Thursday 26 April 2012

if it's not one damned thing


November 2011 – conversation with self back in Al Ain. Should we take the furniture, or should we sell it here? If we sell, we’ll have to put up with endless people traipsing through the house and bargaining with us. Horrible! But houses in Brunei are generally furnished. Yes, but the furniture is mostly crappy. At least we’ll have our own stuff if we take it. Okay, take it!

Removalist gives extortionate quote. We check that it includes disassembly and reassembly of our furniture & unpacking. It’s door to door with no extra expenses. Check. So nothing extra? Check.

February, 2012 - Because there is no house available when we arriv we put our things in storage. We wangle one month free storage. Nice.  Everything is looking good. J

April, 2012 - Temporary apartment becomes available and will tide us over until our house is ready. Nice apartment. Sensational views. Should we get our furniture out of storage or use the furniture in the apartment? Crappy furniture in apartment. Cost of storage and insurance is high. Cost of move from apartment to house is less than keeping it in storage. Okay, let’s get our furniture delivered.

Ring up the removalist to discuss date and procedures. Suddenly there’s a $500 charge for moving the shipping from the dock to the storage. Hmmm. First we’ve heard of it. We commit to move to apartment. Then there’s a charge for moving things to the 10th floor of the apartment – the quote only includes to 1st floor. Bloody fine print! So we’re out of pocket on that one. Need a handy man to reassemble furniture. Whoooaaaa Neddy!! No. No. No. We were assured in Al Ain that we didn’t need a handy man and that removalist guys would reassemble.

I try desperately not to either implode or explode. Worry that K may do either the former or the latter. Turns out he’s got murder on his mind! Agggghhhhh!

Ommmmmm! Ommmmm! Breathe. Breathe. Focus on the breath. Feel it going into the body. Feel it leaving the body. Focus on the next breath. In and out. In and out. The present moment is the only moment. Breathe.

Delivery is on Saturday. Good chance that our furniture will be in a zillion pieces and the guys will walk out. I like puzzles. I do. Really I do. But this is too much.

So, yes, we have accommodation. We can leave our less-than-palatial hotel, but the next few days will be challenging.

Funny thing. For years I read that moving house was up there with divorce or death in the family. I’ve never really got it. Moving has never seemed like much of a trauma to me. But, suddenly, here in Brunei, I GET IT!!

4 comments:

-blessed holy socks, the non-perishable-zealot said...

God bless you. Cya soon Upstairs...

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om mohamed said...


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Neuvoo is a job search engine that indexes jobs directly for free from companies career websites, placement agencies and job boards. We centralize all jobs available on the web, so we are much like the Google for jobs.

Our job search engine offers over 130 000 jobs in UAE and the list is always growing. We will be glad if you add our link neuvoo.ae on your website, to offer new job and training opportunities for the job seekers and your visitors in general. It will be an opportunity to get more traffic and visitors for your website.

Advantages of Neuvoo:
• More than 130 000 jobs available in UAE and more in Golf countries, Egypt, Europe, South America, US and Canada.
• Comfortable and easy search options;
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We already collaborate with many organizations around the world to help people search for careers easily and for free.

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Have a Wonderful day and I am looking forward to hear from you soon!

Best regards,

Imane ELMKADEM
call's agent Neuvoo
Phone: +41 21 5880667
Mail: imane@neuvoo.com

Anonymous said...

Nice Article. I think living in Al Ain is quite refereshing. Al Ain has a more laidback look than Abu Dhabi or Dubai and it has a nice scenery being called the Garden City of UAE. Anyway, if anybody is considering to study mba in uae? they can consider looking in Al Ain.