I live in Bangalore India

I am living in a house in Bangalore, India. Seriously.

We moved into the house last Wednesday, five days ago. I don’t think it matters where you are moving to or from. Moving days are pretty much the same whether you are moving across town, down the block or half the world away. You wake up excited the morning of the move, you get to the new house and things start arriving. By the end of the day the house is full of a mishmash of furniture and boxes. For some reason or another you end up sleeping on a mattress on the floor, not wanting to go to sleep...because you know you are going to have to wake up and deal with this big mess and don’t yet know where anything should go.

It’s true, we were all excited to move out of the apartment and into the house. We were up early, packed up the van and arrived at the house at 9:30am. Deliveries started to arrive within the hour. Everything that we had ordered in Bangalore arrived in small trucks with small delivery men. It all came in boxes and had to be put together – luckily in India, the delivery people put it all together.

Soon enough the floors were covered with pieces of furniture and tiny screws, but piece by piece the couches and chairs, the table and chairs, the beds – all of it got put together. Of course, the most exciting delivery was the air shipment box from Canada. Our stuff – it’s minimal, but it’s our stuff.

There were only a few problems – the table was scratched, as well as one chair. But they agreed to replace it in a few days. The TV arrived but they forgot to send the free Tata Sky box (cable) and 50 DVD’s that were supposed to come with it. Oh, and by 9:30pm the mattresses still hadn’t arrived.

I can’t remember if I mentioned in my last posting that the mattress company had phoned a couple days before the move to say that they wouldn’t be ready for Wed. But Michael went and talked to them and got it sorted out – they didn’t have the color mattresses that we requested, but they did have other colors. All we cared about was that they would be delivered on Wed.

Wed. afternoon Michael phones to make sure they are going to deliver them and they say maybe by 9:00pm but for sure by 10:00am the next day. We said no, it had to be today. I mean, what is the one thing that you need when you move into a house – a mattress, something to sleep on!

So then phone tag ensued.

“Are they coming?”

“Yes Sir, one hour away.”

An hour later, two hours later, three hours later...9:30pm, still no mattresses.

“Sir, the driver cannot find your house.”

“Well, where is he.”

“He’s at The Bank of India.”

“He’s at a bank?” Doesn’t he have the address? You have the address, explain to him how to get here.”

“Ok Sir.”

Anyway, this went on and on, back and forth, until they finally made it to the gate of the complex and Michael and the kids finally went out to look for them and guide them to the house.

Relief, they finally drove up – three guys, three mattresses. They bring in the first mattress, a single for Craig, then the queen for Alanna. But wait, something doesn’t seem right – it’s too long for the bed. Everyone stands and scratches their heads, the three guys shake their heads. I can’t believe it. Ok, ok just bring in the last one for our bed and we’ll deal with this later. In comes our mattress and onto the bed – three inches too long for the bed – whaaat??? Wait a minute, I run back to Craig’s room. Sure enough it too, is three inches too long for his bed.

Phone calls back to the person in charge, a lot of shaking heads and no one had a measuring tape. No one had an answer for this. We agreed to put the mattresses on the floor, not take off the plastic and someone would come out to take measurements the next day.

So, our first night in our new house we all slept on mattresses on the floor with a mishmash of furniture and boxes all around. It was 12:30am and I didn’t want to go to bed – I knew the morning would come too soon and I’d have to deal with all this stuff.

That’s it for now as I don’t have any internet and probably won’t have any for another week. But Michael is nice enough to post this for me at work and I’ll write some more tomorrow.