So I have a week, 7 DAYS until I leave and I have a few
things I still need to do. I have to get
all my boxes and bags plastic wrapped.
Not only so that nothing can be put in my bags as they will be
travelling unaccompanied but I have used the cheap zip bags that you get from
the dollar shop and I am sure that they will not last the distance if they
weren’t wrapped and the only place that seems to do it is at the departures
hall at the international airport. Luckily
for me the Elkins only live 10 minutes away from the airport now that the
tunnels have been completed, so I will probably have to make 4-5 trips to get
them all done, but it is HIGH on my list this week. I rang the ‘wrappers’ to make sure that they could
wrap packing boxes which was a resounding yes and their opening hours are 6am
till 11pm. So it all looked promising
and I was going to start my run on Friday as I would have Shane’s car in the
afternoon and I can fit 4 boxes in the back of his with ease.
The last of my things from the shipping container were
delivered this week. I had more than
what I remembered and I had 7 days to get it all under control. There were over 20 boxes, a bed and mattress,
a TV cabinet, a few bedside tables, a glass table and a few hanging
pictures. The delivery came in the
morning, so I got stuck straight into the boxes and a lot of them were the
‘bar’ boxes with pub paraphernalia collected from all over the world, glasses, Elmo
boxes, my Tupperware boxes, my perfume and make-up and some more souvenir boxes. The thorn was the big furniture, I didn’t
want it, I didn’t have time or the care factor to sell it so what is the next
best thing? Roadside. Shelly and I moved the large furniture items
to the side of the house, on the curb-it sees a lot of traffic-and within 2
hours it was all taken. We were home
when the last of the things were taken and we peeked through the blinds to
watch them as they popped the mattress on the roof of their car and then the
guy walked off up the road with the base over his head. We didn’t want them to see us in case it put
them off taking the gear. But it was a
massive relief as I am just trying to have the least amount of things left at
the Elkins as possible as I don’t want to clog up their house and shed with my
crap. This also meant that I had to get rid of all my perfume. Like my vodka collection, perfume was another
thing that I just ended up always buying when coming through duty free and I
had a lovely collection of around 30 bottles.
Yes, 30. When I think about it
and look at them all on my bed it does seem a little crazy now. Most of them were ¾ full so I decided to take
them to my work lunch I was having with the guys. With 4 ladies I am sure that they will find
something in there that they will like.
My makeup wasn’t as easy to part with; I have a great collection of
Revlon and Dior make-up thanks to my ex-boss’s daughter who is a makeup
artist. So I have just decided to take
it all with me-that can be one of my luxury items that will make the trip.
On top of that I had to start to pack up my room and
organise what was going to go and what was going to stay. It sounds easy, but like any move you have
the last minute fiddly things that sort of just don’t go anywhere, so I have
been shuffling them around the last few weeks, you know small odds and
sods. Now that D-Day was approaching I
had to make decisions and they had to be found a spot. So mid-week was spent going through the last
of the 20 boxes and packing the bags that were going to be sent to Africa once
I get settled. I have learnt from
previous experience now that I had to take a more detailed inventory of what
goes into each bag and then I can either get them all sent together, or if I
need certain things in a hurry I know what bags they are in and they can be
sent without much fuss. The great thing
with getting the bags shipped (besides the price) is that the company will come
to the house to pick up all my bags and boxes, so again I am just trying to
keep the work the Elkins have to do to a minimum. So by the end of the week I had 2 suitcases, 7
large bags and 10 large boxes to send unaccompanied to Africa. That in turn meant I had 5 trips to the
airport to get them all shrunk wrapped and while I was there I weighed them all
on their scales and then they were taken back home, numbered and stacked in my
room now all waiting for the call-delivery day sometime in February all going
well. Total weight-302kg....... I don't think that is too bad. Once we have called the courier
company my belongings will arrive within 5-7 days at the airport in Africa and
then I will have to collect them from there and for the cost, for me, it is
worth every penny. The most important
thing for me is the clothes. It will be
difficult for me to find clothes in my size so I have made sure I have enough
for a while. I have a ticket to London
that I date changed when I didn’t use the return sector when I was supposed to
leave Ethiopia in November, so this may well be used for a shopping trip in
May-at least I will have a better idea of what I will need by May and can shop
accordingly.
Since my return back I have been lucky to have had some
job offers and people interested in having a chat with me for prospective
jobs. It is very flattering I have to
say, but as I am not staying I have let them all know that it was a thanks but
no thanks. I even had a travel company
(who shall remain anonymous) asked if I wanted to write some stories for their
new blog that they are launching but when they sent me the details it was to do
it for FREE. I think it was a little
disappointed that they would think that anyone would work for free, I mean even
the offer of a free trip or discounted trip would have sealed the deal for me. Time is money at the end of the day right? I mean I don’t even make money off my blog,
so there was no revenue even from that coming my way. It would have been a pretty cool gig, but I
just wasn’t willing to do it for nothing-anyone would be crazy to do so.
At the end of the week it was time to look at packing the
stuff that would be coming with me on the trip.
I had the monster, but I was also looking at taking a few more clothes
with me this time, so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting all my boxes sent
in a hurry, I also had the cruise to think about with ‘cruise’ clothes to be
packed. This meant having a smaller bag,
like a small gym size bag that I would check in as a second piece. I looked at my first flight with Qantas and
you could prepay to have a second bag for 90AUD. This seemed reasonable to me and I prepaid
this online. You can do it at the
airport when you check-in but it costs 120AUD to do it there. I have always been paranoid and have also
been charged for excess baggage before, so if I could do it all before I left
then it would take the stress out of the check-in process. My next flights to the UK were with Malaysia
Airlines. After checking their web site,
there didn’t seem to be an option where you could purchase additional luggage
or kilo’s, so I made a phone call to their call centre and was told that you
can’t do that with them and there is a flat rate for excess baggage. I nearly died when I asked how much that
would be and she told me it was going to be 150SGD per kilo which in Aussie
dollars was 118AUD per KILO. PER
KILO!!!! So my little gym bag that
currently weighed 10kg was going to cost me 1180AUD. The actual ticket was only 550AUD. That was insane. I am happy to pay, I don’t expect anything
for free but that to me is a rip and it is how all the airlines used to do
their excess baggage and I WASN’T going to pay that. So I needed to put on my thinking cap and
Shelly came up with the idea of putting what I could into a duty free bag and
taking it with me on the plane rather than checking it in and I was going to
run with this idea until I thought it through and knew my monster was going to
weigh more than 20kg anyway and I would still be in a world of hurt. So I went back to the drawing board and
decided to buy a new ticket with Emirates and date change my Malaysia Airlines
ticket down the track to a random date in October. The Emirates ticket was only an extra 250AUD
than what I paid for the Malaysia Airlines ticket and they give you 30kg of
luggage. You can prepay for additional kilos,
but I will just try my luck when I check-in at Singapore, it’s only a 20%
saving. So this was all done 3 days
before I was due to fly-talk about some last minute changes. I also had to amend my London accommodation
bookings, as I am now staying with friends for some of my stay and I also had
to get some travel insurance. All my
banking needs were checked and login details for internet banking all checked
and confirmed, some USD obtained and all my travel documents printed and
checked. I was now ready to go. I wanted this all done by Friday, so that it
would give me the weekend to help the Elkins with the preparation of Christmas
and to just relax and know that everything I had to do was done.
My time was tick, tick, ticking-but I am read, read,
ready now to start the next journey.
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