The finished product
the next day we were expecting the arrival of the rest of our furniture some time in the morning. this included bed, desk, chairs, TV, coffee table etc etc. colin had taken the day off work to help with all the moving, especially as there was still a lot of stuff that needed to be fetched from our old apartment. dina arrived pretty much on time and did a fantastic job of cleaning the new flat. she even cleaned the extractor fan above the cooking area and this slightly redeemed her in our eyes and we decided that maybe she wasn't as lazy as we had thought, but that maybe it was a cultural difference. women in the phillipines never carry heavy objects, that is man's work or some such thing.
i was in full 'stress-mode' and raring to go. i just wanted to start unpacking boxes and get everything in it's right place and have our lives organised as fast as possible. i just had to wait for the movers to bring our furniture. we got a call from the movers ... "sorry, we can only come in the afternoon at about 2pm". WHAT?! i was pretty pissed off and had to content myself with unpacking what few things i could. colin was far calmer about the whole thing until we got a call that afternoon ... "sorry, we cant come now because it is raining."
"well, it's not raining here."
"well, it's raining by our shop."
"well, then when CAN you come?"
"we dont know."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
that is when colin also lost his temper and we started to question whether these guys were ever going to bring our furniture and started berating ourselves for giving them the money before delivery. stupid, stupid, stupid! fortunately, after a series of increasingly rabid phone calls the movers finally arrived with all our furniture at about 4pm and there were apologies all around. finally, i could start the best part of the whole moving process. unpacking things and placing them. decorating and watching the empty apartment transform into what would be our home until the end of november. it seems crazy that we went to all this trouble just to live in the place for four months, but we had decided that if we didn't get a change of scenery - especially to move to such beautiful, quiet scenery - we would kill each other.
i suppose i should also quickly explain why the end of november was our leaving date. pretty simple really, colin's contract at his school would finish at the end of november and he would get a nice bonus and my work visa (ARC) also expired at the end of november. i had already been told that there was no way i could start work in december and i would also be unable to pass the mandatory health test to get another ARC anyway, which would mean the end of my government funded health care. we were both pretty sick of taiwan already and were sure that by november we would be dying to go back to south africa. i was, and am, still very sick and i needed/need to be with my family. colin was struggling to look after me all by himself, we both needed the help of family, friends and familiar surroundings. even just knowing that we would be enjoying the tranquility and beauty of our rooftop mountain flat (even for a short time) was enough to sooth our frayed nerves and stave off impending insanity.
so ... back to the story. while i was happily arranging and unpacking things colin still had to move some stuff from our old apartment. all his computer equipment as well as all the food from the fridge. luckily we had a friend come and help us on that tuesday. he was on holiday and said he was bored, but he didn't know what he was getting himself into when he offered to help out. i think him and colin had to make two taxi trips lugging backpacks filled with the strangest mixture of electronics and food stuffs; computer wires, keyboards, frozen meat, cheese etc etc. the poor men were sweating by the end of it. they then sat and had beers while dina and i packed away the food etc. typical! (although i would have also had a beer were i allowed to drink ;-).
the following day, wednesday, august 1 was my birthday. i have never really placed too much importance on the day of my birth (after all, it's just another day) so, i hadn't planned anything special. i knew that there was still a lot of work to be done before our mountain flat could become the comfortable getaway i envisioned and i didn't really mind not making a big fuss of my birthday.
but colin had a surprise for me ...
and so did dina ...
