Moving into our Apartment

31.07.18 On Tuesday morning we had breakfast with the new friend of Joep, the General Manager of the Radisson Ikoyi, Kevin. He offered to help us locate our missing luggage.

We went afterwards to the apartment where the cleaning team was not really making progress. They had divided their tasks per area. One was doing the windows. One was doing the most dirty spots and one was doing something nobody knew. After looking at this for an hour we intervened and suggested to work per room instead of per some other random approach. They agreed and then it went fast.

Viv and I unpacked our luggage and went into town to do some more shopping. In the mean time the fridge arrived and the washing machine. However both put roughly in the right space (kitchen) but not connected or unpacked. By this time the cleaning team was ready and left. To our surprise the next group coming in were the painters and they started painting and sand dusting everything so in no time the house was dirty and dusty again.

In the meantime we have tried in any imaginable way to reach AirFrance to get information about our missing suitcase. AirFrance has not been answering any phone calls, they provided us with an official folder for missing luggage which included a spelling error in the email address. And they also did not reply on their own facebook messenger option. Maybe they are on strike?

It was also my birthday so I got some nice birthday presents from Vivienne and the children. All of them called but jack had an additional surprise for us, he had since that morning Bell's Palsy. So he is now on steroids and anti-inflammation and lets hope it will get better soon. Bells Palsy is the result of a virus or infection which leads to the temporary not function of some of the facial nerves (paralysed). We were shocked, as probably Jack was as well, but by now we have heard from several people that they have had this also somewhere during their lives and that it will disappear (sometimes after several months) again.

We went out for dinner at the Lagoon. This is a very nice restaurant at the waterfront. They need to work on the correctness of their invoice or alternatively the waiter was drunk since most of our orders were double on the invoice.;-)

01.08.18 Wednesday was my first working day and Viv's first day at home without me. I started with a shower and in 2 minutes the shower was over swimming. So I decided to shower in the bathtub but there was no stop in the bath. We had forgotten to pack or buy shaving cream so I looked very relaxed at the office.

The day started with trying to connect my Austrian laptop to the Nigerian Breweries network which was not that easy since the Austrian computer is set up in German and logically local IT does not speak German. Additionaly I had a different version of Windows than the one NB uses so copying steps from another laptop did not work. Hopefully we will get it fully working.

My predecessor had left me some money for the first days to get by. So I bought from him Nairas with a total value of 1000 Euro. I received that today from my assistant. It was a brown enveloppe of at least 10 centimeters thick. The biggest banknote is 1000 Naira which is 2,50 Euro.

At the end of the day I went home with Yinka, one of our drivers, in my new car, a Toyota land cruiser Prado. At Home in the morning the painters were there again. The plumbers came to connect the dishwasher. Something went wrong and they pulled the whole water pipe from the wall so for now we have no water in the kitchen. Viv made dinner for us tonigh because Glory our nanny went home to see her daughter, who’s normally at boarding school far away from home. Viv thought she'd bought peppers, but luckily Glory saved us from her putting them in the spaghetti sauce since they turned out to be extremely hot/spicy. She also bought onions, garlic etc but then she discovered that we do not have a chopping board and no proper cutting knifes yet.

Since tonight we have good working internet again in the house, we are very happy with this. Hugo would say: ”home is where the internet is”. We watched our first Netflix show without any buffering so life is great again.

Kevin from the Radisson did locate our lost suitcase, tonight we received our very last luggage, excellent! Also solved! Done! Tick!

While Rob was working I had a house full with men, plumbers, painters, technicians. They come in in groups of 4. The painters came in and an alarm went of. I asked them "what is this?" "Should we do something?" Their answer was; ”don’t know ma” and they raised their shoulders. They went to work and after 10 minutes the alarm stopped. After maybe 30 minutes the door bell rang. A very angry man was standing there, saying that someone in my house had switched on the fire alarm. Or I should say it differently, someone knocked out the protection glass of the fire alarm next to our front door. The guy went inside, made a lot of noice, was shouting, cursing and very upset, and all the workers did was nonchalantly raising their shoulders and saying that they had no idea what he making all this fuss about. So the man drew off again, the workers smiled and put their earplugs in and started working. They had their fun.

With my driver Ali we went together for some grocery shopping, he’s my PA! He helps where he can. Except when he tells me bell pepper isn’t spicy when it is! We ended up in the Spar, received a tumbola number at the cashier's desk and surprise surprise we won 6 glasses, well that’s what we thought, when we came home there were only 5 glasses inside. Nevertheless we could use them, as we have not much here.

02.08.18

Today I thought we would have a quiet day but it’s been busy all day long. It started this morning when Glory arrived with the fantastic text that it was "a cold day today". So I looked at my weather app and it was already 26 degrees….

This morning a tv guy came to fix the television for us. At a certain moment I thought he was ready, because there was tv, so it worked, but he was constantly watching at the tv, it made me curious so I kept an eye on him, while he was sitting on our couch, but he was really watching telly! Can you imagine? When I was about to say something about it, Glory came in, she saw what I also saw, a man watching telly. She sent him away, he told her he was waiting for a cable and this would only take an hour, "yes", said Glory, "or maybe two or three hours". She kindly moved him in the direction of the door. Come back when we’re back please, she told him, since we need to go shopping.

Glory, Ali and I went for a bin, chopping board, knifes more cloth hangers and some grocery shopping. Now I’m eating a lot of fresh pineapple and watermelon, yummy. Slowly we start getting at a point that things are ready, no more handymen in the house please. Tomorrow we’ll do the official handover.

03.08.18

On Friday we had the formal handover of the Apartment to us. The handover was planned and agreed for 10 am but started due to late arrival of the participants (Nigerian Brewery and Landlord) at approx. 14 pm. The handover was different than any others. I tore a piece of paper from my notebook to note down the things that still need to be improved or fixed. The landlord did not note anything down. We assume he has total recall abilities.

Friday Rob came back from the office with Yinka. After we had said goodnight to him both drivers rang upstairs at our door to have a meeting with us about their accommodation. Although promised to be handled, this was not done as agreed so we aligned our views with Yinka and Ali and agreed that on Monday the company would solve this.

Then in the evening the Internet Provider would come to enable us to connect Apple TV to the network. Nobody showed up….....