Moving internationally .... don't use Graebel

Think all international moving companies are about the same? Think again!

I promised I would write this post even though now it all seems like water under the bridge. However getting the word out about how bad Graebel is and how important it is to check reviews before selecting your moving company seems like a good thing to do.


Theoretically I should have had the option to choose among 3 moving companies, but our move was done in such a hurry up fashion (we needed to be in Australia by a certain date for my son to start school), that apparently my company had to skip that part of the process. One day the phone rang and a young woman who sounded about 18 said she was from Graebel and she would be in charge of our move. Things didn't get off to a great start when she told me that the first thing I needed to do was go through our 3,000 sq. ft. house and inventory every item in it, and assign a value to it. Somewhat stupefied at the thought of how time consuming this would be when I was so close to my departure date and didn't have a spare minute in the day, I said that surely I did not need to list every pair of shoes, jeans or T-shirts in the house, and she replied that actually I did. And every fork, plate and glass? Yes, every one. At which point I had a complete melt down and said that I simply was not going to do that, and if Graebel needed that, then they were going to get to be the ones to call my company and tell them I'd decided to decline the assignment.

Things only went downhill from there. And since it was 3 months before our belongings showed up in Melbourne, that was plenty of time to get really far downhill.

Cut to the chase - we had to file a claim for over $10,000 in damages. The packing job was unbelievably unprofessional and poorly done. The moving company on the australia end which was in charge of getting our belongings out of the container, moving them to our house and unpacking them, was stunned at the condition things arrived in. They said they would not pack things like that to go around the block, much less an international move.

Not a single piece of bubble wrap was used in the move. Not a single one. Just paper.
A colleague of mine who was also moved from NY to Melbourne with a different moving company said that his shipper arrived with huge rolls of bubble wrap, and rolls of cardboard. Each piece of furniture was first wrapped in bubble, and then in cardboard. Our furniture was wrapped in paper at best, and towards the end of the packing (it took them 3 days because they showed up late each day, moved slowly and employed people who did not know what they were doing), they just stuck them in the truck with no wrapping at all.

Needless to say, just about every piece of wooden furniture was scraped and gouged. We have a lot of antiques and the damage was inconceivable. Imagine the gouge in the chair below, times 30 to 40 pieces of furniture, with many of them being damaged in multiple places.

Of course ceramics and glass items shattered. Not surprising when you find out that Graebel used a cheap, thin box to pack our goods, instead of the thicker, stronger (more expensive) quality of box. This caused the boxes to collapse during shipping, and to tear, damaging the items in the box.

What we found endlessly ironic, is that at the start of the packing job, they were telling us about how we could not ship liquids (even in closed, brand new containers) or spices. Or gels. Or this, or that. Their list was very long. On the last day of the packing, when they were flat out of time, they had yet to pack the master bathroom. They ended up taking out each drawer of the cabinets and upending them into a box. All sort of open tubes, gels, and liquids, just dumped in on top of each other in a large box. And yes that is a mirror you see thrown in there with everything else.

We liked the box where they took the glass scale and just plopped it on top of all the toiletry items.  Or the box where they threw in the weights with the ceramic vase - none of them with any wrapping!

I wont continue to drone on about how absolutely terrible this shipping company is, but suffice to say - consider yourself warned. Do not use Graebel, and if your employer suggests using them, direct them to my blog about my experience with them.

Waiting for the shipment to arrive

our vessel Lutetia

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There is that old expression of how a person’s life is going to change for the better when their “ship comes in”. I expect it originated in the days of merchant cargo trade by boat, but it has a certain resonance for people on overseas assignment waiting for the arrival of their household goods. 

I left the US with two suitcases on July 19^th. My husband was able to remain back in the US longer and dealt with the movers showing up to pack the house on July 30^th. (More on the movers in a subsequent blog – suffice to say for now that you should NEVER, EVER use Graebel as your international moving company!) 

I lived in the hotel Mantra for a month in a suite that had a dining area, living and a small kitchen. I was far from impressed but my college-aged son liked it and kept reminding me that if I were staying in a suite like that in NYC it would cost a small fortune. One thing that was very convenient was that it came with all that one would need to make a meal at home, and obviously it came with a bed, sheets and towels.

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Fast forward to the time when, as a newly relocated ex-pat, you need to move into your new home. You’ve used the services of the relocation agent, found the perfect place to live, and needed to sign the lease. Also, your company’s hotel allocation in the relocation package has probably run out. So, you pack up your two suitcases of worldly belongings, plus any small treasures you have bought along the way like your coffee machine and olive oil and get in a taxi to start the next phase of this adventure. 

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luggage in empty room

 Walking across the threshold into the beautiful space you will be calling home for a while, empty rooms echo in the evening light.  In order to spend even one night there, you will need sheets, pillows, blankets  and oh yes … a mattress. When the morning comes, you will need soap, shampoo, towels, a plate, a fork, a mug …. you get the picture. It is something of a daunting task to be new in a country, to not have a car, not have your spouse or partner with you, and to walk into a large empty house with just 2 suitcases. And don’t forget that in Australia, rentals do not come with ‘white goods’ … so, need a refrigerator to store that quart of milk you just bought? Buy one.

nice big (empty) walk-in closet

 

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I briefly considered renting a ‘corporate rental’, which is furnished, for a month or so, but when you finally find the perfect place to live, they of course want you to start paying rent right away, and it is very expensive to rent an empty home and also rent what is referred to around here as executive housing (because who else would be able to afford such things?!) So I arranged for rented furniture, which is also expensive but we really had no choice. The funny thing is that they have a minimum of 8 items that have to be rented in order to arrange for delivery, and even with 8 things it was still over 1K, so that’s what I rented .... 8 things ....

my (only) rented sofa

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Here we are, 9 weeks after our house in NY was packed up, still with our belongings in limbo. The ship arrived on time – September 25^th – and it was the only thing in this entire process of moving that was actually on time. They had told us to plan for 10 to 14 business days to clear Customs and Quarantine (actually the rocket scientist in the US had told us ‘about a week’ and it was only after we got to AU that the local delivery person broke us the news about 2-3 weeks). However, unfortunately, our professional movers managed to pack something that has caused the shipment to be delayed by Quarantine. We have not been told what it is, only that there are items ‘of concern’ to quarantine. They check for things like soil, plants, food, and wood. Yes, wood. You have to list every piece of wooden furniture that you are shipping when moving to Australia.

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At some point, our things will show up. And here’s the odd thing … my husband and I have very mixed feelings about all of that ‘stuff’ that made up our life in the US arriving. We have become accustomed to owning 4 plates, 6 wine glasses and 6 water glasses. We walk into our big beautiful walk-in closet and enjoy the small number of items that hang there.  As I said to a colleague at work, this international move has forced us to live with ‘about 10 things’ and you feel that life might just about be perfect if you had maybe 10 more things … but do you really need the 2,000 items that are sitting in a 40 foot container waiting to descend upon you?

I started this blog entry with an old expression, and I will end it with one as well … we are seeing the truth of the old adage that says “the more stuff you own, the more stuff owns you.” 

 

Melbourne Zoo

I haven’t been to a zoo since the boys were fairly young. This may explain why about 97% of the people at Melbourne Zoo were pushing a stroller, or holding a little one by the hand.

I had gone in hopes of being immersed in local flora and fauna, but this was not quite the ticket.  Frankly I found the zoo a little sad. To their credit, they have done a lot with a relatively small amount of land. Also, I expect they are underfunded, which is why there are so many signs around the zoo requesting donations to save animals "from extinction”. If you are in CBD you can take the tram right there, or there is also a train stop.

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I started with the Elephant Walk, which may have been a mistake, since elephants and relatively small spaces don’t mix well. They borrowed a page from Disney in an attempt to recreate a ‘village’ around the elephant enclosures, but it didn’t quite come off right (it probably looks a lot better to a 7-year-old) and just looked a little decrepit. There is a very large male with long (broken) tusks who is by himself in a sort of depressing space, and he has a long tubular object hanging on a rope that he can roll back and forth on his trunk, which will eventually cause a treat to fall out. Once it does, he scoops it up off the dirt with end of his trunk and starts all over again. Unfortunately he just seemed really bored and a little neurotic. Other adult elephants were in another enclosure with multiple young ones. I couldn’t help thinking of the happy elephants up in northern Thailand, who work with their trainers all day (with said trainers being completed devoted to the big beasts) and can seen painting paintings or kicking a soccer ball into a goal.

Moving on to some of the exhibits I liked better, it seemed that the orangutans got relatively large spaces (just a family of 3 in a very big enclosure) but they are sort of a cornerstone of the zoo’s save-animals-from-extinction campaign so that may be why they have a nicer space.  

I tried my first pie at the zoo. I guess that was a mistake since the chicken was dry and the crust heavy. Pies are sort of big here, and I am sure they come in a range from terrible to really terrific. Basically a pie has some type of meat (or chicken) filling and something that needs to strive to be a flaky crisp crust.

The aviary is nice. I guess I like spaces where you can walk in near the animals and you don’t notice the enclosures as much. There is a butterfly house, but it is tiny and was mobbed with people as well as very heated.

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Overall, unless you have one or more little ones that you are looking to get outside in a sort of ‘structured’ outing, I would probably take a pass on the Melbourne Zoo.

Settling-in is not easy …

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(this cup of coffee was on par with the best I've had in Florence, and it was just a little cafe I wandered into to escape the cold wind)

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Wow – so many things, that we take for granted as ‘part of life’ need to be done over, when moving. Leaving aside for now the myriad of new things that need to be set up in my personal life, one would think that at work I could slide right in since I am after all just transferring from one location to the next. But no, I am now an employee of our Australian entity, so as a ‘new’ employee, I have to create my work environment all over.  This means new accounts that must be set up, ordering and installing software, getting used to a PC all over again (I had moved to a MAC years ago, and going back to Windows … Windows7 mind you,  not Windows XP … is not for the faint of heart), getting a new conference bridge account, a new corporate credit card account, new tunneling account … the list goes on.

Not fun  : ( 

Oh well. I see it as an investment towards the payoff, which is the reward of being here for two years.

It had not occurred to me to set up voicemail on my new cell phone, since Apple kindly did a restore from the cloud of everything that was on my US phone and so the phone and acted looked the same. Except … no voicemail … I was wondering why these numbers that I did not recognize (and of course I would not recognize them, they are Australian numbers) kept calling me and not leaving voicemail. So now that is set up as well.

The big nut is finding a place to live. The houses in Melbourne are smaller than what we are used in the US and more expensive. Because we did not have the luxury of time to go on a house-hunting trip before we packed up and left, about 90% of our furniture has been sealed into a shipping container and delivered to the dock, awaiting its ship. I joke with my husband that maybe we can rent that shipping container and set it up on the sidewalk in front of our new house. That way when we want to use one of our many sofas or armchairs, we can just go out and sit in the container.  More on houses soon …

Relocating to Australia!

A two year assignment to my company's research lab in Melbourne presents our family with a wonderful opportunity for adventure and learning. 

This blog will attempt to record some of these adventures and my musings along the way. 

Given how complicated the whole relocation process was, it may also provide some bread crumbs of information to others considering relocation as an option. 

July 27, 2013-  I have had the most wonderful morning. It’s hard to know what to attribute it to except perhaps jet lag is easing its ferocious grip on my poor brain and I’ve had a chance to actually look around and experience my surroundings.  Also, today was the first morning I woke up in my small apartment hotel room, knowing that I could start to unpack my two huge monster bags (yes, just like those ones you see at the airport headed to Islamabad) and I could take the tram to work rather than piling into a taxi. Because of the big Liverpool vs Melbourne soccer game that brought 95,000 attendees and caused all the hotels to sell out, I had been traveling between 3 different hotels over the course of 3 nights.

Walking down Little Bourke street on this quiet grey morning to catch the tram, there could be no doubt in my mind that I had traveled to a new and wonderful place – somewhat reminiscent of Europe, with Asian overtones and yet very unique and Australian. I caught a tram that was not at all crowded , either because I was late getting out this morning or because it was about the 7^th tram in line going up Swanston street.  Walking the couple of blocks over to the lab, I stopped in at the Italian coffee shop (the ones my colleagues have assured me is the best of the 5 or 6 in the immediate radius of our building), and got a large cappuccino and a chocolate-nut-berry muffin. Seven dollars later I had my breakfast in hand and headed upstairs … not to my office, but to my space, shall we call it. Not sure if I should be alarmed or exhilarated at the trend, but some time ago I was in a large office with windows in our Hawthorne NY building. When we shut that building down and converged all the researchers our Yorktown lab, I had a smaller office with no windows (none of the offices have windows in Yorktown – apparently Eero Saarinen decided the glare would be bad for all those scholarly [male] computer scientists). Now I find myself in our fledgling lab, built to be lean and innovative with a start-up mentality and I have NO office.  In a very democratic fashion, everyone sits in open spaces, including the lab director, which I expect may be designed to make us feel young, vibrant and energetic. Who knows,  it could be working  :)

I would not want to claim in any way or pretend that ripping up a life by its roots and moving 18,000 miles away is an easy thing, or something to be undertaken lightly. In a perfect world we would have picked a departure date that got us into Melbourne on a Friday evening and had a couple of days to find our way around town. However, as we know, the world is far from perfect (but at times it can be just grand).  So my son and I dashed for an airplane on Friday evening in NY, the last possible moment we could catch one and still get him to his mandatory orientation on Monday morning. We landed on Sunday evening and by 8 am the following morning he needed to be at orientation. I started work on Tuesday morning.

Jet lagged brain is a funny thing. I tried doing a Google search on it and mostly what comes up is tips on how to ‘beat’ jet lag and the fact that continuous exposure to jet lag can cause permanent brain damage.  No surprise. My impression of jet-lagged brain is one’s ‘executive planning’ function (this is a real brain function that can be tested with standardized tests) goes away. What’s interesting about this is that some less forward-thinking, organized and measured part of your brain takes over, and realizes that the exec planning guy is no longer in residence. In order to deal with this, the chicken-little mind produces alarm interrupts – possibly to compensate for the fact that there is nobody minding the shop. In reality the chicken-little guy doesn’t have a clue about where things stand or what needs to be done, but he figures if he fires enough alarms he might possibly cover the bases. So the lesser brain alerts … where is the visa document … it’s gone … I had it before and now it is gone! Quick look, look, look for it! Oh, I already realized it was important and I took it out of my purse and put it on the desk. All is well. Until the next interrupt arrives. Do you have your purse - quick check for your purse. Yes, it is on my shoulder where it always is.  And so the day wears on, with interrupts ranging in scale and intensity. All very tiring, which is kind of silly, because the reason your brain is doing this in the first place is because it is tired! Anyway, the worst part of this seems to be past. Now I just have regular exhaustion that kicks in early in the day, and by the time the sky is starting to darken (rather early here given 'winter)  it feels like my brain has turned to mush.