All’s well that end’s well

BY ONEIKA RAYMOND


So I did it. I moved. Using my own two arms and legs and three taxis and a bit of elbow grease, I successfully and single-handedly moved my stuff from one apartment to another in Hong Kong. It was comical, and sad at the same time. In the eleventh hour (literally 45 minutes before I had to hand over the keys to my old apartment to my landlord) I still had 75% of my stuff in the old flat.

I did not hire a moving truck.
I (stupidly) refused offers of help/manpower to facilitate the move.

Ah, the joys of procrastination.

So 45 minutes before I had to be out of the old flat, I was having a minor meltdown and Liebling had to try to calm me down over the phone, from his desk at work thousands of miles away in London. An angel in the form of the doormen of my old and new flats came to my rescue (the one in my old flat helped me get my stuff downstairs, and the one in my new flat came out to the long, back alleyway tucked behind the building and helped me schlep my stuff into my new apartment.

Trying to flag down a cab was hilarious (in retrospect). About 4 or 5 cabs passed me by and refused to stop after seeing how many bags I had. Thankfully, new friend of mine, who lives in my old building, let me keep some of my stuff at her place. But I still had way too much.

In the end I had to pull the old “bait-and-switch”- I stood out on the curb with only 2 of my 10-odd bags/packages/suitcases, and as soon as the cab stopped and I loaded my 2 bags into the trunk, my doorman and the delivery guy from the pizza place next to my old apartment building came running up and loaded the rest of my stuff into the back and front seat. We did that a total of three times. HA!

The lesson to be learned in all of this? Not “don’t procrastinate”. Not “you should really let people help you”.

Lesson? I really need to downsize. I have WAY too much clothes/shoes/brick-a-brack. Leaving Hong Kong is going to be a nightmare.

SHARING IS CARING

146 Comments

Comments are closed.