Movers and Shakers

An update from my side - recently we have shifted to a new rental apartment.

Wait, something needs correction here... let me think... ummm.. I think I should say that we're still shifting within the new apartment. Yes, that's better.

So, we're still shifting in the new apartment by 3-4 cartons per day. This is accurate statement.

This exercise has taught me so many things, but the most important lesson is what we're being taught since childhood - बिना मरे स्वर्ग नहीं मिलता (bina mare swarg nahi milta).

Question: Who taught us this lesson?
Answer: The movers and packers. The experience has been such, that instead of "Movers and Packers" I would prefer to call them "Movers and Shakers", or even better: "Dumpers and Shakers".

It all happened like this: when we (finally) decided to relocate, we called upon multiple M&Ps inquiring about their services and quotations. I'm a man of planning, and this was yet another golden opportunity for me to show-off my planning skills to wifey.

After talking to 4-5 different vendors, I did some heavy background checking about all of them for a week or so, and finalized upon the best one  ( this was what I told everybody, specially my better half).

This was what happened actually --- After talking to 4-5 different vendors, I did many things except background checking about any of them. A week later, I garbled up all the numbers and quotations and then finalized upon the one who had been consistently calling me up.

To ensure that wifey didn't miss my smartness, I called up the marketing guy and instructed him to send his folks at 8:30 am.
True to their commitment, they called me at 8:30 mentioning that they would be late by 30 minutes or so. I didn't know that "or so" included multiple "30 minutes". They arrived only 3 hours late.

I spent rest of the day watching what they were doing. It would've been better if I would've "observed" what they were doing.

By evening, they were done with packing almost 80% stuff and had consumed 100% of cartons, lamination sheets. Since I was just looking, so they comfortably took some of our bedsheets and wrapped up remaining stuff into them.

Anyhow, we reached the new apartment around 9 pm and then began the exercise of emptying a truck-full of cartons into a meager flat. By the time, they managed to assemble the big items it was already 2 am, and I asked them not to unpack every carton.

This was day before yesterday. Since then, we've been unpacking cartons one by one and getting amused by our findings:
- Cartons labelled "Clothes", also have kitchenware
- Top layer of carton labelled "Books" was packed with footwear
- Carton labelled "Mandir" had Piku's toys
- We asked them to pack crockery in news paper, so they packed some of the crockery items with single sheet of news paper
- Onion & potatoes were found lying at the bottom of ocean of woolen clothes...
- Upon opening one of the package we discovered that they had dutifully packed the garbage bin.... along with the garbage
.... and the ultimate (you're going to love this)
- The latest carton, when opened today, gave wifey a scare of lifetime. When she opened it up, something jumped out of it and ran away. Yes, it was a R...A...T...
... and by the size of it, I guess, it is same as the one that I mentioned about in one of my old post: "Rat in the flat" :)