The Best Laid Plans

Cliccate sotto su "Read more" per video e foto.


In Case you are wondering - and I know you probably are not, really - I am intentionally borrowing the title from a book about Canadian politics that I haven't even read yet - but it looks good ;)

I thought about what to do for Easter for a while and in the end we did absolutely nothing special, as you well know. One thing I wanted to get right, though, was the eggs. I didn't want to get really good - and really expensive - chocolate, because:

1. The kids really don't know the difference
   
2. If we want to keep collecting the Thomas Wooden Railway we have to save money somewhere -- even if just symbolically
   
3. I wouldn't know where to find really good Easter eggs here - because I'm a European snob

So the choice was restricted to whatever the Valuemart in front of my office had to offer. The boys love Kinder chocolate, but recently I have been very disappointed with the little gadgets found inside them. Not like those of my youth..  The thought of an oversized version of them popping out of the big Easter Kinder eggs left me cold.

Then I saw he official CHL eggs, which promised a pull back Zamboni inside every one of them: Perfect!

If you are not Canadian you might not know what any of this means, so let me explain.

The CHL is the Central Hockey League and ice hockey is of course the most popular sport in Canada - did you think it was curling???

A Zamboni is a large machine, looking a little like a road sweeper, that resurfaces the ice on an ice rink: meaning, it peels off the top layer of ruined ice and leaves behind nice smooth ice. All Canadian kids love Zambonis, just like kids everywhere love all sort of large and mean machines. Why this thing is called a Zamboni was a mystery for me for a while, until I googled it and found out that this machine was invented by Frank Zamboni and his company is still leader in the market. I'm afraid You have to be Italian to understand why all this sounds hilarious..

Anyway, Rajiv has recently become a Zamboni enthusiast, thanks to an episode of Caillou he watched in which Caillou gets to ride on a Zamboni after his skating class. For a few days after that, the toy bulldozer that Appu rides around the house turned into a Zamboni.

So I thought: this is great! We get to do the ritual cracking of the eggs with some cheap chocolate, and who cares about that anyway, and then inside there will be two nice small pull back vehicles that the kids can play with for the rest of the day. While I take rest.

If you have reached here without falling asleep, below the fold you will get to watch a video of the actual egg cracking. Papa' was with us on Skype, which was nice.






NOOOOOO! The Zamboni came in a zillion pieces. It was fun, because I got to see how a pull back car works - or in this case doesn't. Less fun was the fact that Rajiv and Rohan were howling behind my chair because I wouldn't let them play right a away with the toy. Rohan probably thought I was playing with it myself and was really angry.

The thing that should make the vehicle move after you pull it back is the rubber band you see below. Simple. And cool! (By the way, note how the steering wheel is already broken)

Ta - daaaaaa!

Uhm, not really, no. The pull back never worked, the band was falling off and pretty soon the wheels were falling off too. Appu agrees to show the toy for the camera, but by now the excitement is fading.

At least we got one "Toronto Maple Leaves" Zamboni, which I guess is our team. The black scary one is from the "Calgary Flames". Brrr..

So that's it. I have already disposed of the two offending objects, although some of their parts must still be hiding somewhere in the living room.

I know the whole thing doesn't sound like a big deal, but the three of us took it quite personally :)