Last weekend we finally moved into our new apartment. We didn't move far, only across the parking lot (or car park), but the new place is a million times nicer than the old one; the kitchen in particular is a massive improvement.
Meg and her parents did most of the moving of boxes whilst I was at work on the Friday. By the time I got home, almost all our possessions had already been transported from one building to the other. All that was left for me to do was the furniture, futon and bed. These all had to be taken out the old apartment, down the corridor, into the lift, down one floor, out the building's main doors, across the snowy car park, down the car ramp into the underground garage of the new building, into the next lift, up 4 floors, along the corridor and into the new apartment. It was relatively straight forward and thankfully we had our friend Peter to help; without him we would have really struggled with the futon and the bed. We had everything moved by lunch time on the Saturday and everything unpacked by the evening with no major problems.
The only trouble we had was with the lift in the new building. There are three lifts, only one of which is available for residents, the other two being for the use of the contractors who are still building the upper floors. Unfortunately the residents' lift broke down mid-morning. This left the contractors' lifts, which for some reason cannot be called; once they are on a floor they stay there until someone on that floor gets in to it and takes it somewhere else. This means that every time you want to use the lift you have to find what floor it's on, walk up the stairs and bring it back to where you need it. Needless to say, not convenient. So we left Meg with the lift and she spent the morning acting as an elevator attendant, taking the lift up and down the building for the contractors and residents as it was needed, mostly for our benefit of course. She even ended up making appointments with workmen to come and collect them at certain times. She is so organised.
Anyway, we're in and all settled now. As I mentioned, the building is still under quite heavy construction. Most of the upper floors are still unfinished and even our floor had bare plaster walls and a dusty concrete floor in the communal corridors when we moved in. The lift still isn't working, there is no lock or intercom on the building door, the post-room is un-operational, we didn't have hot water for 4 days and there is nothing at the bottom of the garbage chute except for a heap of (mostly our) rubbish piling up in the basement. Despite all these omissions, we're still both much happier here than we were in the last place. You can compare them two places in the panoramas below. Apologies for the crudeness of the panoramas but there wasn't time to paint them or build them to scale. And yes, I do own Green Lantern fleeced trousers.
The old place: - dark, no space and a tiny "St. Catz - like" kitchen.
The new place: - light, plenty of space and over-sized American style kitchen appliances. I reckon I could fit a whole turkey in the microwave!
The view from our new balcony: note the crane, the train tracks and the graffiti. But it's covered in snow and therefore looks pretty.
The only things we need to do now are hang a few pictures on the wall and think of a suitably amusing name for our Wi-Fi connection. Our personal favourite so far is "This is not the Wi-Fi you are looking for". Any other suggestions gratefully received.
