Thursday 28 August 2008

And we're back!

Dear readers,
Sorry about the long silence - last week was pretty busy. The results of note are that a typhoon has been and gone, and we have a new address. It would be foolhardy to publish it here, but I think you should all know if...if not, email me and I'll let you know.

I spent the day last Wednesday on the Peak with a friend, which was lovely and very relaxing. It was kind of strange not to hear Cantonese all day. For your info (I know you're always on the lookout for juicy cultural titbits - or should that be stereotypes?) Cantonese sounds like people arguing, and Mandarin (or Putonghua as it is known here) sounds like someone chewing on a whisky tumbler full of wasps. If you saw Hu Jintao's speech at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, you'll know what I mean.

I got a call from AGS Four Winds to say that our stuff had successfully docked, and cleared customs, so we managed to schedule delivery for Thursday afternoon, not least because Typhoon Nuri was due to arrive on Friday.

I spent Thursday morning in cabs between the serviced apartment in Wanchai, and the new apartment here in Happy Valley. Luckily we hadn't accumulated too much stuff in our first six weeks! The shippers turned up on Thursday afternoon, with 48 boxes, including our bed and sofa. They unpacked very quickly and efficiently, or at least as efficiently as possible in a minuscule flat! They were very good, and friendly. Don't know how much they cost, because HSBC paid, but the service both here and in the UK was very good. I've just about finished unpacking the last few boxes now - there were 6 boxes of books, rather excessive in retrospect.

The thing about professionals doing the packing is that you prepare stuff for them, then ask them to pack everything in this drawer, or whatever's left in the bathroom, something like that. So you inevitably end up with some random stuff that you forgot about in the back of the drawer. The prize for most useless item to have travelled 6,000 miles is a rather nice, brand new (still packaged) brass window catch that we never got round to fitting in the house in Sawbo....

Anyway, it's lovely to have all our belongings back, our photos, books, decent knives, peeler, that sort of thing. Oh, and the Pilates mat, phew!

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