Of moving house and my angels

October 1, 2011

Thank you for persevering.

At this moment in time, I’m thoroughly convinced that I’m an old guy. This is due to 2 reasons. Firstly, is the tiredness I felt when we moved house last week. Not really complaining. Got a bigger place, which is good thing. The movers from Felix Relocations did the whole thing. Packed stuff and delivered them to the new house. Sure you’re thinking, why am I complaining isn’t it? Well, it’s not easy this moving business. Of course the movers come and do the hard work for you but there are other things to do as well. Like looking after after the 30 plus year old house you’ve just bought. There are just many things left unsorted. The thing is, the previous owner (who just happens to be one of the Judiciary’s most celebrated figure) left the house totally bare. As in with very very minimal fittings. When vacant possession was given, we discovered there were no fans (except one very old, barely working one) and all the lights have been wrenched out except some flourescent lights.

Talk about “vacant” possession. This is the grand daddy of vacant possession’s worst case scenario. You see, the thing about buying an old house is you take it as is. What that means is (without giving you a law lecture) you take the property how it looks the day you saw it for the first time. Unless you write it in the contract that the vendor (the guy who’s selling) has to rectify certain faults to the property, that’s what you’ll get. It’s almost impossible to write it into the contract anyway as vendors are just happy to make a killing on the sale and for the most part would not see the point in making good any defects to the property. What this inevitably means is I have to spend on new lights, fans and the like. Which takes a chunk out of the profits I made selling my previous home. And no, I didn’t make good any of the defects in my previous property as well.

I am thankful that Mak suggested that Kakngah’s family and Shafiq come over to the new house for Maghrib prayers and recite the Yaasin. The house has been empty for a good 9 months or so. You never know who could be “occupying” the house do you? All this thought is spine chilling for sure, but if anything’s there, I sure hope they’re not there anymore. I quite confident as Harith Haiqal had a good night’s sleep that night. You know what people say about babies and other worldly creatures don’t you? So the fact that Harith made it through unscathed is a measure of relief. To reiterate, I went back to JB (I didn’t take any leave from work after we moved) with pain in various parts of my body. And that from not really doing much during the whole moving exercise.

All that said, I’m still quite concerned over security to be perfectly honest. It’s a house with a big compound. The type of compound where there are trees and it’s super shady. People can hide there you know. Trying to beef it up as much as I can. The less said about it the better I guess. I have had this belief for the longest time. If everything is going well, don’t jinx it by talking about it. You know, like you’re on the highway and the traffic’s great. Never say, “Wow, traffic on the highway sure is smooth today.” Before you know it, there’ll be an accident and the traffic’s going to be jammed for a good few kilometres. I’ve always applied this belief in many things in my life.

I went for karaoke with a few friends at a place near my house in JB the other day. We had a great time. So great, I immediately felt sick the next day. I’ve never went to karaoke and sang songs from Aerosmith, Metallica and Def Leppard before. So the feeling’s good. It’s a welcome change from the normal mundane stuff.

There’s another thing. My office has blocked Facebook. Which is fine. I can always go mobile if I need to . However, it appears that there’s a blanket restriction on this blog as well. When I try to access my blog from the office, I get the same notification which is displayed if I try to access porn, I think (I’ve never tried to access porn from the office or any other place for that matter mind you). I try again next week. Probably this time they’ll let me in.

Oh, and here’s a photograph of the new house. It’s a old house but nice nevertheless. Don’t think the photograph does it any justice.