The Mattress

I moved into a new apartment a couple of weeks ago and one of my first purchases was a mattress. Since I didn't intend on spending an outrageous price for a new one, I decided I'd get one used. HK has a lot of foreigners coming and going so it is pretty easy to get something fairly new at a reasonable price. I went over to geoexpat.com's classified section and found a promising ad. Less than a year old and needs to be moved quickly.

I went over and met this nice German lady who was moving in with her English boyfriend. In the end, I bought the mattress and a tv set. We arranged to have the movers they were using to also drop by my place to move my new purchases the next day. Anyways, I met up with them the next day and we took a taxi to the fellow's apartment to wait for the movers. While we waited, we chatted a bit. There is something about an English accent that makes even a Harvard graduate feel intellectually inferior (not that I know what it's like to go to Harvard). We could be talking about porn and I'd still feel like I didn't have the academic qualifications for the topic. I was the George W. Bush to his Tony Blair. This may be the first and last time I compare myself to Bush......

Anyways, the movers were late so the boyfriend called up the movers and told them off a bit in Cantonese. I was impressed.
The movers finally arrived and unloaded the couple's belongings. The deal was that I would ride with the two movers to my place so they could unload the mattress and tv. Despite my best efforts to get a window seat, I ended up in the middle seat between two hard-working (read BO) movers wearing nothing but shorts and shoes. It was a very quiet ride as we didn't have anything to say to each other. As I was breathing through my mouth and trying to think of something, anything to say, I became thankful that HK was so small and that it takes about 15 minutes to get to anywhere.

We arrived, they unloaded the mattress and tv, and I watched a movie on my brand new tv while lying on my brand new bed. Good stuff.