readymade daal makhni packets. If you buy canned stuff, make sure you also buy can opener. I did not, and had to borrow my flatmate’s. Or you can get one from India. You get a lot of canned food in the UK. A proper can opener will be very useful.
Finally, before heading to the checkout, I picked up a box of Ariel for washing clothes and two random solutions and a toilet brush for cleaning the bathroom. And a toilet paper roll pack. Then I went to the checkout counter and got everything billed which came out to be about 100 pounds. I then came out and booked an uber as I couldn’t carry everything. And my ride was a red Mercedes s- class which dropped me right in front of my accommodation. Since I did not have cutlery, I borrowed my flatmate’s for the day, and went to city road the next day. I will talk about that in my next post along with my clothes shopping experience.
commscholarukdairy.data.blog 