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How on earth did we get here - yes indeed how?

June 17th
Walking to tennis over the bridge from Greenway Bldg 15, I read a google voice message from Rex. Oh my god, my blood froze and a small tear sprung from my eye and then another and another. We had our visas granted for our assignment to Saudi Arabia. Now the theoretical had suddenly become “for real”. I was stunned.
June 30
th
The transportation assessor arrived at 4pm (Thursday prior to the July 4
th weekend) to assess our packing requirements and to advise us that the packers would arrive t 8.30am on Tuesday July 5th, after a holiday weekend! We tired to pack up as best we could but it is difficult to pack when you are still living in a place. I endeavoured to get stuff out of the house as fast as possible and get our cardboard suitcases packed up or at the very least started.
In theory it all sounds great. However, with Jay under our feet and feeling exhausted due to lack of sleep the move experience can best be described as controlled havoc, indispersed with mild panic, or sometimes extreme paralysing panic which necessitated staring out the window blankly or trying lamaze breathing. None of which really worked.
July 4
th
Moved into Hotel Indigo – very hip hotel on Hildago. We had a Presidental Suite, which gave Jay his own fold out sofa bed and we managed to sleep in fits and starts. The added stress of loosing the title the Porsche and my forgetting that my Greencard was with ARAMCO, necessitated a flurry of last minute paperwork and all of it the official kind that needed to be witnessed and taken care of in a hurry and more importantly correctly, legally correctly. Furthermore the apartment had to be listed and more papers had to be signed. We would have been stranded without the help and effort of our dear friend, George, who kept the pressure on us to make sure that the paperwork was all in order before the plane door closed.
July 5
th
Closing in on the July 7
th departure, the packers arrived on July 5th. All hell broke loose. They didn’t know what to pack, the inventory was spotty at best. We didn’t know what was going to fit into the E-Packs for Air Freight because we hadn’t seen the boxes before. The Sea Freight was easier, but none the less, it was a taxing time for us and the packers as well! I say never again, but we all know that is not the truth. I will say that next time it will be different, and yes it will be. By the grace of god, the tennis team arrived and helped out. I guess the tight pitch of my voice tainted with a nervous waiver, prompted my dear friends, Carla, Marylin and Mary to come over and help. And what a help the three of them were! I doubt that I could have got through those 2 days of packing without the serenity and support they offered over those days of extreme stress, coupled with an overlay of emotional turmoil.
We eventually found humor after we had to repack a couple of Rex’s boxes for him. Not because he had lost something or had forgotten what was in the box but because the boxes had been so badly packed. So there they stood 2 beautifully packed and stacked U-HAUL Dishrack boxes with logos emblazoned on the side. Good job all round – but no, we had to empty them and start again. Rex wanted to use the plain generic cardboard boxes, not the logo emblazoned boxes. I could tell by the silence that Messrs Bick, Jahde and Griffin would have been plopped inside the “plain” boxes, closed up, taped and shipped. In my opinion, if a box or two had to be repacked to keep Rex happy then we would do it. And so we came to have 5 of these fabulous plain generic cardboard boxes as our luggage along with 2 alumium Haliburton “James Bond” looking suit cases, and three bicycles for check in – 10 pieces of luggage. We have the photos to prove it. Somehow they all made it, they all stayed taped up and they were all checked by TSA. We know this because the herbal non-hormonal diet supplement that a friend wanted had all been removed from the boxes. Maybe other things didn’t make it, but that really stood out as we had packed them specially for her from our mutual friend Rodica.
July 6
th
A sprint was made to complete the inventory in the storage unit. More errands were made and the day evaporated. We got through it and the packers left around 7.30pm from Bullseye Storage, taking half the gate with them and damaging it significantly. Bonded to ARAMCO, that catastrophe was left for Bullseye to sort out with ARAMCO. We had other issues - basic survival and including keeping calm under all conditions, which basically meant not breathing deeply and trying to enjoy the company of friends before we all flew off to “Never Neverland”.
July 7
th
Woke up at some ungodly early time. Suggested to Rex that we pack up the hotel so we can all check out at 8.30am. Jay and I to the hairdresser and Rex the to Greenway to pack up the last items and tape up the checked luggage to be ready for the airport departure at 3pm.
After the hairdresser we took Marge and Al to lunch at Canopy on Montrose, a farewell lunch and also their 67
th wedding anniversary as it happened. They graciously allowed Jay to stay with them in13R as we packed up 13Q and ran some errands.
Rex decided it was time to go to NCV to retrieve his wine and give it to Robyn. He also needed 2 tubes of Rembrant toothpaste and to purchase new sunglasses. This at around 1.30pm when we were to picked up at 3pm to travel to the airport. I was livid. (I think that is all I need to say, short and to the point!).
Mary and Mary witnessed that debacle as did Marylin and Sylvia. Again, we scrimped by and made it downstairs to the entourage that was to take us to the airport. Linda kindly took the bikes, Harry Mack took a teary Rex and the perky Limo driver took me and Jay. Off we went.
The airport check in could not have been smoother. The luggage was off loaded to a team of perplexed Emirates staff. We didn’t see it again until it arrived a Damman, Saudi Arabia. We spent a couple of hours in the Emirates Lounge before we boarded plane.
Emirates Business Class is somewhat fabulous and it was obvious that most of the travellers were on “business” about 15, certainly no more, because there were about 15 spare seats. We were all well spread out. The other business class section in front of us was equally spartanly occupied. First Class had one family, we heard them but didn’t see them either enter or leave the plane. Need we say more?
Jay wooed the air hostess assigned to our aisle. Zoe was her name and the two of them chatted away. She got down on bended knee and took his drinks order, his food order, gave him toys, played hand puppets with him, to the exclusion of other passengers. We sat in silence, the staff, and quietly imbibed on vintage Vive Cliquot Brut Champagne – oh what joy!
Dinner was as one would expect – delicious and multi coursed. Zoe scrambled to find food that would soothe the tummy growls of Jay, however, Chick-fil-a and Old McDonald’s are not readily available on Emirates Business Class. Jay managed to choke down a crust of bread and consumed some orange juice. The tray was removed in a virtual virgin state – I apologized profusley, Jay sat with his head phones on watching “Bednobs and Broomsticks” roaring with laughter intermittently. With luck everyone else had earphones on and he could not be heard over the roar of the engines.
I tired in vain to watch “The Lincoln Lawyer” after dinner with my Champagne, which George suggested was a great movie, especially in Business Class with vintage champagne. I think I watched the same section 10 times as I was interupted constantly:
I need chocolate milk
I need to go potty
I can’t hear my movie
I’m hot
I’m cold
I need to go potty
I’m hungry (absolutely no sympathy on that request)
I want to lie down (this was easier said than done)
As luck would have it all the sophisticated computer chips in Jay’s seat were disconvovulated. I tried every switch, followed every direction and failed. Finally, after much agnst, I flagged down a stewardess. Not to be outdone by a passenger, she too finally gave up and ventured to re-program the seat from the master control which would take 10 mins. By this stage I was really loosing track of my movie and my patience. Eventually the seat was given up for “dead”, Jay and I decamped to the row behind and set up for bed there. No one was going to admit that perhaps the inquisitiveness of a precocious 4 year old may have destroyed the seat…..
I was fascinated to see that Jay and I were the only people in our section of the plane who cleaned their teeth, washed their faces, combed their hair and bedded down in night time attire. Everyone else, wore their check-in clothes – gross! A 15 hour flight to boot! Night attire for me was not some flimsy neglige but rather workout pants with a soft long sleeved t-shirt, Jay was in long johns.
So after some more minutes, we were ensconed in our new beds, he with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and me, yes, struggling to come to grips with The Lincoln Lawyer – it took me 4 hours to watch a 2 hour movie and I still didn’t get to see the last 30mins. Another time, another flight, or a time when Jay is in school.
And where was Rex during all this upheaval, well he was in a coma, out cold. In fact, he didn’t even know we’d moved, because by breakfast time, Jay and I were in fresh clothes, bright eyed and bushy tailed in our original seats eating breakfast. Once again Zoe, still smitten over Jay, was bending over backwards to ensure that he got “dry” cereal, a glass of big boy milk, along with the standard fare for breakfast. Once again the tray was returned in a state of near perfection, only the cereal and milk consumed –no fruit, no yoghurt, no croissant – well they weren’t there because I ate them all. I was hungry.
And so, the plane landed, in Dubai. We had an intermission there in the lounge.
As far as we know all our belongings made it off the plane with us, including Jay.
So, we had thought that by moving to the Middle East that Jay would be removed from American consumerism. Well the Duty Free Hall in Dubai made any other Duty Free we had seen look like a Woolworths store. The Business Class Lounge had more restaurants and bars than a Fairmount Hotel including a full service Spa and showers. Oh the showers, oh the long hot show, in absolute silence, oh joy of joys. The fresh clothes, bliss.
The flight from Dubai to Damman took about 2 hours if that. I was the only non-Muslim woman on the plane. Those who were Muslim were festooned in their standard dress ware of Abaya and head scarf, which in a couple of instances revealed only large liquid brown eyes floating in a sea of black. I am happy to say that Jay was exceptionally well behaved and didn’t run up and down the aisle and jump around like a similarly aged child, but then again, Jay was fast alseep so that is not a fair comparison.
When we landed we made our way to immigration, where the wait was long. Rex donned the ARAMCO name badge and in due course we were hauled from the “Foreign Passport” line and moved to the “Diplomatic” line. It could have been the card or perhaps more to the point that we were the only blonde people in the entire immigration hall and I was wearing a fine straw panama hat on my head and not a headscarf. We’ll never know but we did get through. The finger printing process seemed to take forever. I think nervous sweaty fingers are hard to print. Finally we emerged to Baggage Claim. On the way to Baggage Claim some poor unsuspecting man holding a mangled VIEHMAN FAMILY notice greeted us and escorted us to baggage. Our three bikes, and 5 cardboard suitcases awaited us on some barge of a luggage cart with three men running around in circles making sure nothing fell off. They were somewhat stunned when they were told that there were 2 more suitcases on the carousel that they had missed. The Halliburton aluminium, which looked out of place with the monochromatic ever so stylish cardboard dishrack boxes. When we next move with cardboard boxes, I’ll design some stylish “family” logo for them – details, details, details, details. The main thing was that to our absolute astonishment, they arrived, not broken, not smashed, but each self-contained and in one piece.
We proceeded with the barge, the driver, and two luggage assistants to the ARMACO lounge.
Greenway staff called Jay ‘The Prince”, we thought those days were over, until airport staffers came up to him and started calling him “The King”. Yes, in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, the immigration army officials who looked as if he could take us all out in one swipe, called Jay “The King”. We were not amused.
And so our adventure advanced forward.