IT WAS AN ILL OMEN WHEN OUR FLIGHT TO Europe was mysteriously cancelled for “logistical reasons”. But otherwise the move to Holland was on track. After two months of limbo and living out of suitcases, we would be sleeping in our own beds again. Or so we thought.
Here was the plan. Arrive on Thursday, have the house in livable condition by Monday and sort out the details from there onwards. Sure.
At 8am on Friday morning, two guys pitched up in a car, apparently part of the assembly crew. The shipping container into which they were supposed to assemble finally arrived at 9am, which wouldn’t have been too bad if it didn’t come with a total crew of two. This for a load that took eight guys more than two days to pack in China. Factor in that the truck couldn’t actually make it onto the property (an unforeseen difficulty) and we now had four people to do the job of twice that many while also carting all our material possessions fifty metres up a driveway.
But hey, this is the first world, where labour is expensive but labour-reducing equipment is ubiquitous. By 2pm we had a small truck added to the team. Now everything had to come out of the container, onto the truck, up the driveway, down from the truck and into the house. Things were getting more than a little chaotic, especially as the sun started setting and everything was dumped in a complete, unorganised mess. We would pay for that later.
As the day drew to a close, we were kindly informed that nobody from the removal company would be on site the next day because everybody had to pitch in on another, particularly large, move. This, despite our weeks of careful planning and scheduling. To say we retired to our hotel in a less than happy mood would be an understatement.
On Saturday we learned that, yes, it could indeed get worse. The sub-contractors tasked with re-assembling the furnishings (the kids’ beds, the computer desks, the wardrobes) faced a huge pile of almost-matching parts that had been strewn haphazardly about the place. On top of that, the Chinese movers had neglected to send through the re-assembly plans. Our assemblers were experts at the IKEA way of doing things, but little else. It took them one day to assemble the shell of one wardrobe – and nothing else. We spent the first night in our new house sleeping on mattresses on the floor, ever less enamoured of our first first-world living experience.
I kicked up a stink like you’ve never seen. New experts arrived and my wife taught them how to sort parts and figure where they might go. By Day Six we were where we should have been on Day Three, and wiser for the experience.
To be fair, many things went right. The kids had a great orientation at the school. Our visit to the immigration department took 15 minutes, and an hour later the entire family had social security numbers issued by the Leiden tax office. I can’t quite get my internet connection configured yet, but when it is up and running I’ll have a connection five times as fast as anything I could get in South Africa, without any download cap.
Next time, though, if I had the choice, I’d rather have the Chinese bureaucracy than the Dutch logistical skills.
Here was the plan. Arrive on Thursday, have the house in livable condition by Monday and sort out the details from there onwards. Sure.
At 8am on Friday morning, two guys pitched up in a car, apparently part of the assembly crew. The shipping container into which they were supposed to assemble finally arrived at 9am, which wouldn’t have been too bad if it didn’t come with a total crew of two. This for a load that took eight guys more than two days to pack in China. Factor in that the truck couldn’t actually make it onto the property (an unforeseen difficulty) and we now had four people to do the job of twice that many while also carting all our material possessions fifty metres up a driveway.
But hey, this is the first world, where labour is expensive but labour-reducing equipment is ubiquitous. By 2pm we had a small truck added to the team. Now everything had to come out of the container, onto the truck, up the driveway, down from the truck and into the house. Things were getting more than a little chaotic, especially as the sun started setting and everything was dumped in a complete, unorganised mess. We would pay for that later.
As the day drew to a close, we were kindly informed that nobody from the removal company would be on site the next day because everybody had to pitch in on another, particularly large, move. This, despite our weeks of careful planning and scheduling. To say we retired to our hotel in a less than happy mood would be an understatement.
On Saturday we learned that, yes, it could indeed get worse. The sub-contractors tasked with re-assembling the furnishings (the kids’ beds, the computer desks, the wardrobes) faced a huge pile of almost-matching parts that had been strewn haphazardly about the place. On top of that, the Chinese movers had neglected to send through the re-assembly plans. Our assemblers were experts at the IKEA way of doing things, but little else. It took them one day to assemble the shell of one wardrobe – and nothing else. We spent the first night in our new house sleeping on mattresses on the floor, ever less enamoured of our first first-world living experience.
I kicked up a stink like you’ve never seen. New experts arrived and my wife taught them how to sort parts and figure where they might go. By Day Six we were where we should have been on Day Three, and wiser for the experience.
To be fair, many things went right. The kids had a great orientation at the school. Our visit to the immigration department took 15 minutes, and an hour later the entire family had social security numbers issued by the Leiden tax office. I can’t quite get my internet connection configured yet, but when it is up and running I’ll have a connection five times as fast as anything I could get in South Africa, without any download cap.
Next time, though, if I had the choice, I’d rather have the Chinese bureaucracy than the Dutch logistical skills.
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