one month in our new working life

Fig. 1. Our bikes are designed in Wisconsin, but probably made in China

We have been working for about a month now, and biking the last 2.5 weeks. Last week, when we were waiting for the traffic light on our bikes, there were two girls belly dancing for the waiting cars’ entertainment. Interesting, detail was that it was pretty cold, and they had the typical belly dance costume on, including the bare belly. Fran asked me later, did you see those girls belly dancing, were you not surprised? I told her that I think I have arrived at the point that nothing surprises me anymore…. at the traffic light, that is. Guys balancing a glass ball on their head, musicians playing guitar or trumpet, little boys juggling and girls dancing, guys selling candy, water or flowers, cell phone chargers, or a window wash, you name it.

the crate / la caja

Figure 1. Destination unknown, explains a lot…

Here it is, the final update about the crate: remember that thing I was so super enthusiastic about in packing up? Well, it turned out that the easy part was getting the crate filled and picked up. We had no idea what was coming. The crate people started sending us emails, first I got an email that we needed to pay another 200$, at the local desk of the company, and receive the ” BL” form. It was all very cryptic, and hard to understand, but we went there. It was some sort of post office with a lot of people talking to clerks at desks, and we had to get a number and wait for our turn. When we wanted to get our number, we were asked what we needed, and we told that we needed to pick up some form, BL, and pay for it, but they didn’t really seem to understand what we needed, but gave us a number.

packing up

Just a few weeks ago, we started sorting through “our life”, or in other words, all the crap we had collected over the years, to see what we could take to Chile. Shipping everything would be a very expensive endeavour, to ship a 20 ft container (about 7 x 2.5 x 2.5 m3) to Santiago would cost about 6 grand. Because most our large stuff was hand-me-down furniture, we decided to hand it down further to our friends and other interested people, while we would ship our more personal small stuff, books, kitchen stuff, a drum kit and clothes in a crate by sea (weight no real issue, and quite affordable). We will use our savings to buy new stuff, nice, almost 40 and finally buying some new furniture!!

figure 1, 2