First of all - if you do this kind of move make sure that you do that with an organisation that supports you or at least understands what it takes to move a family from one country to another (did I mention that before?).
My new boss wanted me to come to Germany as soon as possible so some coworker could transfer all her information to me (she ended up spending half a day with me, and then disappeared - suddenly she was "sick" and took vacation until her officially last day - so no transfer at all). So when I told my boss that I would have to come back to Taiwan in around May to deal with some issues and to bring over my wife and my son he was like: "Hm, that is high season and even our veteran staff members don't get vacation during that time. And i don't want anyone to get special treatment." Hm, wouldn't you call moving a family from Taiwan to Germany a somewhat special situation which calls for a somewhat special handling?
Anyways, I ended up promising him that i will of course work while I am in Taiwan and even visit our supplier.
So we tried to clean the apartment, boxed a little bit more than 50 boxes, ran errands (like transferring money, picking up passports, returning modems, etc) and on top of that I worked almost full time and really visited our supplier. The result was almost a week with two hours of sleep on average (two nights with no sleep at all).
My wife was great, she did a lot of the packing by herself, and had to organize and handle a lot of issues (e.g a shipping of the boxes). She only complained once (when I was once again running back and forth between my computer and the boxes): "If you have to work the whole time anyways, you could have come back later."
Unfortunately we couldn't finish all. Like cancellation of our cell phone contracts. Funny story - I went to a Taiwan Mobile service center (with my ARC) and told them I need to cancel my contract. I also told them I would pay the fine for cancelling the contract early. Their reaction: "Sorry, you need to bring you passport. And you cannot pay the complete fine today. You have to wait until your next bill arrives next month." Even telling them that I would leave the country didn't help. They didn't want me to pay now.
We ended leaving in a real rush. I just returned from a last trip to the post office, and when i returned, the car taking us to the airport was almost there. So I just put on my shoes (without socks) and only a light jacket (which turned out to be a real disaster during the flight), then we grabbed son and baggage and left for the airport. More about the flight in the next entry.
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