Furniture & Time Challenges
My flat is rather empty at the moment, since my shipment from Dili won't arrive until some time, and there are also many items still waiting to be bought. I had some simple chair stored in the attic, but the locks had been recently changed. Hence, I needed to get the new keys. One may think that would be solved rather easily, if one didn’t know how the house management and maintenance of apartment buildings is organised here: both of these tasks have been outsourced – to different companies, of course.
So, I had received a letter from the house management company that the new keys can be obtained from the maintenance company. So far so good, I called the maintenance company, who confirmed that they have keys and I can come and get one from their office. Now, here comes the interesting part: the office is located in the other side of the city, and they have introduced special ‘service time’ for the house residents. This service time, which they claim on the house notice board is introduced to provide better service, is one hour once a week. Luckily this hour happened to be on Mondays, so I got the key, and chairs, yesterday.
I also wanted some more comfortable seating and bought a sofa and armchairs today. The furniture shop is located approximately 200 meters from my house, so guess how long it’ll take to deliver the couch? Yes, three days (‘only’, according to the salesman, so it should be with me on Friday); this again thanks to an optimised, efficient logistics system.
Yesterday, I started my first course for long time. It was actually quite a pleasant feeling sitting at the lecture again. I thought I would start disciplined, and arrived to the classroom two minutes before the scheduled starting time. Too bad my time was three minutes behind the one in the lecturer’s watch, so she had already started.
On Sunday, when I was waiting for a bus at the stop, I heard an elderly lady telling a horror story that had greatly disturbed her. She complained that in past six months, the bus had arrived to the stop two minutes before the indicative time presented in the timetable thrice, whereby she had missed the bus and had to wait another 10 minutes for the next one! She went on telling that first two times she had let it go, but after the third time she had called the bus company and complained.
So what is the moral of these incidents? It takes quite some time for simple things to happen, but then they will happen at the exact moment according to a schedule. I’m not quite sure whether I like this feature or not. Or whether it is a feature at all.
