All Our Stuff! ...and a Kitchen! 東西到了，廚房也來了

We've been very busy, so busy I've not had time to post. The good news is...OUR STUFF MADE IT HERE! Oh, and the other good news is...OUR KITCHEN IS IN! Wow. For us, this is huge.

We had a string of beautiful days, no rain, cool temps: very nice. Then when the day came to get all of our boxes from the States delivered, it got cloudy! Mark worried about the boxes getting soaked at the last minute. Mold is a real issue here. Amazingly, the rain started up after everything was safely inside the house! This is one more example of how this trip has been. So many things have "just worked out." Not everything has, but many things have!

The truck that delivered the stuff wasn't one of the Ubiquitous Little Blue Trucks (we'll call them "ULBTs") that one sees all over Taiwan. It was what passes for a full-size flatbed around here--which isn't much, but our alley is even less. The driver did an amazing job getting that truck down the alley...and right past our house...

Ping picks up the phone, has an exchange in Taiwanese, hangs up. "I don't know how he got the other address..." Unfortunately, he drove right past us, somehow managing to squeeze between the corner of a brick building and the bumper of a ULBT parked on the other side of the street. Bummer: he couldn't get back! And he couldn't go on, either. Apparently, further up the street it gets even narrower and he had to back down the hill and turn around. But now he couldn't fit between the wall and the still-parked ULBT.

He started talking about it in a loud voice in Taiwanese. Very loud! Not mean, just loud. People started leaning out of windows. Two guys on the second floor had words of advice for him. He didn't think that would work, so they suggested something else. He didn't think that would work either. Ping went to find the owner of our little corner store to ask him if he might know the driver of the ULBT. By the time we turned around, our driver was beaming at us, waving and giving us the thumbs-up! Here comes the ULBT driver to move the vehicle. We're saved!

Okay, so this is what All Our Stuff looks like stacked up in the house. 41 boxes, well packed. It's all very neat.

But wait...it's all got to fit into this small house with no storage! We're still working on that bit. For now, we've lined up all the boxes in two rooms, one layer deep (rarely more), and we're opening things slowly as we need them.

One of the discoveries in this whole process was just how little we really need. All Our Stuff has been packed away for more than a month, and we've been able to get from here to there, have a social life, eat, sleep...all that with only what we brought in our suitcases and backpacks.

It was also interesting to see what we opened first. Ping needed her old passports for insurance reasons, so we hunted for and located those on our Inventory spreadsheet. The Brita water filter was next. We've been buying 5200 ml water jugs from Carrefour and lugging them up the hill. Hey, look! The stemware was in the same box. Ah, now we can have a glass of cheap(ish) wine in something besides a coffee cup!

Mark is infamous for his near-homicidal cooking skills, but we both were so happy when we found out the kitchen we'd ordered was going to be installed today! Someplace to wash dishes besides the bathroom sink or the shower! Somewhere to put the bowls and spoons besides the drying racks in the utility room! A place for hot water!

Strangely, we weren't really thinking that much about actually COOKING in it. Food is so easy to get around here! Yesterday, we had a late lunch: a winter melon iced drink, two different bowls of noodles--one with wonton--and a plate of yam greens with garlic. Yummy! Cost: $NT165. That's about $US5.20 For two people. Hard to beat. And it was SPICY because we asked for it! Yay!

Here are all the doors, the fan housing and the two-burner, gas cook top.

Yes, this is one of the Ubiquitous Little Blue Trucks. Almost nothing gets done in Taiwan without one of these and/or a scooter.

Mark always thought the vehicles in Asia were way too top-heavy. They have a very narrow wheelbase and look unwieldy and unstable in the corners. They are, but that's not the point. You simply can't get down the alley with anything else--especially scooters park shoulder to shoulder bordering the street.

More pictures of the cabinets before they were installed.

Here are the two guys putting in the cabinets. These guys showed up around mid-morning and they were done in about 3 hours.

Note that all the cabinets are 11 cm off the floor! Remember Xiao Qiang?? Yes! This is why all cabinets are levitated, or at least propped up on steel legs: you have to be able to chase those little buggers anywhere they want to go.

All the drawers and doors have a rubber seal around them, too. Good thing. Very good thing.

Almost done! We are very happy with the look! It's not a whole lot, but it's enough! The space between the big steel sink and the two-burner cook top is only 74 cm, so it's not a lot of counter top, but--again--you don't need much.

We were both surprised at how much bigger the kitchen felt after the cabinets went in! For weeks we've been speculating about how everything will fit, and the space has seemed to shrink in our minds. It turns out to be a nice, neat little kitchen! We still need some cabinets and a small counter on the opposite wall, but there's more room for it than we thought there would be. Oh, and we didn't put the refrigerator in there either, so that helps. More on that in a later post.

The kitchen is in! That's the utility room through the window. Yeah, we have a window--with a screen, mind you!--from the kitchen into the utility room. How many places have one of those!

We're glad to have our kitchen! The first thing we cooked when it was all done? Instant noodles in their own paper bowls. Just add hot water. But we cleaned the chopsticks in our own kitchen sink!