Our stuff has arrived

Deciding what to bring when you move from one country to another can prove difficult, traumatic even. As those of you who read this will know this time we have not only moved country but company as well. Our previous company, The Company (red) had a generous allowance, built into our contract, so in Singapore we were able to sit on our own couch, eat off our own plates and even ...bliss....sleep on our own beds and we weren't even bumping the edges of the provided container. By comparasion the allowance The Company (blue) pays for is barely enough to cover linens and clothing let alone all the things you bring to make the house feel like a home. We carefully separated our precious things, making sacrifices and saying goodbye to all but the things we couldn't live without and still exceeded our limit by more than half! The rest went south to New Zealand to join what is left in storage.

When we moved from the Pacific to Asia we skipped through New Zealand on the way and dipped into our storage crate to reclaim some of our furniture for the Singapore shift. Both boys loved trawling through their boxes chosing what to bring and what to leave behind again. The part of their lives they had grown out of grew a little bigger, the precious things they moved with changed from stereo, lego and books to files stored on an ipod, CD cases filled with discs and books. The container has become a time capsule of sorts with an as yet unknown date of retrieval. I would have loved to have been able to pass some of the passable stuff on to my nieces and nephew but because we are non residents that would mean paying duty so unless we move back for a spell in storage it stays.

Yesterday our stuff arrived. Well most of it arrived. I arrived home from the gym to find a hallway full of boxes, a meagre 62 precious boxes, waiting for me to unpack. I attacked the 'kitchen' boxes looking for our brand spanking new coffee machine. Kitchen sorted I turned to the boxes marked 'misc', then 'misc and ornaments', then 'art frames', 'books and games'. Still no cappuchino. I unpacked 'clothes', resurrected 'pillows and bedding' and shelved 'linens', checked the labels on the remaining 2 or 3 boxes, left a strained message on Js phone and sat down with a diet coke instead. Finally in a box marked 'entertainment centre' and after almost everything else was homed the coffee machine emerged. Whew!!