The Arrival........Day #13, #14, #15, #16 - Lots of unpacking

It was nothing but box after box, corrugated cardboard and bubble wrap.

Progressively working through everything. Working out where the contents were going to go, and assembling furniture.

I got my bed built on the Wednesday, so no more airbed! I am glad I took everything to bits in Qatar, because it made putting everything back together a lot easier.

Also, my tools were in a box easily identifiable, so had them from the start. There were still a couple of items that I didn't know which box the packers had put things in, so had to stop one room and move to another until I found the missing bits etc.

On Thursday, I got a call from the car garage, the car had been registered and they now had my number plates. I popped into the garage and got them fitted.

I was also meeting the land lady to look at a couple of replacement items for the kitchen, the Fridge Freezer had seen better days and was needing replaced, and one of the hob rings was also broken. We also went to the place to get the electricity and water done, but will have to go back next week as needed more current meter readings.

While I was out, I got a message from one of my pals I worked with in North Sea, he had appeared at the villa! He was over visiting family in Cyprus, and said he was going to come up past if he was in the area, but didn't say when. So as soon as I got finished up in town, I dashed back up to meet them. As I was finished driving for the day, it was opportunity for a break from unpacking and crack open a bottle (or 2) of bubbles. Great to catch up with him again after was must have been almost 5 years.

By Friday night, everything was unwrapped, and majority of things put away. I got the network sorted out so, the link to Aberdeen was up and working again and the telly was happy :-) (i.e. no geolocation issues)

I was also adjusting the arabian lights, that we had bought in Qatar. We turning one of them, there was an almighty flash and arcing sound. Fortunately, I didn't get an electric shock, but even after the arcing and the noise had stopped, the lights kept on, I used my shoe to flick the switch on the wall socket as didn't want to touch anything. Surprised that no fuses blew or breakers popped. On closer inspection, it looks like the joints had been simply wrapped in electrical tape, and this had shifted with moving the light. Will need to get a proper joint on it at some point, in the meantime, the light is out of service and a label wrapped to the plug!

Saturday, I had sorted out all the packing material, all paper was flattened and all the bubble wrap bundled and corrugated cardboard rolled.

I decided to move everything into the garage, which was just as well, as we had a shower of rain.

The last thing I opened was the large crate which contained the round glass table top for the garden table. When I opened the lid, there was a draft of hot air coming from the box, the glass inside was absolutely roasting. The centre of the glass was too hot to touch. It had been sat in the garden in the sunshine.

When I picked up the glass, I felt it flex, and made an audible bowing noise. That is when I noticed it had actual gone visibly concave with the thermal expansion, and the noise was the raised centre flexing through to the other side. I am surprised that the glass hadn't shattered when the flex happened. I stood with it edge onto the sun, in an attempt to get it to cool down before I attempted to move it anymore. After a good few minutes, it was now possible to touch the centre, but there was still a small amount of bowing. I dragged it on its packing cardboard into the shade, and again waited a short while before was happy enough to try and lift it onto the table top. Got it into place, and relaxed...

I think the worst parts of the unpacking were;

• Opening the corrugated wrapped large items. Especially those that had been smothered in packing tape and had odd shapes.
• The kitchen, all the small items from all the boxes...

Not to worry, it's done - no more boxes!

Desert Dust Washdown!

All the garden furniture still had a layer of Qatar Deset Dust on it. Lined everything up, cushions as well and went to town on them with the jet wash. Certainly looks a lot better now. At least here, it won't be covered again as soon as they are cleaned.

Internet Woes

I unplugged the villa DSL modem, to move it to another location, to see if it helped with coverage, but unfortunately, even though the DSL sync was good, there was no internet. I took to Twitter and contacted Cyta support, they had a play about, but were having issues as well. They talked about sending out a technician to check the line, but I repeated that the modem has Sync'd to it cannot be a line problem. The error message that was showing up was an Authentication failure. The messed about for a couple of hours almost, and after sending them serial numbers, and checking for lights flashing when they did stuff, they eventually got it back working. According to them, there was a configuration error with their system. They said it shouldn't happen again! Time will tell.