El Andalous - More Organisational Woes

Work In Progress

Well, I’ve given you all a few weeks rest from my organizational woes, so I’m now going to return back to them, since this is really taking up most of my life just now.

As I said, I decided to offload all my broken and unwanted stuff on Joke (pronounced Yoka rather than as Joke as in witticism!) to sell to charity. Again, this sounds easy, but it wasn’t. I needed to clear all my files off my laptop before giving it away. This must have taken me at least two days and I began to feel that this was a lot of work to do something where I got no reward!

The main problem was that my laptop screen was no longer functional. I managed to hook it up to the TV, so that I had a proxy screen. Unfortunately, the software that I’d downloaded to remove all the files didn’t automatically execute for some reason. I googled and found a way to get it to execute by going into the BIOS on start-up and changing the start-up command. However, all laptops are apparently set for the BIOS screen only to show on the primary screen, which is the screen on your actual laptop. Therefore, it wouldn’t show on the TV screen. I had to give up.

My old laptop was also very slow, so downloading programmes took forever in itself. I ended up trying to download another programme to remove all my files, but it just wouldn’t ever fully download. In the end, I found yet another programme, but I had to erase most things individually and it took forever.

I made an impulse buy in Spinneys of a set of plastic drawers which I thought would serve well as bathroom storage. However, when I got home, it didn’t fit, so it had to go in the lounge, which wasn’t really where I wanted it. Moreover, I thought the children’s design down the front of the drawers was just a bit of cardboard on the packaging, but it turned out to be the picture on the actual drawers. I didn’t really want a set of drawers with a children’s cartoon emblazoned on it! It was all a bit of a disaster.

I tried to rectify it by buying some sticky-backed plastic (good old Blue Peter!) to hide the garish cartoon. As I’ve said before, I’m not really an arts and crafts type person. Although the covering looks pretty good if you just glance at it, if you pull a drawer out, you can hear the bits of jutting-out plastic scraping against the drawer below. Still, they are functional (for now).

I gave up on Medhat ever finding me a wash unit for my bathroom. I told him to forget it and I confidently strode into town thinking I would just sort this myself. However, instead, I got a bit bamboozled. This often happens when I go into Hurghada.

I got a quote from one place to have one made specifically for me, but then realized there were things I hadn’t thought to consider (I couldn’t remember if my tap went on the basin or if it was fixed on the worktop, I wasn’t sure how the basin was fixed to the worktop, or how large a hole was needed etc). I went to another shop and found a nice self-contained unit for 2000 LE. But when I sat down to order it, it transpired that it actually cost 10,000 LE - I’d completely misheard the price. And then a tap would be an extra 1500 LE. I had no idea that taps were so expensive! This was more than I'd intended to spend, so again I gave up.

Finally, I decided to take the plunge and go back to the first place. However, when I got to the shop, the guy who had served me before wasn’t there and they couldn’t work out what he’d recommended to me. Moreover, it turned out that I had to order the granite top separately from another person; they only did the bottom part of the unit. The granite person would have to come to my house , I’d have to see how long it would take for him to prepare the granite, and then they could do their part of the unit after that. My heart fell – this was getting complicated and beyond my capabilities as a non-Arabic speaker. Yet again, I gave up and went home, feeling frustrated.

Eventually, I spotted Medhat’s manager, Mohamed, and he found me a suitable unit within one day. If only it had been that easy from the start! To install it, though, my pipes in my bathroom had to be moved, meaning the wall tiles had to be broken, and I needed replacement tiles. Fortunately, these were in stock.

It all got done in the end, but it was an uphill battle all the way. I had no idea that getting a new wash stand for the bathroom would be so difficult.