{"id":366,"date":"2007-05-12T22:08:19","date_gmt":"2007-05-13T03:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=366"},"modified":"2007-05-12T22:08:19","modified_gmt":"2007-05-13T03:08:19","slug":"in-whitechapel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2007\/05\/12\/in-whitechapel\/","title":{"rendered":"In Whitechapel&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n&#8230; shops don&rsquo;t close for lunch but some do close for Friday prayer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8230; I no longer find it surprising or even noteworthy when the women I meet in the street are dressed in <i>abaya<\/i>, <i>hijab<\/i> and <i>niqab<\/i>, covering everything except for their eyes, or when schoolgirls&rsquo; uniforms consist of a <i>salwar kameez<\/i> and a matching headscarf. In fact I find it rather more tasteful than some of the stuff I see in other parts of the city, and I am rather jealous of some of the <i>kameez<\/i>es I see. (However I do still find it odd that the same women wear open-toed sandals all year round. Doesn&rsquo;t it get cold in winter?)\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSpeaking of covering up, I find it interesting that western women are most likely to hide their eyes behind dark sunglasses, while Muslim women do the opposite and cover everything but the eyes.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8230; everyone and their dog has either a travel agency or a money transfer service, often attached to some other business.<br \/>\n&ldquo;Business centre and travel agency&rdquo;<br \/>\n&ldquo;Book shop and travel agency&rdquo;<br \/>\n&ldquo;Money transfer and ladies taylor&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAs a consequence I am always up-to-date on the exchange rate of the bangladeshi taka (which generally hovers around 135 per pound) even when I have no idea what the Swedish krona might be worth. And I could find someone to book a <i>hajj<\/i> or <i>umrah<\/i> trip for me, or book a flight to Dhaka or Sylhet, far easily than I could find a diving trip.\n<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Prayer_break.jpg\"><\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Money_transfer_and_ladies_taylor.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; shops don&rsquo;t close for lunch but some do close for Friday prayer. &#8230; I no longer find it surprising or even noteworthy when the women I meet in the street are dressed in abaya, hijab and niqab, covering everything except for their eyes, or when schoolgirls&rsquo; uniforms consist of a salwar kameez and a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything_else"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}