How high’s the water mama?

04 Aug 2013

Those of you who know the Johnny Cash song from which the lyrics in this week’s title is taken will know the response starts at “two feet high and risin’”. The call and response keeps increasing from two feet up to “five feet high and risin’”. Well we didn’t reach that level but Rae and I could have sung our own version:

Phil: How high’s the water mama?

Rae: It’s half inch high and risin’.

Phil: How high’s the water mama?

Rae: I say it’s one inch high and risin’.

Friday, as I was coming home from work, I got a call from Rae who told me our basement gym was flooded by a half inch of water. It might have been worse: the gym is dropped a full inch from the rest of the basement, so the water was at least contained. I called Rajesh, our work contact who is the interface with the landlord. He called back and said the landlord’s manager would be at our flat at 11:00 in the morning. Well, when we got up the next morning, the one inch barrier had been broached. We had water throughout the basement!

Well, the landlord’s manager was here at 11:00 sharp but he was as confused as we were about where the water came from. He thought it might be from the washing machine drain. The only problem is we hadn’t done a load of wash in three days. He thought it might be condensate from the basement air conditioners, which had been repaired the week before. Really? Condensate? Using my high school physics, I calculated there was over 216 gallons in the basement. Even if I was off a bit (and judging by the number of buckets we watched the manager and his “crew” of the neighbor’s driver and cleaning lady carry out of the basement, I don’t think I underestimated) that was not condensate or even the couple of gallons at a time our little washing machine uses. So now we have a sparkling clean basement floor but we still don’t know where the water came from. We are to watch the basement and see if our flood returns.

It won’t dampen our enthusiasm!

The good news of the week was we were asked to come sign our furnishings shipment through customs. We were not able to take any pictures so I will try to describe customs center and the process for clearing our furnishings through the same. This is one of those times I don’t think even my sparkling narrative will do justice to what we experienced. It wasn’t bad, actually it went fairly smoothly, but the scale was astonishing.

The shipping agent would not give me an address for the customs center. Rather, he said we should have Mehndi call when we were on the way and he would give directions. So, as we got in the car I called the agent and handed phone to Mehndi. After five minutes of discussion, Mehndi hung up the phone, handed it back to me, and said, “Very dangerous directions!” I was really hoping he meant difficult not dangerous. It turns out that seems to have been the case because getting there was a fairly convoluted process but nothing seemed very threatening.

As we started to get closer to our destination, the foreshadowing of what we would experience was the number of trucks lined up on each side of the roadway. The closer we got, the more densely parked were the trucks so that by the time we got to the turn off into the customs center (which we missed the first time we went by it) there was a concentration of trucks two or three deep at each point of the intersection. Round two making the turn found us going down a narrow road made more so by an endless train of bumper to bumper trucks leading right up to acres and acres of shipping containers stacked on top of each other and end to end as far as one can see. We had to get out of the car and walk into the customs center; prove our identity through our passports; get temporary passes; and then walk a quarter of a mile into the belly of the beast passing even more cargo containers and loading docks that entered into a hall that was as big as two football fields. Then we waited. At least there was air conditioning. It was clear that everyone there, the customs employees and the shipping agents know each other well. They were all cordially chatting and joking whilst we waited.

Finally our agent came and got us and took us into the hall through a maze of boxes, crates and other articles that had been shipped. Finally we got to our lot, which seemed pretty insignificant both in size and number compared to everything else in the hall. Each box in our shipment was numbered and there was a numbered manifest with the contents of each box that the customs agent had. He had the box with our computer in it opened and two more boxes at random (those of you who know Rae will not be surprised that one box held her shoes the other hangers). Then laying a finger to the side of his nose, and giving a nod up the...no, no wait that’s wrong. Then with the ever popular head nod, he had me sign the manifest and we were done.

Our furnishings had cleared customs but they were still not in our possession. That’s the rest of the story and I will leave it to Rae to tell it and other highlights of the week.

Rae here,

One of the things that Phil didn’t mention which struck me was that this big mass of Cargo, trucks, warehouses, and lots and lots of men waiting to either drop off, pick up or help move cargo, seemed to kind of be out in the middle of nowhere.  In the middle of this nowhere was this whole little world.

When we left the customs center the agent told us we would hear from him before 5 that same day about when our shipment would be delivered.  I’m sure you won’t be any more surprised than I was, if I tell you that that didn’t happen, we didn’t hear Monday, but did finally hear late Tuesday evening that it would be delivered on Wednesday at noon.  Given previous experience, I wasn’t holding my breath that that would actually happen.  To my surprise, at noon on Wednesday an agent showed up at my door with about 6 or 7 helpers to deliver our goods.  The first step was for them to unload the truck onto the driveway, then from the driveway into the house, and into the various rooms of the house. As each box was brought into the house it was checked off the log, until all the boxes were accounted for.  After the boxes were dispersed thru the house, they began unpacking them.  By 2ish the boxes were unpacked, removed from the house and the crew gone.  I didn’t know where I wanted all the items put, so some are still on the bed in the guest room and pictures are still waiting to find their places on the walls, but the kitchen is unpacked and the clothes are crammed into the limited closet space that we have, (Saturday we went out and bought 2 more wardrobes, that will be delivered on Thursday.)  The added storage will be good since I’m not feeling too comfortable about storing much downstairs at this point.  Here we thought having a workout room could be handy, now I’m wondering about the possibility of water aerobics instead.

Monday after Phil got home from work we thought we’d have our driver run us to the mall to see if we could pick up a few things for the house.  Well, the normally 20-30 minute ride to the mall took us about 1 ½ hours so we only went to one store and only managed to get 2 items.  Luckily the drive home went much faster, so our poor driver was back in time to catch his train home.  The interesting thing about our drive home was that we came up behind a wooden cart that was loaded about 15 ft high with large blue barrels.  They reminded me of the 50 gallon water barrels we have back home, but maybe a bit larger.  Mehndi our driver moved over to go around it and I realized a couple of things.  One was that there were 2 carts and the other was that each cart was being pulled by a large Brahma bull.  After we passed the carts Mehndi pulled back into the lane the carts were in, when I say lane, I use that term very loosely.  Shortly after passing the carts we had to stop at a light.  I turned around to see how far behind the carts were, and was surprised to see that they were right behind us.  The bull’s nose was right at the back of our car.  I could look into his eyes, they looked tired.  I always find it fascinating to see all the ways they have of moving things.

Well, our new car is not so new anymore.  I’ve been pretty surprised by the lack of accidents considering the crazy mass of traffic and “anything goes” attitude about lanes and space. One day last week as Mehndi was bringing me home a motorcycle cut in front of us and clipped our front right bumper.  Mehndi caught up to him and told him that he needed to go around the corner and stop so we could talk (not sure if anyone here has insurance and even if they do, I don’t know what that means). We went around the corner, pulled off the side of the road and waited, but he never came.  Don’t know where he went.  The next day another motorcycle ran into the back left bumper.  None of these mishaps did much damage, just a few scratches.  Today coming home from church Mehndi decided to move to the right, but didn’t wait until he had cleared the car that was next to us and so clipped our right rear bumper on the car’s front left bumper.  He didn’t stop, but kept going (I gasped, but didn’t say anything).  When we arrived home he got out to let me out and looked at the bumper, said one of their favourite cuss words (shite) and then told me, “no problem”.  When Phil got home from church I asked him if Mehndi had told him about the accident.  He hadn’t, but as we looked out our window at the car parked on the driveway, it appeared that the paint or scratches or whatever had been there earlier had been dealt with, amazing!  We still have the rear left bumper to be initiated.  I have no doubt its day is coming.  I actually amaze myself with my lack of gasping.

Well these are just a few of our week’s highlights, but I’m sure you are tired of reading by now.  More adventures are sure to come our way, so.....    

Namaste, for now.