I’m at the end of my two-week Christmas holidays, and I don’t feel like I’ve had a moment to relax. Moving house started on December 22nd when I got up early, rented a ‘High Ace’ van and spent the whole day hauling boxes and furniture over to our new house. It was 3am by the time I finally got everything done, and two whole rooms were packed with the stuff I had moved.
The next day, a good friend came around to help me move the heavy stuff, namely our refrigerator, washing machine and sofa, and the day after that was when Mr. H brought his team of traffic light engineers over to do the air conditioners.
Since then, I’ve spent the holidays putting things in the rightful places, shopping for everything from new light bulbs to bookcases, and throwing out an enormous amount of rubbish.
Mami and I have made some wonderful discoveries such as realizing the tap in the bathroom sink is attached to a hidden half-meter long hose, so you can pull it out and wash all around the basin, and we’re lucky enough to have a modern toilet with heated seat and built in bum-hole washer, for want of a better description.
Not everything is perfect however. The upstairs toilet has an unsightly stain in it which even kerosene is struggling to remove (it could be weeks of scrubbing before it’s gone), and the doorbell is one of those high-tech gadgets that connects to your telephone, causing it to ring when someone comes to visit. Although it sounds posh, it won’t work without the correct phone adapter, which needed an extensive internet search to find a shop that sells one (for a whopping $100!). On top of that, a couple of doors won’t close properly after earthquakes have made the house a tad uneven.
On the whole though, they are small problems which will be fixed in time, and we are thrilled with our purchase. This is a house that was built during the bubble economy for close to half a million dollars. We picked it up for well under half that.
The neighbors are friendly, but I’ve been roped into once-a month rubbish duty, which I’ll no doubt tell you about after I’ve got my hands dirty.
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