Home as you left it

Strewn yet hewn

When I returned home late in the night a week ago, it never occurred to me how if anyone had seen a dog in the window of my apartment over the weekend, they could come back on my return, point to the dog and ask how much it was.

In fact, I could have left my bathroom scales in my wine rack (I did not do that, someone else did) and expected to still find it there or carelessly left the fridge door open and met it undefeated by gravity or the rotational forces of the earth in the same position I had in my forgetfulness abandoned things.

That lack of trepidation as to the condition of my home that always seemed to leave me a total stranger in my own home after any sojourn away, was bliss. None of the disorderliness which to the mind of another was their order, or apparent disarray was due to poltergeist activity, I simply had a trusted house sitter.

Behold an earthquake

Trusted is being generous to a fault, because except for the entirely immovable things, everything moved, changed places, or just disappeared. The lack of care for the very basic things even though to his thinking he was keeping the place tidy, robbed me too many times of the enjoyment of home, yet overwhelmed to a masochist trait, I submitted myself to more abuse.

However, after a 16-hour journey back from Cape Town, still barely at 60% of my strength, I stepped into my home and though he was present, I found myself running the vacuum cleaner through my apartment before I even took my jacket off. When I opened the fridge, a hurricane had swept through it with pieces anywhere but where they should be.

That I was still finding things out of place five months later is testament to his genius that has a madness to its method, but the day after I returned, I asked him to give me back the keys to my apartment and I bought myself the unimaginable treasure of space, independence, and wallowing in the mess of my own making. I could live with that.

Peace with my pieces

The next time we saw each other, it was at a waving distance attending a funeral, I bear no animosity toward him, I consider him a friend, even if he thinks otherwise. It was a necessary intervention, rescuing myself from the throes of the unmentionable trying to articulate the indescribable.

Just to have your home unspoiled and be able to suggest the best price for the dog in the window the stranger saw the other day and get a good exchange without rummaging through the depths of Hades for the upper set of your false teeth and the missing tail of the dog. You do not want to know what I still cannot find in my own home.

Cape Town reflections: Feathering the nest

But for a love nest

We aim to create home away from home when we meet up in Cape Town that has become our city of choice in South Africa. This requires we have suitable domestic arrangements beyond what obtains in a hotel, and so certain things need to be taken into consideration.

I have used Airbnb once before and, in many ways, I did not enjoy the experience as the upfront costs can be quite high in terms of deposits and I was not sure on the dispute resolution process. With Hotels.com, whilst we cannot make bookings more than 28 nights, there are other benefits as it is part of the larger Expedia Group and for even 10 nights you book, we get an average cost reward night, I have been quite happy with the rewards of almost 9 years of loyalty.

When seeking accommodation, we look for fully-furnished apartments with certain requirements, this demands apartment block information and the apartment inventory are detailed and frequently updated as things do change and sadly, this not always the case. We would rarely book a place where we are not sure of what the apartment contains on the main booking page or in the small print.

Things we note

We can probably trade-off on unlimited Wi-Fi as we have once had to use a Mi-Fi (mobile wireless Internet) when the landlord forgot to keep up with their Internet Service Provider subscription, however, the apartment must have a washing machine, probably with a dryer, a fully kitted kitchen with cooking plates, an oven, a microwave oven, utensils, crockery, cutlery, and other essential elements to make for a homely setting.

Sometimes, the inventory would not suffice and we are left with scrutinising the pictures of the apartment and views from it to see how it is furnished, the general layout, what and where things are installed and gleaning subtle detail as fixed showerheads or those on hoses, the furniture and the bathroom.

On location, Cape Town

Location is obviously important, we try to be within walking distance of the V & A Waterfront, and though we first stayed in the Foreshore area, we have tried out the Gardens, Mouille Point, Green Point and Sea Point. The apartment at the Gardens near the District Six Museum was quite spacious on the second floor, but the area seemed a bit precarious and unsafe, even if it was just 6 blocks up from a main police station. It has a draw, but we have not been persuaded to return.

Obviously, Mouille Point gave us the best views of the sea looking all the way to Robben Island, but the apartment needed some cleaning up before we could move in. The overworked manager who is desperately in need of help but probably too parsimonious to spend on the need to modernise and maintain his portfolio of apartments could do with some aspects of personal hygiene too, our first meeting left me quite crestfallen, I was afraid the last 17 nights of our stay would be in a hovel.

Just to get it right

We lodged our most complaints in a choice of 7 apartments at Sea Point and it was dire. Information on booking page suggested there was no lift in the apartment block and there was. I could have in the absence of a lift for a 3^rd floor accommodation decided on somewhere else. How whoever took the inventory missed the bathtub in the bathroom is totally beyond me.

Then, in the kitchen, there was no microwave oven, like whoever had stayed there before had never spent more than a couple of nights or did not have any inclination to order takeaways or warm meals, surely. Then when trying to cut some kitchen, I found there was no kitchen knife and then we had to go shopping for a knife after 8:00 PM on a Sunday night and we just about got a something slightly longer than a penknife.

The pots were aluminium bowls with handles for the pots or the lids, we needed a laundry basket and a clothesline, we should have asked for a table fan as there was no air-conditioning installed, though there was a gas heater; for Cape Town? I guess I too Northern hemisphere to think winter is Cape Town demands heating.

For convenience always

For our first 28 nights, we were not going to endure the absence of these essential things and it was 6 nights on before we got a useful pot, the microwave oven, a laundry basket and a dozen clothes hangars to supplement the mere 3 in the wardrobes.

When moving to another apartment we have an overlapping day, to check-in the day before we checkout where we are. It gives us time to move apart from allows us to make essential arrangements if necessary. The option to extend always exists, but we have found that for the third time moving apartments during our rendezvous helps give us a feel of the Cape Town and prepare us for our eventual move there.

Basil Fawlty is in Cape Town

What you see is anything you get

We had such an abundance of choices about where to spend the rest of our time in Cape Town, that the decision took days. The fact that some advertisers on hotels.com do not bother to update information about their properties and most especially the pictures leave one wondering what is available and what is not.

For instance, where we are staying now, the information about the property said there was no lift in the building and that there was only a shower in the apartment. Well, there was a lift, and it was not recently installed and how do you miss a bathtub in a bathroom?

Who we saw was something to see

The new place we booked for an overlapping day for checking in and checking out said there was only Wi-Fi in the public places apart from the fact that the pictures depicted a different place from the address that I had to visit the property manager to confirm the situation. One of the pictures had an old-style cathode ray tube television when the detail suggested a flat-screen television. You do wonder what these property agents get paid for.

Taking Brian with me to collect the keys, there was no way I could have returned to tell him of my experience with the agent and he would have believed me. The agent, a rather unkempt man well into his sixties, if not seventies who should have retired probably a decade ago attended to us, and I use attended quite loosely.

What we saw was nothing we’d seen

He was as disorganised as to have that be a credit to his managerial prowess, I sat watching as he attempted to get many things done and successfully half-complete anything, even as he fielded telephone calls, gave instructions, confirmed bookings and we were to pay a breakage deposit and collect the keys to the apartment.

It so happened that he also had to show us into the apartment, moving supermarket trolleys around his jumbled office, grabbed linen and other essentials before giving us a ride in his car to the apartment. We could have been riding shotgun with a twisting roller-coaster for the road when a call came in.

How he drove was daringly crazy

He unbuckled his seatbelt to get the phone that he put in his ear with the left hand in a right-hand drive vehicle when we began to veer off the road. So, whilst holding on to the phone conversing, he took his right hand off the steering wheel to shift the manual gear across his body to the left, we prayed and it was close to our destination as we silently promised ourselves never to be a car where he was driver, ever again.

The man who has probably been in property management for decades has a good idea of what he should be doing, but there is no doubt that he needs not just help, but a professional air of competence that belies his business, for my patience was tested and my mettle experienced a dip in tolerance. If Brian were not there, I cannot tell of what I would have done.

Who he was, was someone we knew

When he told me his name a few days ago, I thought I heard the English name Basil which left me concerned about having encountered the South African version of Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers. And though his name does end up in the English version, if so addressed, we could never have met up with a better version of the hotelier as a property manager. The less said the better. It was an ordeal and a half, that I was not all shook up leaves me rather staggered.

I found the mug

Grandad ever watching

The mug, that mug, my mug has the inscription, “If at first you don’t succeed… call grandad.” I wish I could, he died many, many years ago, though I doubt he would have been able to give me the advice I needed to find my mug. Then what is to say his spirit was not with me aiding me in the quest for that missing artefact.

Blog - Now, where's the mug?

Then paranoia set in, having looked everywhere I thought the mug could be, I decided to take pictures of my office desk, the coffee table, and the kitchen, including the bin. Just in case the mug reappeared in any of those places, and I could reference pictures to see what I was missing.

Upending everything again

I checked my door, it was locked, went over my apartment again and then repaired to bed to sleep, but this thing still bothered me, where could be the mug be? As Brian knows, I would unlikely go to bed without satisfactorily resolving this riddle.

Back in the living room, looking under settees, behind the seats and every nook and cranny, but it just did not make sense. I even looked in the fridge and the freezer, just in case, in a moment of silliness that sometimes finds an excuse for my actions, I might just have, well really?

Back in the kitchen, I opened every cupboard, looked again in the dishwasher and then finally, I pulled open the door of the microwave oven, and there was the mug, full of the tea that I had tried to rewarm. I made tea in the afternoon then got distracted after a few sips.

How it happened

Normally, I would boil water and fill up the mug to warm up the tea, but instead, I poured lukewarm water out of the kettle into the mug and set it in the microwave oven for 90 seconds, where I forgot the mug all that while until I wanted to have some ginger tea before going to bed and hence, the search high and low for the mug.

Rather than get agitated about it, I could have just calmed myself down and eventually found the mug. I am sure this same thing happened sometime last year too. What I need to do next time if the mug is not in the sink, on my office desk or in the dishwasher is to check the microwave oven before having wild ideas about where the mug might have scampered off to without letting me know.

If at first, I don’t succeed in finding the mug, I just relax, use another mug because it is somewhere in my apartment, I just can’t find it yet. 

The mug.

Now, where's the mug?

Only me or others too?

Nothing can be as maddening, the thought that you might not be the only resident of your own apartment as a single occupant, for I cannot for the life of me find the mug that I had a cup of coffee out of this morning and then tea this afternoon.

After use, it should be in the sink filled with water ready for a rinse, it is not there and not on either my office desk or the coffee table. And this upset me no end because it starts the perambulation around my apartment seeking where it might be.

O sweet muggy

The bedroom, but why? The bathroom? Surely not! Maybe I forgetfully dumped it in the bin, now, that is crazy. Could it have slipped under the sofa? It has a handle, that can’t be the case. Now, if my door is locked, there is only one other possibility, Ratatouille, and that would have been when I had a nap in the bedroom. O sweet muggy, where are you? I cry.

It is not in the dishwasher, so, I am left wondering, where this mug could be, and it is not amongst the other mugs in the cupboard which brings me to an uneasy situation about things that have suddenly disappeared and then appeared again. My tendency is to discard them on the premise that they did really disappear at the machination of someone.

Believe yourself first

The other day, it was a straw hat, and I might have left it somehwre, but that is unlikely and maybe it is, I have done silly things before, some I cannot bring myself to recount at the sense of embarrassment that someone might take the opportunity to mock me about. Brian, my eyes are on you as I roll them at you.

Maybe, just maybe, for some reason or another, I cannot see the mug where it is because in the confusion, I have temporary blindness and unawareness to perceive where I did put it absentmindedly. What bothers me is as I go to bed, the thought that the mug is missing might just get me up in the middle of the night to assure myself that I am not thinking silly things. If there is a story after this, it would continue elsewhere.

House watch type sea

The revisions of decisions

The luxury of being spoilt for choice can sometimes be a handicap to making decisions. You are presented with options and variations, reviews and options, desires and dislikes that you find yourself wrestling between opportunity and regret.

When you have wide-ranging choices out of affordability and not limited by available resource, other elements come in to play. For instance, when I was shopping for an apartment literally 20 years ago, the issue was not if I could afford it, it was whether after the choice was made, I will be happy with it when compared with other places, I viewed in the process.

Having a good feel

It came down to gut feeling, the place I chose was still occupied, it felt lived in, the departing occupants were friendly, nice, and accommodating, I warmed to the property the first time I saw it compared to the other empty shells that left me undecided and nonplussed. They all looked like hard work when the place I bought presented good ideas on how I would like to live there.

I visited the neighbourhood one evening and made enquiries at the Blockbuster store nearby about the feel and safety of the area, it got to a point that I could not think of living elsewhere, my mind was made up and I enjoyed 10 and half years there.

The tick-tock of time

Recently, I have been thinking of getting a new wristwatch, it has not been easy, and I am nowhere near being able to choose what I want. I have basic requirements, a watch without a busy face, with day and date, self-powered, and with a perpetual calendar. Alas! Every watch I have seen has more dials than an old nuclear power station, I do not need to know my altitude or how far below sea level I need to get before I have a drowning reflex. I just want the time without having to tweedled knobs and dials.

Extend this to getting a laptop and it is a mess, one look at the reviews, and every endearing feature is lost to the tales of woe standing out with just one star. You are left weighing all sorts of options that weeks after, you are none the wiser. Let us not talk of the watch, I have been on this Aegean treadmill for the best part of three years.

Maybe not now

At the turn of the year, I was looking for an apartment in Cape Town to spend the last 10 days of our holiday, we could have extended our stay where we were but decided on trying somewhere different. That was fraught with all sorts of disbenefits, location, safety at night, ease of travel, cost of the deposit, and user reviews. The longer we left it, the fewer the choices we had. Eventually, we just had to go for it, and it was a good choice.

Sometimes, the surfeit of choice is a warning to move on, give it time and hone your requirements to what really meets your needs. If you do not have to decide limited by resource, opportunity, or time, then you are not under duress and you do not have to create undue pressure on yourself. Maybe, you need something completely different, that is what breaking away allows, and with an open mind, you might acquire the unexpected which turns out to be the best.

Preparing for a neighbourly dispute

Parking to the letter

I never get to write letters like this that often though sometimes one just has to be polite, firm and resolute about protecting one’s property from abuse.

My apartment comes with a car parking space and they cost a premium in Amsterdam, as the last year turned difficult I attempted divesting myself of that asset without success and so the hardship that followed.

Thankfully, things have begun to turnaround and it is still part of my property as it sometimes gets used by neighbours or other apartment block residents that have the courtesy of asking to use the parking space.

Though, I do remember a birthday celebrant coming over to ask to use the space years ago at least that was the reason she gave for wanting usage but whilst I am not complaining the offer of a piece of birthday cake would definitely not have been snuffed at – there’s gratitude for you.

Taking liberties

So, by happenstance I took my bicycle into the garage to get air in the tyres and saw a car in my parking space, it did not belong to my neighbours or my friends so I called the Residents’ Committee about the problem that I have now learnt is rife in the apartment block.

There have even been instances when the illegal activity have involved the miscreants moving non-vehicular property of the spots to park their cars, how annoying.

The Residents’ committee got back to me today and offered a few suggestions including getting a vehicle removal firm to shift the car, meanwhile, I have be taking pictures of the “criminal” activity for actionable process.

Stretching the meaning of theft

One analogy I was given was I do not expect when I am away from my home on holiday to see others occupy my property without my consent, that would be burglary. Without extensive extrapolation to occupy a parking spot without permission is an inconvenience if needed and an affront to polite society even it is empty, it might not be burglary but its value gives it a context of an element of theft.

I have given the miscreant till tomorrow morning to move that car before I am compelled to take drastic action.

The responsibility is not mine

It would be interesting to note that as I placed the letter under the windscreen wiper there was an envelope just on the dashboard without an address but a mobile phone number, probably from the abuser expecting me to call and then using that occasion to ask for permission to use my parking space.

Well, honestly, after three days of my noticing the car on the spot, there is no reason for me to seek out the culprit and then be bounced into doing the person a favour. It is incumbent on that person to seek me out and do that, so there we are.

Without Prejudice

I do not know if Dutch law allows for the usage of “Without prejudice” letters, but in English law I am informed that it grants the sender certain privileges of protection of expression that the receiver cannot take advantage of in law.

Many a time, when I was in the UK, it came in handy when dealing with difficult situations. English just happens to be my mother tongue even whilst living in the Netherlands, my shame but then, it has its effective uses.

The purpose is to ensure I am not unnecessarily inconvenienced if I do decide to have the vehicle removed and rightly so. The letter appears below.

Without prejudice

To whom it may concern,

I have noticed over the last few days that you have parked your car in my parking space without my permission.

Whilst the space is empty it does not make it a free parking space; it is a matter of common courtesy to request permission to put your vehicle in a place that you do not own.

I have for actionable purposes taken pictures of your vehicle on the space and reported the matter to the Residents’ Committee.

I would kindly suggest you remove your vehicle by dawn of the 23^rd of September 2010 before I seek redress for this illegal activity.

I hope with this note you are duly notified without prejudice and with the utmost consideration on my part.

With the kindest regards,

Signed with contact number.