Kick-starting life in another flat

So, after threats of moving being necessary to take care of the termites at our flat, and the electrical problems we had, and after which, our woodwork wasn’t even fixed after several months had passed, Amy and I decided that it was time to actually act on our threat and find a new flat. Basically, despite really liking our flat, it sucked to have to make threats any time that we needed to get something fixed.

We gave our two months notice and soft of half-heartedly started to look for a place. At about the same time, one of our co-workers was going to be moving out of her flat. Her flat was nice, though not quite as nice, and it was also in a great location. Still, we didn’t want to just jump at the first thing that came our way; we told her that we were interested, but that we still wanted to look around a bit. Honestly, though, things just weren’t really showing up….

So, in the end, we settled on taking over our co-worker’s flat—a decision that was finalized suddenly at the end of August—really last minute like. We were waiting for over a week for our friend’s landlord to return to Chennai to find out if she was comfortable with the transfer, and she literally returned on August 29th.

We met with her, and she seemed comfortable with the transfer. So, Friday September the 1st, we started “shifting” as they like to say here in India. Our friend had found some guys off the street with a truck who had helped her move our of her place the day before, so we decided to go ahead and use them too. Soon enough, barely even half packed, we were scheduling them to come and get our stuff that evening.

Meanwhile, I went over to our new flat to let the cleaners in to do a preliminary scrub-down of the whole place. After “supervising” them in our entirely empty apartment, I raced back over to our soon-to-be-”old” home to help load the final items onto the truck. Now, I know that we don’t really have a lot of stuff, but still, those guys had moved fast. I was there less than 15 minutes before they were ready to take the stuff over to our new flat. Another 15 minutes, and we were unpacking things off the truck.

Now, change is never easy—and that seems especially true in India. So, while we got to our new place quietly enough, we knew that settling in would take some time. For example, we still needed to move our air-conditioner. This meant one more organized trip with a carpenter to return to our old flat. And we needed to have pest-control come—something we had hoped would only be a precautionary measure but instead turned out to be a necessary one.

With that in mind—and knowing with certainty that pest-control would be making a mess of the place when they came—we decided to just leave everything in the middle of the room. They would be coming early the following week anyway, so it wouldn’t have been too inconvenient.

Sitting around in our new home on Saturday, writing a long paper, our doorbell unexpectedly rings. Two guys are there, ready to move our co-worker’s A/C out—so we snag them and say, “Hey, why don’t you move ours in too? It’s in Chetput.” Amy takes an auto ride with the A/C installer guys to pick up our A/C and forty minutes later, they’re back, banging their way around our flat. They decide that our A/C needs servicing, and it’s only about $4 or so, so Amy and I decide to go with it. Next thing we know, they’ve taken one of our toothbrushes and proceeded to start scrubbing the slats in the front of the A/C and leaving a black mess of junk in our bathroom.

Oh well. Whatever. At least we’re in a cool messy place instead of a hot one….

Sunday comes around, and Amy and I decide to take it slow and try to have a nice day. We go and have lunch. Amy decides she needs to go to work and get some stuff taken care of. I do my usual and go to Barista to get some caffeine in me. Amy and I meet up later for dinner, then head back home. Only thing—the key that we used to lock the door doesn’t seem to want to work to open it…. I try my key. Amy tries her key. The maintenance comes and tries to fiddle with it.

No luck.

“So, do you know a carpenter or a locksmith who we can call to get this taken care of?” “Sorry. It’s not possible. Sunday holiday, Sir.” Wow. Thanks for trying dude….

So, I go across the street to the restaurant/cigarette stand that’s there and I describe the problem to the guy at the cigarette stand. He sits there, twirling the key around and inspecting it as if he can tell from looking at the key whether it would work to open the door or not. But, in a few minutes, he’s roused up a handful of guys—one of them with a screwdriver—to come and try and help us with our problem.

When we get up to the flat, I find out that one of our upstairs neighbors has apparently joined Amy in the quest to get the door open. After everyone has had their turn to jiggle the key around without any luck (there are five guys in the hallway at this point) they all come to the conclusion that the only option now would be to kick the door in.

Hey. At least it wasn’t our first choice!

I could tell once the decision had been made that at least one of the guys there was really excited about the option of getting to do something so much fun. He quickly posed himself in a stereotypical karate-kick/movie-style door-kicking-in posture and jabs his foot into the door with a loud bang.

Funny. I swear that he moved more than the door at that point.

Still, that didn’t deter them, and holding the regular door handle in the “open” position, three of the guys slammed into the door finally popping it open.

It turned out that there really wasn’t any damage done. The lock that was being stubborn just latched into a metal piece nailed on to the outside of the door’s frame rather than latching into the door’s frame. So there wasn’t any damage done to the frame at all, which is what we were most afraid of to begin with….

Anyway, almost as soon as the door was open, all the guys quickly disappeared—actually refusing to take a “tip” from us. Pretty nice of them overall…. And so we entered our new flat, ready to start again….

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