I have successfully moved from KL to JB and I am currently taking a great deal of laborious efforts to fulfill my newly-found life with beautiful R&B songs and delicious cheese cakes. But before that actually happens, I had to undergo several painful procedures of moving out and moving in. One proven fact for many, moving to a new place can be deadly nerve-cracking.


Packing

Firstly, packing demands a delirious attention to tiring details. The following statistics on the number of Cekmi’s packed boxes might possibly prove this point.

Office: 4
Wardrobe: 5
Study room: 4
Bedroom: 4
Kitchen: 9
Bathroom: 2
Living Hall: 4
Miscellaneous: 1

Total number of boxes: 33

Yes, you read it right – 33 boxes. It was like asking Superman to lift the whole house.

Packing is a truly strenuous affair. It requires a major spring cleaning that could shock you with unexpected findings. Packing indeed amused me with the discovery of unwanted paraphernalia – mountains of old movie tickets, packs of lovey-dovey greeting cards, broken collections of cute little tokens of remembrance, crumpled sets of fancy paper bags – all hidden comfortably around inaccessibly covered space. I threw them all into a giant waste plastic bag.

After 24 hours of packing, I managed to compartmentalize all the household bits and pieces into 33 boxes. With the assistance of two professional men, I uploaded them on a two-tonne lorry which would carry them directly to JB.

It took me 4 hours of skilled driving to reach my new house in Taman Universiti. But it took 11 hours for the slow lorry to reach there. It was almost midnight – the neighbours might probably be sleeping soundly on their beds, but the men managed to unload the boxes quietly and effectively without anyone around the neighbourhood screaming madly at us, thanks to my organised numbering system of packaging. To unpack the boxes in the middle of the night was not a good idea. So, I spent my first night in my new house sleeping among those gigantic 33 boxes.


Unpacking

Mess was all around and I was all alone. It was maddening and suffocating. I did not know where to start.

Patience.

This word kept my sanity in check during the mind-boggling tasks of unpacking. At times, I felt like giving up and kept questioning myself on why I had to do all these crazy tasks alone, or why I had to move out in the first perspective. Thanks to wise Cekmi, I managed to get things in perspective again. Thinking very hard out of the box, I pushed myself diligently to get things out of the 33 boxes. I did it single-mindedly, motivating myself by visualizing a complete sweet home in JB, picturing myself having a good life here, happily watching good Korean dramas, cheerfully sipping a good cup of Nescafe, savouring my independence and emancipation.

One basic challenge that tested my patience was dealing with difficult people to handle few basic things in the house – reinstalling Astro, resetting up air-conditioner, changing the uncivilized toilet door, putting power sockets in two rooms, rebuilding the flood-prone parking lot, and fixing streamix. However, my landlord has been particularly helpful when it comes to fine tuning the house. He is like Mr. Muscle who would come to my rescue when I need a correct detergent.

After days of clogged energy and sweat, I finally completed the house with five specialized sections – living hall, kitchen, bedroom, wardrobe and study room. With this swift accomplishment, I finally laid a comfortable foundation called home. I could have taken things slowly and easily, but I always have this speedy over-heated passion for a speedy completion. I just couldn’t stop getting things done and ready quickly so that I can immediately start focusing on other important things in my professional life.

Having to go through these drills made me sickly thrilled but I was viciously satisfied once the tasks were triumphed. This major task of moving has drained my energy that, to certain extent, I felt like a mentally-challenged person released from a mental asylum. Having to cope with difficult situations required a little extra amount of persistence and composure. Keeping this attitude in balance proved worthwhile for me because after each fulfilled task, I strangely felt like a newly-born man, being supplied with a new Superman power that kept me flying and flying.