I’ve mentioned here before that the last year we lived in Manilla, we moved into a house. We previously lived in an old apartment building in the older part of town. But we needed to move because an earthquake damaged our apartment pretty severely.
For some reason, the house we originally were to move into suddenly wasn’t available, so the embassy rented another house. The house belonged to a doctor and he had moved to a new house a couple of months earlier — and — he had left all his furniture. He had apparently bought all new furniture along with his new house.
Since the embassy was providing all our furniture, they asked that all the furniture be removed and also requested that the interior be painted before we moved in. I guess the doctor agreed to that,
When our moving day came, I was on a short trip and Claire went to see our new house and found that the inside had all been newly painted, but apparently the painters came before the old furniture was removed and they had simply painted around each piece of furniture. No one could understand why that would be a problem for Claire — never mind that the embassy provided furniture didn’t quite fit in the right spaces.I still remember that phone call I got from her. She told me that she had moved in and I asked how she liked it. She said something like, “It’s different — you’ll probably have to see it to believe it….”
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