Moving House

House /n., adj. haʊs; v. haʊz/,

1. a building in which people live; residence for human beings.

2. a household.

3. (often initial capital letter) a family, including ancestors and descendants: the great houses of France; the House of Hapsburg.

blah blah blah...

42. The name of the main character in the TV show I am watching.

I am going to move to a new house next year. And of course, I am not referring to the definition 42.

Here goes the story: Last September, JPA (my sponsor) decided to change our allowance plan. In the past, JPA paid directly to College Square for the monthly rent (which is about 750 Australian Dollar per month), and in addition I got 380 dollars per month for allowance. By allowance, it means electricity, water, Internet, groceries, transportation et cetera et cetera - basically everything minus the tuition fee and the accommodation. The allowance had been barely enough for me, as for the Internet alone I needed to pay 30 dollars per 500Mb, and it tallies with about 3 week's usage for me. No, not good at all.

It happened that for some reasons, JPA was feeling generous and decided to raise our allowance in the future. In the new system, they now pay us 1200 dollars every month, and we are to spend it wisely on everything. It seemed like a really lucrative offer, as I can now look for accommodation elsewhere which could offer the same amount of comfort without the high price tag of College Square. As you can see, although they fixed the super-sonic lift after three months, I still haven't quite gotten over the traumatic experience with their industrious window-washers. The fact that my apartment's price is raised to 802 per month doesn't help either.

Hence the new house.

As of today, I have yet to find a good house, as the house availability is still on the scarce side. I have been to a few house inspections, and they are either too run-down, too expensive, too far or too small. Yes, it's rather hard to beat College Square even with its plywoods. My search will continue though when I am back in Malaysia, and if I have no luck at all, Yong Chin and I are set back in College Square. College Square is kind of a safety net for us there, as the apartment's availability is pretty much guaranteed when everything else fails.

Actually, today is not so much about finding houses, it is more about packing. As I am writing this, I am halfway packing my stuff to be moved to Xuan Ni's house in the morning. I can't leave it in my current house as the contract is going to expire before my new semester begins on 12 February. Haha, here comes the bad habit again, writing blog in the most unearthly hour in the most unsuitable circumstances. But be kind to me, as you can see, if I don't write my blog in such circumstances, there wouldn't be a single entry at all.

One unearthly hour ago, before I went very off-track, I actually wanted to share my insights about moving house: packaging.

• Safeway (Woolworth in other states) is your best friend when you are looking for boxes. Yes, despite all the price tags on everything your eyes can reach in the supermarket, the boxes are free!
  
  
• Wait until 11.30pm when their staffs start unpacking their stocks to be loaded on the shelves. The large boxes are going to be put on the each aisle, and you just have to wait for them.
  
  
• BUT! Don't just stand there, kindly ask one of the friendly staffs to show you the aisle where the facial tissues are located.
  
  
• Yes, Kleenex boxes are your best friend! They are large, and it suits just right for the width of two large textbooks, three small story books or ten underwears put side-to-side.
  
  
• Napkin boxes are perfect too.
  
  
• You can ask one of the staffs to open the boxes for you, in case they haven't unloaded the stocks. It's so easy you can even lend them a hand - just tear it, invert it, and leave the tissue paper boxes on the floor. I got ten large boxes in two minutes this way.
  
  
• Don't put everything in Kleenex boxes - they are too large for things like lecture notes. For those A4 notes and books, there is the biggest invention since the white bread - IndoMee 30-pack boxes! Trust me, the Indomee factories must have used A4 books as the template for their box design, as they fit just so well. And amazingly, each box fits my one-semester materials perfectly too. So I can just put the whole semester's stuff inside and label the boxes accordingly. Sweet.
  
  
• Remember, don't throw away your IndoMee boxes. They are very reusable.
  
  
• For the last tip... Don't just keep all the rubbish. There are things that you think might be "memorable in the future", but once you decide to keep them they will not see daylight again. Identify them and dump them in the bin.

That's it for moving house. I am back to packing my clothes.


p/s: I think that my writing on the comment in the previous post has to be postponed again... It's too hard to write about because my brain is rusty already. :(