Finally a Home Delivery!

After months and months of waiting, our furniture and things – our home really – were finally delivered to our house. Dealing with movers and relocation companies sometimes feels as a Sisyphean task but with time and a lot of patience, the shipment will arrive and life can slowly return to normal. I’m still trying to handle the culture shock that moving back to a Westernized society has provided me with. Here, I’m no longer Madam or Signora, I’m not superior to anyone - we are all equals - and my husband is no longer the obvious Head of the Family. Having moved so many times and met so many removal specialist, I was a little surprised when ALL the crew rang the doorbell and introduced themselves, greeting my husband and me by our first names. The oldest moving man, the team leader I guess, immediately started complaining about our furniture; how heavy it was (”it’s solid wood, we need to be several of us to carry”), how difficult it would be to carry the non-dismantable furniture upstairs as the staircase is not extremely wide (”it’s not possible, we’ll never get it up”), how impossible it would be to get our Californian king sized bed up (”why do you even have such a big bed”?!) and how stupid it is not to have the kitchen on the ground floor (”it’s stupid to have the kitchen upstairs”). I was very tempted to tell the man to stop complaining and put his back in to it instead. Or perhaps finding an other career instead as the business he’s currently in involves carrying other people’s possibly heavy and unwieldy furniture. I didn’t say anything to him other than in my mind where I told him off very sternly. I realized that giving him and his crew a scolding would most likely antagonize them and resulting in a refusal to work and I really wanted our things and furniture to be carried inside the house and not left on the driveway. So I closed my ears, smiled my loveliest smile and at lunchtime I even drove away to get them fresh coffee, doughnuts and lamingtons. This gesture was very appreciated and led to less complaining. The moving men said nothing about the marble table they had to be six people to carry. They did however comment as they left that we have many beautiful things and they were wondering how we would be able to fit it all into this normal sized house. And by the way, they managed to get everything upstairs without too much hassle - just like I knew they would. 

Although it’s hard work to unpack all the boxes, clean everything and find the perfect spot for it all, it’s wonderful to have a home again. Fitting everything into our house will be less of a problem than we anticipated. The relocation company in Kuwait lived up to their reputation when they packed our home: a considerable amount of our things are now out of order or seem to have gotten new owners. After I’ve finished unpacking everything, I will start filling out the insurance claim form and THEN I will put up our Christmas decorations. Life in Australia can begin – for real.