Mexico Medical Student |

The good news first: I’m writing from my new home! I’d never have thought of penning a blog post until I was at least on the flip-side of the move–regardless of how un-unpacked we are–so this very fact is already a good sign. The bad news, well, I’ll save that for the end.

Like many students, our first place was a “starter” place since all of us get here not knowing our ass from almacenaje. Claudia was pregnant and the need to find a good house was paramount. I actually left the crap apartment early to come the house from which we just moved. The house is nice, but it’s far away from the hospitals I’ll be mostly at, and it’s not the most babyproofable–something we’d have no way of foreseeing as first-time parents. Following the advice of a local (bad idea), I got some fletes to do the job of moving into our now vacated house. Mudanzas is the proper word in Spanish for moving companies, but it implies “professional” movers for “big” moves, like Mayflower or the like in the US. So here’s what fletes got us: a beat-up, 1980s model Ford F-150 with a 6+-foot-high fence surrounding the truck bed.

“Oh, HELL no!” I thought when that thing puttered in. I mean, screw me, why not just get a rickshaw and whip my ass from behind as I pull my household? I was greeted by a guy who must have weighed 500lbs who handed me a clipboard and a pen from potato-sized fingers to write down all the data they really should have already had, seeing as how I gave it all on the phone. Just waiting for me to write down the destination address, any particular goods of “special value” (like I’d let them take it in the first place), etc. the guy had already started sweating. Mind you, this is the first week in December. In the morning. “Not good,” I thought, as I was genuinely concerned for both this guy’s health and my things. Turns out he was the driver and was responsible more to stay in the truck-fence-hybrid and ensure proper space utilization. The other two guys, if you put them hip-to-hip widthwise, didn’t even match the driver’s impressive width. I wouldn’t have figured either of them could lift much of anything.

In the end though, they got everything done, but it took two round trips back and forth, and even the then-drenched driver had to finally help. Just for sanity’s and my belongings’ sake, I also assisted. On top of that, the driver in particular was not very subtle when asking about a tip. Something inevitably gets dinged or bent during a move even with the best of movers, but it should be a major exception. With these people, there were far too many dings and scratches trying to fit everything into a ridiculous joke of a moving truck, as well as too-little muscle (and obviously experience) navigating the big stuff up and down. “Next time,” I told myself, “I’m calling professionals.”

And call professionals I did. This time, a well-dressed older gentleman came to the house, did an assessment (as opposed to an inadequate phone interview from the rickshaw movers), surveyed exit/entry widths, steps, etc., and gave me an amount on the spot. Wanting to be “proper” with these people, I called a day before the move to ask roughly what was an acceptable size to not have to be boxed, at it is hard finding large used boxes around here.

“Oh no, everything must be boxed,” an obviously older lady primly replied.
“Yes, of course; I’d never just leave loose items scattered about for them to move. I’m talking large items–at what size can I just leave things unboxed?”
“Well, our policies are quite clear,” she said, avoiding my question. “Our workers won’t move anything if it’s not boxed.”
At that point, I’d had it. I had no patience to deal with a pencil-pusher mentality when I was grimy, sweaty, and facing these people coming in less than 24 hours. “Well your surveyor should have indicated I have a washer, dryer and a fridge–do I need to find boxes for them too?” I asked, dripping with sarcasm.
“I can’t help you with those questions. You need to speak with Mr. Medina [the estimate guy] and he’s gone for the day [3:30pm?!?]–I’ll transfer you to his voicemail.”
Knowing at this point I was dealing with the laziest of the lazy or the CYA-est of the CYAs, I just did what I had to do with what I had. In the end, Claudia and I worked all Thanksgiving night (dinner? special day? HA!) and through the morning with no sleep to get everything ready.

The truck arrived Friday, 23rd of November at 10:00am. While shoppers were already in their 6th hour of hoarding in the US, my own Black Friday was just beginning. Things were looking good because 1) they were on time (a rarity) and 2) it was, as promised, a REAL covered moving van. Then in a surreal moment, like those clown VW Bugs at a circus, workers started piling out the side cargo door, one after the other. In all, seven workers showed up, including the driver. I wondered from what indgenous village they plucked these workers from, because the tallest of the workers was probably 5ft 2in (1.57m). The jefe was a bit taller and more “professional” looking, but even he was a bit on the puny side. I figured that the reason they sent so many was it’d take two of these guys to do the work of one strongman.

Before I was even done talking with the supervisor, I stared blankly in yet another surreal moment (I had no sleep, after all) as things were streaming out of my house carried by these little Mexican harvester ants underneath. And like ants, these little guys seemed to lift several times their weight. I had boxes of textbooks that made me grunt moving them around–med students, you know exactly what I mean–and these little Mayans had one in each hand and would have another box or trashcan or some item balanced on the back of their neck–down the stairs, around a corner–nothing stood in these guys’ way. I was in total awe. I actually felt shame at my own tubby, pasty-white, pampered, out-of-shape self as probably any of these little guys could easily outdo me, not necessarily in raw strength but most certainly in actual work. They moved so fast, I had to ask them to pause because I’d explain to one guy that some stuff over in the corner was going to be transported by me (such as my G5 tower and a padded satchel containing my life’s data in external HDs), but the next guy who wasn’t there to hear this, started walking off with it and I had to chase him down. More than once, I asked a worker not to take something for fear of it being dropped, since, well, worry-wort me couldn’t take that the tabletop glass was balanced on the dude’s head! It was absolute chaos. If there was ever such a thing as over-efficiency, this was it.

Oh, and the “it must be boxed” bullshit above? There were things I had no intention of them taking, such as brooms, mops, cleaning supplies, etc. since we had to do cleanup the next day. These things I never had in a box and were just in their normal place in the utility area. They took it all!! Dirty, clean, stray towels on the floor–you name it, it found its way on to the truck. I actually had to come up with a mental list on-the-fly of things that out of necessity I needed for them to take out of the truck.

Insanity. I didn’t actually do any heavy lifting but all the parallel action (and again, lack of sleep) had me completely drained. Except the day was only beginning, and it was now time to drive to the new house–me in one car, wife and daughter in the other–and the moving van in tow. The fun was far from over.

Part 2: The Unloading tomorrow, complete with a few discoveries I’m still dealing with…