Greetings from Wellington.
Woo hoo. Where did that month go? The last Chronicle was 13 March – exactly one month before our departure date. Lots of people have been asking me if I have been in count down mode. My truthful answer has been no – until now.
Selling real estate in this country is an interesting experience. Despite having received and accepted an offer ages ago, no money changed hands and both vendor and purchaser can re-neg – it’s weird. This means that the place stays on the market until the deal goes “unconditional”. So we have lived in excessive tidiness for weeks and weeks and cleared out every Sunday afternoon for open homes to proceed. Thank goodness it went unconditional last week, so that is a major job ticked off on the to do list.
We have commissioned a friend to sell the cars and happily there are some nibbles on those - finally. With any luck they’ll sell over the weekend. One bed has gone to the son of a Chilton teacher. He is setting up house for the first time with his girlfriend so we sent them off with crockery and cutlery and glassware and linen and and and – it was a win-win! Two book cases are earmarked for a Board member. Although their call to come and get them is long delayed I have realized. That deal may be about to fall over! Stop press – it’s on, but only one bookcase.
A former member of my staff, recently returned from a stint in Singapore, generously offered to host a private party for us at their fabulous home. After umming and ahing we agreed and that was Friday night. It was actually nice to have the chance to mingle with a small group of people with whom I have worked most closely and of whom I am fond. The Official Bash is on Monday night. I have managed to persuade my Chair that one function is the way to go. One speech to write that way. Problem is that I used a modified version of the speech as my editorial for my last weekly bulletin and now feel I need to do something different. More writing.
I think that departing feeling has been accelerated by arriving home from work on Friday. Between two professional packers and Dr Crumble, a huge amount of stuff had been disappeared into boxes, rooms and walls cleared and generally great leaps taken towards exiting. Apparently one of the guys has a 3 year old son and he was sidetracked (the packer I mean) by our collection of picture books and children’s books. He was reading instead of packing. Same guy finished going away with a whole box of titles of which we had doubles plus a spare teddy bear, so he was pretty happy.
The rest of the packing happens tomorrow. So after I have done this Quake, I will be up to getting gear needed for the next few days into bags which wont go into the container. All good fun. Right.
Did I say that I had enrolled in the Experience Bank program run by Leadership Victoria? Well I have. That has entailed two flying trips to Melbourne for the day of 23 March and again for 6 April. The 6 April was particularly relaxing because my syndicate was the duty group and of all the tasks to be done for the day I landed the job of preparing the research paper and presenting it to set up the day. I think that takes a really special sort of talent! Duh!
The next Quake will be sent from Melbourne and I don’t know how long it will take for us to become communicado. We are staying with my mother in the first instance and 03 9889 3276 is the landline there.
That’s all for now
From
Dr Quake & Dr Crumble
