Showing posts with label leaving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leaving. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Unpacker's Plight (photos may follow!)

Dear Packers,


As I now, one year on, start to see the results of your handiwork, I felt the urgent need to write and tell you how I feel.  I guess I should do it before I do my Mount Etna impersonation all over my poor family!
Just a few simple thoughts that might help the next poor soul who HAS to go through your clumsy, incompetent hands!  
I felt the need to thank you for wrapping my cheap, tatty, stained plastic ware with such utmost care and at least seven layers of thick wrapping for each piece.  Thanks also for not bothering with my handmade earthenware - most of which is now chipped or broken and as each set is now incomplete it is completely worthless.  I may as well have thrown it out of the window, in Chennai and smashed it to smithereens myself!
Thanks also for wrapping my thin Indian kitchen paper in several loving layers of more paper.  I don't know how it would have survived a year in storage without that.  I also was most surprised to see a roll of disposable cleaning cloths gently placed in a large box for me to open up twelve months later.  Unfortunately what you didn't know was that I brought that roll from the UK to Chennai and had many expat friends who would have willingly kept it there.  Ditto the Ziploc bags and heavy black trash bags.
Thank you for wrapping the white Wedgwood service in such a flimsy manner, but  for making sure the brightly coloured trashy china was swaddled better than a newborn baby!
I wonder at your reasoning behind bubble wrapping pillows, cushions and blankets.  Were you concerned they might get broken?  Chipped? Cracked? Or were you mentally deranged?   Pity you didn't think the same for my bespoke, handmade terracotta dining table and matching pots... all of which are now crumbling wrecks not the original beautiful items we bought and fell in love with.
I have spent countless hours over the last few weeks shaking my head in wonder and disbelief  at your sheer stupidity! I would love to know why you would place glasses one inside the other and wrap with a single sheet of grey paper, when the books, files and Cd's got two layers EACH.  Every single glass is chipped or broken.  Thanks.
In our new home, we have a double garage - thanks to you we can not even park a bicycle in it.  There is a veritable mountain of corrugated card roll, bubble wrap, the intensely poisonous and vile polystyrene, boxes of every size and description and so much paper I could start my own printing works and never have to source paper for twenty years.  Have you heard that our planet is suffering and we are trying to reduce, recycle and reuse?  Have you been doing an impression of an ostrich for the last ten years or so? Think ECO, think GREEN, think ahead to the poor person who has to unpack your imbecilic wrapping.
Thank you also for making us pay for an additional shipment unit after telling us that all our belongings would not FIT into a 20 foot sea freight container.  Had I known then that not only had you over packed EVERYTHING, that you had put in at least ten 'dead' boxes (this means empty - filled with screwed up paper or with nothing at all) but also included other boxes that had the ends of rolls of paper, finished rolls of tape, sweet wrappers, screwed up tissues - obviously used..... (YUCK!) and other litter; I think I would have personally come over and smacked you ALL upside the head..... hard.  Perhaps I would have enlisted Dhoni's cricket bat to help me!
Finally thank you for robbing us blind.  It was truly incredible (that word means hard to credit in case you have already wrapped my dictionary five times!) that  several of our boxes left our home in my presence, went to your warehouse, supposedly were loaded into a sealed container which I witnessed being broken open in London and somehow went missing.  Can you explain more fully than the witless "no Madam, it was not our fault"?  I am pretty sure you can't.  The same way you cannot explain why the insurance you made us take out and pay for exorbitantly somehow has a hundred thousand terms and conditions all of which make it impossible for us to claim a single rupee (never mind a dollar or a pound).
Finally I would just like to say to you, dear, dear packers, that when a close friend suggested in her Blog that your company name should be changed to 'I-LIED'  she was right on the button.  That is your company name, mission and motto.  Congratulations on maintaining that position to the bitter end. I pray daily that we never have to deal with you again.


With deepest regrets,


SejalSez


PS - Thanks for the Diwali card you sent me wishing me a happy new year - clearly you had not seen fit to think of what you had done to my possessions - a happy new year is the furthest thing from my mind!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Long Goodbyes

I guess it is fair to say that I am a pretty sensitive, emotions-on-the-surface kind of girl! I have been dreading today for the last couple of weeks, but until yesterday I could pretend it wasn't going to happen. I have however managed to keep the tears to myself!

One of my Forever Friends left Chennai today. I can safely say that as much as I say I am not going to go all out and become close to people anymore - there is always someone who slips past the resolution and becomes special.

I would have loved to throw a massive farewell for her - but I know how very much she would have hated that! So a small select ladies lunch was the way to go! It eased the separation anxiety a little - distracted me as I thought of little gifts and little things that would be easy to carry on the plane and at the same time remind her of me, her other good friends and Chennai (in a positive light) every time she saw or wore these things.

On the whole, I think she had a good time - at least the table was not full of weeping women!

She and I spent time together at the salon today and even managed to get a tattoo done before she left!

I hate the way other people think that they can talk about us, hurt us and malign us and expect none of this to snake its way back to us. I hate that she left feeling betrayed and I wish there was more I could do for her. She stayed strong for me over the past year when I have had some pretty trying times, even when she had stones cast at her for being my friend. I guess right now I am sort of, in a tiny way, there to support her through the trauma of taking her family and moving onto a new horizon.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that she will not let it all end here, neither will I. Sometime, somewhere, in the not too distant future, we will be having a pedicure together and disturbing all the other clients with our singing!!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Forever Friends

I can't help but feel a real sense of loss when a friend (especially the forever kind) chooses to, or has to, leave Chennai. I feel a part of me is going with her and leaving a gaping hole behind. I have been getting better at the whole 'goodbye' thing, but realised today that I am simply fooling myself. This 'goodbye' thing is damn hard. It does not get easier, it does not help to start distancing oneself from the person leaving and it does not help to think of life in Chennai without that friend.

The word 'friend' seems so pallid for what I feel for some of these girls and usually their kids. The depth of feeling that comes with making friends that will last a lifetime (forever friends) is more than merely friendship. It is kinship, shared views, thoughts and feelings, it is a shared sense of humour, a shared Cosmo on a low, low day and just someone to say - yep you did OK. My darling hubby is not always there for this - try as he might - working long hours, travelling long days and weeks, and finally reaching home to find a wife in need of emotional sustenance may just be too much to handle!

I am grateful that the few forever friends made in Chennai are still in close contact with me, are still trying to find ways for us to see each other and are still reciprocally tolerant of the rantings of a sometimes madly emotional woman! I thank God each day for the blessings I have - my husband and kids, my parents, my sister and these wonderful, wonderful forever friends. As long as these people are in my life - I can handle anything.