Moving on up

When I arrived here in Cambodia on April 2004, I only had a luggage, which was just natural because I was just on holiday. Three months later I went back to Manila, decided that I would give life in Cambodia a try. It was my first time to live away from my family, my first time to be on my own.

I lived with friends for a while until saving enough to find my own apartment on November of the same year. My first apartment was a one-room flat that was on the second floor (the equivalent of the third floor in the Philippines). I immensely enjoyed shopping for things I needed for my new home. But aside from the basics, I didn’t dare purchase anything else. My freelance career was just budding, and I had a feeling that my flat wouldn’t be my flat for a long time.

Eight months later I moved into my second flat. This was bigger than my previous flat, with two bedrooms, lots of windows and an L-shaped verandah that faced the quiet street. I had with me three boxes of household and work stuff and a luggage containing my clothes. 

Four years later, I found myself moving again to a new flat. A friend is moving back to Manila to study and the flat he shared with another flat was too much to resist for me. I had, after all, lived in it in my first few months in Cambodia, and I liked my time there. Also after 4 years of living alone, I found myself wanting to share a household (not in the romantic sense) with someone. I just didn’t realize that moving would be such a colossal production.

Think of how Cecile De Mille must have felt while The Ten Commandments was being made. Or Mother Lily when Peque Gallaga was making Once Upon A Time.

My present work schedule allowed me just a few days to prepare for this move. In between travelling to the provinces for field work, I packed four years of my life into cardboard and plastic boxes that defied my calculations. My procrastination slowed me down as well, as I tried to sort things that I wanted to get rid of and those I wanted to take with me. I ended up taking them all.

Of course, it didn’t stop me from playing with the meters of bubble wrap I used in wrapping my things.

When I finished packing, I had 9 cardboard boxes filled with books, bed & table linens, glass/ plastic/ ceramic ware, kitchen implements, shoes & bags, 3 luggages filled with clothes, scarves, and what-not, 2 plastic boxes of pirated CDs & DVDs, and countless plastic & paper bags of stuff. Not to mention the appliances, paintings, and pieces of furniture that I had purchased. 

It took 1 small flat-bed truck and 4 men to move all these into my new house. As the moving men were loading my stuff unto the truck, I sat for a while in the verandah, trying to take in as much of the view. I had some fun & nice moments in that verandah.

Unfortunately, I was off to another province barely a day after moving into the new house. So I left the house looking like an evacuation center. I wasn’t even able to set up my computer. And 5 days later, the situation hasn’t improved much. Good luck to my room-mate when he arrives on Monday.