Interna

My household is on the way to Sweden already and I'm sitting in an apartment empty besides the bed and the modem. Yesterday was my last day at PI. Laurent Freidel said the good-bye words at the weekly wine & cheese, and everybody politely clapped their hands, though most of the people present I didn't know. Some of them where students from the recently started PSI program. Laurent did quite a good job, though I always find it weird to hear my CV summarized in a few words. It keeps getting longer. My CV looks so neat, whenever I look at it I wonder where is all the sweat and pain. Can I put them in an additional section?

Since there is no direct flights from Toronto to Stockholm anyway, I will have a few days stopover in Germany which also allows me to pick up some stuff I deposited there earlier. Not to mention that I should say hello to my husband occasionally so he doesn't forget he's married. In Stockholm, am staying the first month in a guest apartment. Experience tells me the first weeks in a new country are very busy, filled with bureaucracy, disorganization and frustration. So expect blogging to be sparse.

Some of you might have followed it on my Twitter account, two weeks ago I had a water damage in my apartment. The water tank in the storage room which preheats the warm water leaked. This must have happened sometime in the evening after I went to bed. I got up the next morning early to make a phone call to Europe and noticed all the carpet was soaking wet. Since I didn't know how to turn off the water and it kept running I had to wake the building manager. He looked at the disaster, turned off the water and reappeared some hours later with a vacuum cleaner sucking out what must have been about 100 liters of water. Later that day a plumber exchanged the water tank. It took a full week for the carpet to dry. Luckily nothing was really damaged, just that I had my moving boxes on the floor at that time. They soaked up the water and basically dissolved. I had to replace several of them and repack which was very annoying.

Though it was clean water, it turned out to leave stains in the carpet. An insurance guy came to assess the damage, later a "carpet expert" came to figure out where the spots came from. He said that there was probably rust in the tank which would have accumulated under the carpet and they'd have to take out the carpet, clean the floor, shampoo the carpet, and dry it. I was hoping they could do that after I've left, but of course it's more important to be nice to the new tenant who'll be moving in Tuesday. So yesterday evening I came home to find an empty living room with a loose carpet and wind machine tucked under it, such that the carpet moves in constant waves. Quite a dynamical inner design. I think it has potential.

The rest of my story in Waterloo will consist of somebody picking up the bed, somebody else picking up the car, my landlord picking up the apartment and house keys, and somebody dropping me off at the airport. You'll hear from me once I'm back in Europe. Meanwhile, a nice weekend to all of you.