Moving

July 31 2007

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 ...

Anniversary

Another post to mark another important milestone along my journey of recovery. It is 8 months today since i had my gamma knife surgery at the veteran's hospital. currently, i am experiencing a relapse and have been having terrible convulsions sometimes twice a day. i seem to slowly be getting better thanks to a lot of bed rest, but due to my relapse colin and i have had some terrible fights and the stress has just become too much for us. so, i am not sure what is going to happen to what is left of our relationship.

Anniversary

as is the tradition of this blog i must commemorate the anniversary of the day that i simultaneously discovered that i had an avm on my brain stem and stopped smoking. it has now been 9 months, but it feels like forever. i can barely remember what my life was like, what i was like, before that fateful day.

things have changed dramatically, some irrevocably.

stopping smoking is one of the best things i have ever done for myself and although having an avm on my brain stem is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, having it discovered in time - before it hemorrhaged - is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. so, today is a good day, today is a good anniversary.

Arrival

July 30 2007

The road to our new flat

The day finally came and what a day it was! We were officially supposed to move into the new flat only on July 31, but the former tenant was leaving early on July 30, Monday so why not move in earlier? We managed to convince the one mover to help us in the early evening on July 30. He was going to transport not only our fridge, washer and dryer, but he had also agreed to come to our old flat and help us move all our other baggage, including our huge sleeper couch.

colin was working that day so he arranged to meet me, dina and the mover at our new flat in the early evening. the mover arrived at around 4pm in a small flat-bed truck that was already half taken up by our washer, dryer and fridge. my heart dropped when i saw the truck, it was not what i had been expecting. how on earth were we going to fit all our mounds of baggage plus a rather large sleeper couch onto that little truck?! and then, how was the mover going to drive the truck all the way to the mountains without something falling off or breaking?!

i was very nervous and so was the mover. neither of us were quite prepared for the mammoth task ahead of us. firstly, dina and i had to help the mover carry all our stuff down three flights of stairs and onto his truck ... i was certain i kept hearing glasses break as he desperately tried to mash all of our possessions onto his little truck and tie them all down. finally, dina and i watched the truck waddle slowly away with all colin and my possessions waving from side to side. "please drive slowly" i had begged him. dina and i jumped into a taxi with extra baggage and headed for our new flat to meet colin and the mover.

dina and i arrived and clambered up five flights of stairs to the rooftop and colin and my new home at about 5:30pm. colin was still at work and we expected to have to wait for him to let us inside as he had the key so, imagine my surprise when i saw our door wide open and our senile, slightly crazy landlady and her toothless friend hauling things out of our flat. now, colin and i had been promised certain things such as bowls, plates, knives, forks, a toaster etc etc by the previous tenant, but i also knew that the previous tenant had sold the landlady her large appliances so, when i saw them pushing the old fridge out the door i didn't get too worried, but then i noticed that they were taking EVERYTHING. this was a free-for-all that i had to stop!

i stormed into the house and quickly started telling them, in no uncertain terms, what they could and could not take. i literally had to pull plates out of the toothless friend's (now just called 'toothless' ;-) hands commanding "zhe shi wode!", meaning "this is mine!" this is not the nicest way of arriving at one's new abode, to see one's landlady fleecing the place. but, thank god we had decided to move in early so that i could catch her in the act and save what was rightfully ours!

meanwhile, during this little 'drama of ownership', the mover had arrived, ostentiously with all of our belongings still precariously strapped to the back of his truck. he wanted to know how to get up to our flat and wanted help carrying things. as i was desperately trying to multi-task a very odd situation with taiwanese people who did not speak a word of english and a phillipino house assistant who seemed unable to carry anything heavier than a pair of shoes, colin finally arrived to help. our landlady and her friend were dispatched for the time being and colin commenced the laborious task of helping the mover carry everything from his truck up to our fifth floor apartment. i felt great sympathy for both of them as it was horribly hot and humid and they were carrying incredibly heavy objects up a ridiculous amount of stairs. both colin and the mover were bathed in sweat by the time they were finished, but the mover was still in good spirits. he connected our fridge and our washing machine and then left with a sigh of relief.

colin and i, however, were not in good spirits. in fact, we were livid. we had explained to dina beforehand that she would have to help carry, but she insisted on hiding around corners, disappearing to avoid doing the heavy work. colin and i both got angry and repeatedly told her to move her ass and start helping, but to no avail. i ended up doing more heavy lifting than she did and i was the one who had had brain surgery. by the time everything was inside the new flat, including dina who was listlessly sweeping the filthy floor, we were both tired and grumpy. colin went downstairs to find our landlady and toothless and managed to regain most of what they had taken from us. they were very apologetic and there were no hard feelings. not so with dina, we sent her home and then bitched to each other about how incredibly lazy she had been that day. finally we set up our sleeper couch amid our boxes and the amazing amount of trash and dirt that the previous tenant had left and went to sleep.

Furniture

July 22 - July 29 2007

one of the first things we had to do before our move was buy ALL the furniture. there were built-in cupboards in our mountain flat and that was it; no fridge, no bed, no washing machine, NOTHING. so, we decided to go to IKEA. we had a long list and spent about 2 hours going through the entire store - me being pushed in the wheelchair - dutifully writing down names and ID numbers for all the items we wanted. finally, we arrived at the ordering area. there were two guys on computers recording what people were ordering and when they wanted it delivered.

two guys?! not nearly enough. but, we had no choice, we waited for about half an hour before we got to order our furniture. we started going through everything painfully slowly. half an hour into the process we got told "oh sorry, we don't have the mattress you want." hmmm ... okay, there was another one that was also okay, so colin ran halfway back through the store to find the other mattress and get the ID number while i continued going through our extensive list with the computer guy. we got the ID number for the other mattress and then got told, "oh sorry, we dont have the bed you want."

and that was the end of my self-control right there. we had, by then spent 4 hours in IKEA only to discover that the main reason we had gone there in the first place; to buy a decent bed (which is difficult to find as most taiwanese mattresses are rock- like) was the one thing that they didn't have! not only this, but that they were so incompetent, so thoughtless that they kept out of stock items on display and then couldn't even be bothered to put a warning 'sold out' sticker on them. and the worst part of all of this was that colin had gone to that very store the day before and spoken to someone in the bed department who had encouraged him to buy that very same bed and mattress!

i must have been an interesting site. a foreign female, in a tartan wheelchair, flanked by her 2 m tall boyfriend, screaming at an IKEA worker in chinese about how lazy and disgusting his store was. naturally we both stormed out shouting about how much they had wasted our time (we both have very volatile tempers ;-). we phoned and made an official complaint about how badly the place was run and then vowed never to set foot in an IKEA ever again and to warn all our friends against the place. so far, we had spent a day at IKEA and come out with no furniture, but with MUCH higher blood pressure.

our only other option was to trawl the second-hand furniture stores near our flat. this was very hard on colin physically as he had to push my wheelchair around uneven and often non-existent sidewalks in the middle of taiwan summer: temperature 36 C; humidity 80%. we spent a day missioning around looking for good deals and honest salesmen, arranging deliveries and making deals in chinese while poor colin sweated off half his body weight. eventually, after a whole lot of bickering we found everything that we wanted. we managed to convince one salesman to shorten the legs of a coffe table for us and another salesman to come to our old apartment and help us move our existing furniture as well as what we had bought from him. dates were arranged and times set. well done sue and colin!

we could finally relax about the furniture, we had everything under control and had done it all in chinese. no problem! right?!