Nomad??!!*?!

I am writing this from Hong Kong international airport!! We are traveling to India and have a long layover at Hong Kong. They have free Wifi at the airport and I decided to put it to some real use!!! We are in the middle of yet another pack and move session. This will be my 8th move in the past 3-1/2 years of stay in US and the first 7 were withing the first 1-1/2 years. But this time, I don't know my new home yet!!! I wondered what should be my home address in travel forms I fill out and I ended up filling my old home address. "Old home" because we no longer live there!!!

It all started in the month of June when we were planning our vacation to India. The occasion was my dad's 60th birthday in the end of November, which is celebrated by the couple renewing their marriage wows. A complete religious wedding ceremony will take place including retying the mangal sutra (sacred nuptial thread). Then, my bil's wedding was to be held in the end of January. We are in for double celebration, so close to each other, which lead us into taking a 2-1/2 months long vacation. My husband does not have so many vacation days and will be working from Bangalore. Since we were going to be away for so long, my husband started to convince me into packing all our belongings and storing them in a storage before leaving to India. It would not only save on rent, but will also let us get a lower rent when we are back, as the going rates are at least $100 lower per month than what we are paying now. He tried this trick during our last vacation to India too and I outrightly rejected it because, at that time, I was having a 3 month old baby and recovering from a C-Section. But this time, he succeeded!!! We compared the various storage options and zeroed in on 'Moshes' mobile storage. We were to leave on Thursday and we asked the container to be delivered on Sunday morning. Murali (My husband - somehow never mentioned his name till now) spoke to the city to obtain permit to have the storage container parked in our street. We could park without a fee for 72 hours.

On Saturday morning, I cooked food for the week. Check out my cooking expedition at my food blog here. I had already completed all my vacation shopping and had piled them in a corner of our 2nd bedroom. Later in the afternoon, we pulled out our big bags and started packing for the vacation. Since Murali will be working most of our vacation, we had to pack almost all his clothes. I had to pack up all my salwars and sarees. Also, I had to pack up all my son's clothes, as he would outgrow most of them pretty quickly. I also packed lots of diapers and snacks for him. As we were packing and weighing (two 50 pound bags allowed per person) our bags, we realized we will need 2 more big bags for check-in. We bought 2 huge duffel bags as they are lighter which means, we get few more pounds to stuff in :) End of Saturday, we had not even completed packing bags leave alone packing up the entire home.

On Sunday morning, the storage container was delivered at 8 AM. We continued packing bags and finally completed in the evening. Then, we started packing and loading the storage container. We packed up books and bedding first and loaded the container. On monday, we packed up my kitchen except for a few essentials which we would use till the last day and leave in the car. On Tuesday night, we finally packed up everything and loaded up the container. On Wednesday morning, our container was taken for storage. All that left in the apartment would either go to India with us or stay in our cars. Wednesday, I started the cleaning. Murali was working till the last day and he did his best to help. On Thursday, we finished up the cleaning, rest of the packing, parked the cars at other firend's apartments and gave our apartment keys to our neighbours to be handed over to the landlord. Our friend Bharath picked us up in his minivan and dropped us in the airport around 9.30 PM to begin our long 32 hour journey (including this layover).