This was the worst move on the Skinner family records.
Everything that could go wrong, did.
The stress was high even before the move began.
Above extraordinary family difficulties, the paper work is slow and difficult
So dad takes 2 weeks to do "outprocessing" because no one in the embassy is ever at their desks. Finally he turns in the last of the documents, including his diplomatic drivers licence, which he does on Thursday because they won't give him the tickets to fly out until everything is turned in.
You don't get funds to stay in a hotel (and you are required to stay in expensive ones overseas)
because the embassy counts their subsidy on your (expensive) apartment as the pay, so we stayed in someone else's apartment (very kind of them) so we shuttle between the two apartments, packing little by little.
I cash a cheque for great flipping wads of paper money to leave with someone to settle our last accounts.
So Sonia-and-company come to the empty house at the last minute, and stay and stay, Michael lays on the floor with a headache among the last of the boxes, the girls insist they will die if they don't eat now, and I tell them to eat a snack but that won't do..Kris starts pacing.
That's the background. So it turns out my shoes are packed, Kris calls dispatch but no cars are available. So he says "what can happen?" and he drives us to the other apartment. The very first intersection Kris pulls in front of a bus. (corner of the 80 con novena) The bus driver scrapes along that $150,000 armoured diplomatic car, swerves to the left and ends up on the sidewalk.
The good thing is that about 12 people show up to help Kris. The bus driver's friends abandon him and he sits in his bus and waits while the embassy roving patrol comes and hangs out on the sidewalk with us. Dispatch finally sends a car and takes the kids to the apartment, then comes back and waits with Kris and I, then an insurance person comes, then 2 motorcycle cops and then their sergeant. We negotiate for awhile (insurance person doesn't do their job well) they call everyone, we hang out, I go back to the apartment and get some cookies which we hand around. The cops tell Kris they know someone from Canada too and they talk while they wait. Some of the milgroup guys stop buy and hang out too.
After 4 hours things are cleared up, and we go home to bed.
Beware the urge to say "what can happen?"
