Moving homes or houses !

What's it about moving houses .. I am sure no one in their right mind would enjoy it. I am the knid of guy who likes to warm up to his 'digs' and well am too lazy to move just because there is a better 'set of digs' about with more space and style ! That is precisely why I have been in this flat for a year and six months now. But that's the cost of being an expat.. in the last 6 plus years of being an 'expatriate' I have moved 5 houses ! not to mention the fact that its soooo easy to move places in Dubai... you have friends around to help you pack (well they were'nt married back then) and then on the d-day all you do is go find a Pathan with a lorry haggle some and presto you'd get a 'superb' deal, and just because you are a 'Pakistani brathar' the God fearing Khan would throw in a 'Chota' to do all the moving for you.. add to this the Malbari Natoor (watchman) and presto all you have to do is drive your 4 wheel from one part of the city to another (or for my last move there,, one city to another) and sit pretty, and best of all you can do it at your leisure.

This Country,, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland aka EINGLAAND and more so London, you have to do every thing on your own (unless you are filthy rich !) which for the record is no fun at all. The wife and I spend a good time of last weekend packing our worldly belongings (which seem to just multiply on their own) into our 'movers' brown packing boxes and in suit cases of various denominations. Now during the week she is to have all the fun and pack up her 'Kitchen' and then 'de pack' the land lords Kitchen back in its shape (don't ask what that is all about)

The D day is we are hoping end of this week, so if every thing goes by the book we'll have moved in our new flat. And then is one half day of fun with the 'Inventory Inspector' from my present real estate/manager and we'll have fun counting spoons, ladles, furniture and the three paper backs we got in with the flat.

One of our neighbour's volunteered to ferry the two dozen odd boxes and suit cases to the new place at the weekend, lucky us we are just moving two blocks away within the same post code !

Public transport

London

It’s been two years in this city and when I first landed here I wanted to write ‘ a first impressions’ kind of thing, but never got around doing it. Well, this is just not that, it is more of ‘here we are again’ kind of a thing. The first impressions thing I will do some other day! The city has changed me, one of the most remarkable thing that it has done to me is make me ‘vehicle less’, it is not an unusual thing for people living in pretty much any where in ‘Greater London’ for not driving to work especially if there is a commute that involves going into central London and the congestion charge! The public transport system in this city is the very best and the most extensive compared to any where in the world. You can on most days get to your ‘intended destination’ more efficiently and economically than you would by say a ‘taxi’ or a ‘car’. The saying is if you really hate some one and want to torture them send the bloke to central London having to drive a vehicle!. Another thing quite acute about the public transport is that every one uses it, the Mayor of the Greater London Authority commutes from his house in North London to his central London office on a tube (underground), so do most of the millionaire chief executives of FTSE 100 companies and well every one. It is more of an ordeal for the ‘more wealthy’ citizen because most of them actually prefer to live in one of the many villages/towns on the outskirts of the Greater London because those are the best places to live in England, re good schools, amenities, larger houses etc. That means their commute time is any thing between an hour and two!! I on the other hand have a fifteen-minute commute to my office, door to door it is just 35 minutes and that’s not bad considering the fact that I live some 19 miles from central London. The point is even after two years I am just not comfortable in not getting around with a car, some days I have these cravings and others I simply think of moving to a city that supports ‘vehicular commute’. Driving is very much synonym to every thing macho! The rev of the engine, the pick, the speed, the cruise and the control over all that horsepower! I can quite well remember buying my first car a 1998 Honda Civic Lxi, now that was fun, of course cannot stress enough the sense of loss and depravity I had to endure when selling my Pajero before moving here, that baby took me to the beaches, sand dunes, off road in to the desert, hell I even made it to the ‘Rab ul Khali’ or the empty quarter on the UAE-Saudi Arabia border, where the average dunes are the size of a ten story building!

The Dentist

12 December 2006, Lahore


Ok let me make some thing clear, I hate doctors.. not as persons or personal human beings but as in Doctor - patient kind of thing, their receptions, the patient's chair and the dentist's chair !! If I do get sick, I am almost dragged to the GP! (there are exception however, say to get a sick note for). Now this was the sole reason why I am not a doctor (I’d like to believe that I would have made it to a decent Med college in Pakistan) and a Chartered Accountant. I could not get over the fact that I would be doing some thing all my life, which I actually loath personally other wise. I was quite good in Biology and scored the highest marks in my school in class 10, well then again I did that in Urdu (and alas I am not a journalist or a writer), come to think of it I did score the highest in Pakistan Studies (in class 12) and am told it was probably the highest in the Federal Board, overseas stream (but hey I am not a historian or a Political Science expert) although I am told I will be a good politician by one of my close friends (its lost on me though). Ahh the vagaries of being born a male in a third world country – middle class family. You don’t really get to decide what you want to be just because you like it. Its about the economies and money, well its just about money really! Having said that, I would not have want to be born a female, especially in a third world country (now I am not being a male chauvinist, just being plain honest.. In fact I think there is a bit of Women lib in these lines). I mean Women in our societies do have this option of doing what they really like, well most of the times at least.

Now coming back to the topic. Doctors and Dentists, because I hate visiting one,, I try to be on best behaviour with my body, so as never to get sick in the first place. More so with my teeth, I take good care of them because the last thing I want to do is end up in the dentist’s chair. Yesterday, though I finally succumbed to my Dad’s policing and got rid of two big one’s in the back there, my dentist having given me local anesthesia and all said it may ‘pain’ a bit. Now don’t get me wrong either this guy has a very bad sense of humour or he has never been in a dentist’s seat and woohaaaaaaaaaaaaah is all I can say. I held on and was being quite a man of it, you know with a couple of ladies in the room couldn’t just yell out with pain. Some where when my dentist was chiseling through my tooth breaking it into ‘3’ pieces before he could ‘extract’ them out I felt the intensity of pain I have never felt before (and pray to God I never do) , the worst part is that I couldn’t just yell out with all that apparatus gagged in my mouth and the ladies of course, but hey man was that painful, you can only experience it to believe it, perhaps some thing like ‘child bearing’ (thank fully I don’t have to go through that,, personally ie). Now as I was saying the ‘tooth’ in being extracted was broken into three pieces, when I heard (felt it more likely) the first one, it kind of reminded me of all my sins, big and small, all the nasty stuff I have done all my life, you know been mean or for that matter just ‘hurt’ people, In fact I was quite sorry for beating up my younger brother when I was 11 and he was 8, hey sorry man, forgive me if you are reading this! . I mean I literally ‘ran over in my head all my sins’ and well thought this was pay back time, God was just giving me my due. To be quite frank, I am not sure what the other two were for and of course the second tooth that came out, It took some good part of an hour and more, for the first half I thought I was just paying my due,, and the second half I am still trying to figure out… is that some thing for the next thirty days of my life.. kind of a ‘prepaid expense’ maybe. Where I sort of need to just amortise it over ever year. Whatever, it was, it was an eye opener and I hope that even my ‘Dentist’ never has to be in a similar position, ever (see I am still benevolent).