Renting in Muscat Part Three - Moving Day

Even though I am getting a bit sick of The Renting Saga, I may as well keep it going. It was an experience I do not wish to repeat here ever.

Cush and I had debated back and forth about how best to move our stuff. We had heard a lot of horror stories about how either moving companies charged retarded amounts of money and damaged items, or of cheap companies that damaged items and so we decided to ask some friends to help us and we also rented our friends cousins truck.

When moving day actually came around it turned out that our friends who had said they would help had been on the piss the night before and were no longer up for helping. We understood, but then found ourselves at a bit of a loss. One dear friend of ours said he would personally sponsor a laborer to help us, which gave Cush the genious idea of going to Ghubra roundabout with the 4x4 and loading it up with dudes and bringing them back to our house to help with the moving.

And that's what happened. He said he got to the roundabout, stopped the 4x4, called out the window something a bit gay like "I need some dudes!" and 6 guys jumped in. Sadly, he had to ask 2 of them to leave which they did not want to do.

He took the four dudes back to our house and gave them some instructions and told them how much he would pay and if nothing got broken, how much extra he would give them.

While most of them did not speak English, they got the gist, agreed on the money and proceeded to start loading up our friends cousins truck.

They were doing really, really well to be honest until I happened to notice that they were carrying Cush's desk down the stairs with his super amazing, custom handpicked parts dream computer on top.

I remember the agony Cush went through researching graphics cards and ram and motherboards, and whatnot and how much he agonized over how much it was going to cost, and in an instant I saw in my mind how it could all be gone.

I ran into the hallway and all that would come out of my mouth was the word no, like "nononononononononono!" and I was waving my hands in a "no-go" motion.

One of our friends who had showed up to help heard me and also ran into the hallway and started saying "nononono" and waving his hands.

The 2 men stopped and stood there just looking at us like we were crazy.

And right there, there was the divide. And how could they know how much that small metal box cost and meant to Cush? Other than his car it's probably his most prized possession.

Between me and our friend though I'd say most likely our friend had more influence because he's a man we talked the dudes into moving the table and the computer back into the apartment, all the while they looked at us like we were completely nuts. I took Cush's computer off the table and asked that they not touch it.

One of them said, "we move everything, yes?" Like he totally didn't get it and I don't blame him, so I just said, yes, just not this.

At another point in the day I noticed one of the dudes was blowing his nose and wiping sweat off his face with what looked suspiciously like the red towel from our guest toilet. I went and looked in the guest toilet and sure enough, the man had taken my towel without asking, and no I didn't ask for it back. It was all his at that point!

My job that day was packing things up and bringing things to the door that could go and after 3 truck loads we were mostly done with only a few small things like the Christmas tree and a few shelves that could wait for another day.

We had had enough.

Cush dropped the dudes back off to Ghubra roundabout and paid them. The man who spoke English the best said something heartbreaking like, "thank you sir, now we can eat for 2 weeks."

Cush asked how long it had been since they had work and the man confided that it had been awhile and they hadn't eaten anything in days.

***Advice time*** if you choose to get some dudes to help you move, feed them first! I wish I had known... I would have made everyone breakfast first. I don't trust hungry people carrying heavy stuff, it could make for a bad situation.

When I got to the house for the first time that day I was a bit stunned to see how much of a hodge podge things were. I mean it wasn't too bad but little things like the water cooler was upstairs in Cush's office, and all the book shelves were in the kitchen.

A few of things did get scratched and the walls got quite a bashing all the way up the stairs but over all it only cost us 20 OR for each labourer and 40 OR for the truck.

As is a bit of tradition we ordered pizza to a friends house (the one who gave us the idea to go to Ghubra roundabout to get some dudes) because we didn't know our address and he brought it over and we had a few beers and began shifting things into place.

There's 1 more part, I think it will be called Renting in Muscat Part Four - Explosion of Water and Faeces. Yeah for real...