Mom arrived in Wellington on Tuesday (11-Dec) night, or rather, it should be Wednesday early morning (12-Dec 12am+). I went to pick her up at the airport. As the last bus to the airport was at around 9pm+, i waited there for more than 4 hours when almost all shops were closed. I had thought of having my dinner at the airport but didn't know that the shops at the airport here do not operate 24 hours like at Changi Aiport. I gotta eat Subway sandwiches for dinner since it was one of the few shops that was still open. And on that day itself, i have had bread for all my three meals.
When mom and i got back to the apartment hotel, it was already 1am+. We had to check out from the hotel by Wednesday 10am and then lug our luggage across the street for about 350m to the apartment that i have rented for the next 6 months.
After moving in to the new place, there were (and still are) lots of things to settle. I have hooked up the electricity in time but not the Internet. I am still using the expensive prepaid mobile broadband now for accessing the Internet. There are still some stuff to buy as well despite this apartment is supposed to be furnished. After all, it does not come with the other household stuff such as laundry basket, dustbins, detergent, toilet paper, etc. There also isn't enough wardrobe space for my clothes and drawers/cupboard for my other stuff, and also i need to get a proper working desk and chair for working on my laptop. I am now sitting on the carpeted floor with my laptop on the living room coffee table, and this makes my arms and buttock ache!
Mom and i have been out shopping everyday after i got home from work and over the weekend. For the stuff that i couldn't find in this city, i managed to find some on a popular NZ website and ordered them online. There are lots of things that can be easily found back home but not here. For instance, we could not find table mirror and the one that we did find in a furniture shop cost NZD30+, which we did not buy. There are still quite a number of things to buy, and i have actually spent a lot already. I am now running out of NZD and gotta use my SG credit card. This means that i will have to suffer some currency exchange loss.
Besides furnishing the place, I also need to settle some outstanding issues with the property agent / building management because the inventory list that was given to me does not exactly match the things in the apartment. I have emailed to the agent but she did not reply me on my dispute. I gotta get this right lest I am held liable for the missing stuff or damaged areas when i end the lease.
It is 12:36am now and i ought to go to sleep soon. On days that i am not staring work at the client's site, I have been going into office late everyday (official working hours is 8:30am to 5:30pm), at around 9am. My boss has been kind and understanding about this in view of my needs to settle down quickly. However this cannot go on forever. I have decided to be on time tomorrow and hence will have to get up a bit earlier than usual.
Will update more tomorrow... hopefully.
Labels: life
