Sunday, June 17, 2007

Immaturity and more...

Its so surprising how much can change in a mere seven hours. And its good that both these posts come one after another. It will always remind me of how I went from good to bad to frustrated to literally in tears. So the cable got setup fine, which I failed to check properly because my computer was already catching some wireless connection and before I could check whether mine was working properly, the Ikea delivery guys arrived. And I forgot all about it.

I knew Ikea goods had to be assembled but I did not ask for professional assembly help. Interesting, since I have never fiddled with screw-drivers before, never pulled apart a computer and joined it again, I am not sure how I thought I would accomplish this. I am not somebody who takes fun in assembling stuff (late realization). When its a group I might still join in, but when I am alone it would be one of the last things that I would do. So the first thing that happened, was that I realized I had picked up different colored chairs. The dining table happened to be oak and the chairs happened to be black. When I saw the chairs (that is the chair parts), I was almost too stunned for sometime too think. Then I unwrapped the bed. Well guess what !! There were planks, more planks, more planks and a lot of nails/screws. (Infact the only thing I have seen the whole day are planks of different shapes and sizes.)

I will not go into the whole adventure of assembling a bed alone by someone who will never call herself a carpenter. I splintered wood left and right (I think I messed up the screw sizes at one point). I managed to drop the heavy planks on my foot and will soon have either a black and blue toe nail or a missing toe nail. But in the end I did have a standing bed-frame. For everyone's advice that assembling Ikea products is easy, I will agree (with a lot of muttering under my breath and groaning with the pain of sliced fingers and aching hands)........ with the precondition that you should have all the parts. I unfortunately, had not got the mid-beam of the bed. And this, I realized, was sold separately only when I got to the instructions of Step 18 out of a total of 24 steps. Imagine the frustration of not seeing a so called finished masterpiece. Imagine having a bed frame with the empty interiors, and a new mattress standing and staring at you from a distance, not able to belong where it should. Imagine a whole room full of just boxes, and packing paper, imagine un-assembled dining table pieces lying about and imagine unopened boxes of black chairs which have to be returned.
And you will have imagined the condition in which I left my house.

I would give anything to sell everything off, wipe my hands clean off the whole mess and go away. :) Run away rather !!! And maybe when the hangover of hopelessness, amateur carpentership, absence of satisfaction and immaturity at things not working out the way they are expected to, wears of, I will be able to think more rationally and find solutions instead of more problems. But that does not seem to be a possibility anytime before tomorrow.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

do you remember the boroline jingle from the good ol' doordarshan days...

"jeeboner nana otha pora jeno gaye na lage"

of course, i am not asking you to smear the grease-like cream thingy all over yourself but you get the idea, right?

on the bright side, assembling any other IKEA stuff from now on should be a cake walk for you...if you buy anything from IKEA ever that is...

Anonymous said...

haha..a very funny account I must say..and something I again definitely relate to and empathize with..its a tough job and I am actually quite impressed that u did it all by urself..good job !!

ur post reminded me of "Three men in a boat" by Jerome K jerome..and their packing incident..yours although not exactly the same but somewhat similar...

well my approach was a little different..as a person who has never put together wooden planks and screws except for 1st yr engineering....initially I was daunted by the enormous amounts of wooden pieces of different sizes and nuts and screws lying in front of me..I was about to ask for help from a friend but then I thought why not look at it as solving a jigsaw puzzle (something i enjoy immensely) and try putting them together. I agree there were also similar moments when I had put the wrong screw here and a wrong plank there..but finally after a few days and entire weekend of effort I managed to put my dozen or more pieces of furniture together (although not without some physical discomfort I must say). And well except for the bed which gave me the most trouble and resulted in a small boo-boo (I promised myself I will never ever try to put a queen sized bed together without someone at the other end holding the plank) I actually quite enjoyed it..so much so that I even thought of taking a course in woodworking after that (although better sense prevailed later:-)). I hope you enjoyed it too.

Anyway Hail ikea!! for making carpenters out of techies..but I am sure u will agree that at the end of the day we felt really proud that we had achieved what we did..maybe it was a small achievement..but a good one nevertheless..anyway will wait for more such anecdotes (although getting a black finger is not funny and I know it hurts a lot..sorry that it happened.. but I found the rest of the post quite humorous..since I myself could relate to it..)...anyway keep writing..and keep posting...and I am sure your bed feels even more comfortable..now that it has been assembled with ur two hands..and ummm I guess with ur feet too :-(

shriram said...

didi,as I said before,you sounded so, so cute when you were narrating it to me over the phone-reading your post makes it even more so:)Imagining your face-frustrated, and angry standing in the middle of the mess, quite makes me smile:D

shriram said...

Also dont forget the golden rule-
In any assembly of mating components-mating is preferentially done from above!;)
(no pun intended here!!!:)

Unknown said...

You are quite brave to have tried to put an Ikea bed toether by yourself.. I simply lacked the drive to do that, and settled for tables & chairs from Ikea, while I got my bed conveniently delivered with a box spring sans frame. It kinda works well when you are pressed for space :) as everyone is in New York!

Why don't you put up some photos of your pad?