Chp 843. Safe Express to Mizoram

Here's one more post I want to publish on my blog before this year ends, mainly because till today my Mizo friends from Pune, Mumbai, Delhi etc. keep asking me how I sent all my stuff from Pune back to Mizoram.

To send my entire lifetime belongings back from Pune to Aizawl, I used this Movers & Packers service called SAFEXPRESS.

I still remember back when I was studying in Tamil Nadu, we used to send our belongings back to Mizoram using this courier service known as "ABC". Those were the steel trunk days, you know, large steel boxes with our names and addresses roughly written on top with a permanent marker. We never used to send our stuff in a suitcase because the case would be broken by the time it reached Mizoram. :D

Those days, we had to take our trunks to the ABC depot ourselves, which was a big pain (especially if you were a scrawny class 7 student with no knowledge of Tamil like I was), and then once it reached Mizoram, we had to go to the godown to collect our belongings, which was again a troublesome task.

Fortunately for us today, most of these delivery services now not only collect our luggage from our doorstep and deliver them to our destination's doorstep, but they can also pack it for us (with extra charges of course).

SAFEXPRESS is one such service. Before I continue, let me put a disclaimer that no service or product is perfect. Just as how somebody will have good experience with Amazon or Zomato delivery, there will always be someone who had a bad experience with those same companies.

Likewise, I know two friends who had a horrible experience with SAFEXPRESS. All I can say is, everything went well for me, as well as for the 20+ Mizos from Pune to whom I had recommended this service since then.

I'm not going to put the phone number of SAFEXPRESS here as numbers change in time, and years from now, if you stumble across this blog post, the particular number may not exist anymore. Safest bet is to search on Google or one of those online yellow pages and you'll get the current phone number of the nearest SAFEXPRESS outlet from your location.

So once I called up SAFEXPRESS and booked an appointment, they turned up at my apartment at the exact time discussed. There were three of them, and after they looked around, they got to work immediately.

They divided themselves up with different tasks, like one guy packed my kitchen stuff, another guy packed my bedroom stuff, while the third guy packed my electronics stuff. I didn't have to do anything at all.

Since I had to keep running outside to buy last minute stuff as I was flying home the next day, my friends Dr. John and Dessy came over and stayed at my apartment, just to let the packers know they were being observed.

I didn't take any other photos of them packing that day as I was busy, but they really did a great job. They bubble-wrapped every breakable item carefully, like my glasses and porcelains, as well as my electronic items. And after they packed everything in a box, they water-proofed each box tightly again. A very impressive work indeed.

It took them around 4 hours to pack all my belongings.

And that was it. All my belongings from the time I left Mizoram in class 3, now packed up in little boxes and to be sent back to Mizoram permanently. It was a very emotional moment for me and I cried. :P

SAFEXPRESS has a weird tariff system. It is very expensive to send just a box or two home all the way to Mizoram, but the more boxes you have, the cheaper it gets! :D Yeah the "per box rate" reduces drastically as you add more boxes.

I also opted for their larger boxes because their official SAFEXPRESS boxes (green coloured) could fit only 15 KGs and were smaller. My suitcases as well as my TV, CPU, Monitor, coffee table, side tables etc., were all counted as one box each.

I even sent home my extremely heavy and much cherished Queen-size spring mattress as the cost of sending it home when calculated with all the other boxes, came to around 4K, which was a very good deal considering I bought it during Diwali discount for 50K and it would have cost me more than 10K to send it to Mizoram by itself.

The mattress incident reminds me of this joke. :D

So after much haggling about the total cost and discount with the main guy called Hanuman, the final cost of sending home all my belongings from Pune to Aizawl came to 38K.

The invoice above said "Perfect Cargo" but they were affiliated with SAFEXPRESS. They're one of the many official partners of SAFEXPRESS across India, kinda like a franchise system, and all my details including tracking features were all available at the official SAFEXPRESS website.

Once they were gone, I too packed all my remaining stuff that I was to take home with me by flight. The above packing incident took place on 28th November 2019.

I reached Mizoram 2 days later, and on 12th December 2019, my luggage reached my house!

It took just 14 days! That was really awesome.

From doorstep collection to doorstep delivery, it sure beats the ABC courier service days. :D

Even my mattress made it home safely, yay! :D

And so that was my experience with SAFEXPRESS.

We unpacked all my boxes, and not a single thing was broken, not even my wine glass set! A truly fine work, as promised.

After that, I had recommended this service to all my friends in Pune and even gave them Hanuman's personal mobile number, and everybody who had used this service too didn't regret it. Yes the rate may still be a bit more expensive than other services, but at the end of the day, what matters the most is receiving all our things undamaged, and that's what SAFEXPRESS did. A very safe express indeed.

Ps. This is not a paid promotion, nor am I getting anything out of this blog post. Like I said in the beginning, the only reason I am writing this is because the next time someone asks me about how i sent home my stuff, I can just send them the link to this blog.

Hope this blog update was useful to you, and hoping to see you again in the near future.

Cheers.

Chp 842. Ryders 2020

As we all grow up and continue our journey through life, we come across new friends along the way, maybe from school or college or office or other places, but the one set of friends we can never forget are the childhood neighbourhood friends we grew up with.

These are the kids who lived just next door or a few buildings away, kids you went to your local Church with right from Beginner's or Primary Department, kids you invited over for your birthday parties and who in return invited you to their's, kids you exchanged Christmas cards with, kids you shared your GI Joe or Barbie collections with. Basically, your locality gang.

I know a lot of people who got out of touch with such friends and went their separate ways, maybe because of being in different social circles or simply because they grew up and moved on. I on the other hand, consider myself to be really lucky because till today, we form a close-knit circle. We call ourselves "Ryders". :)

Our gang of friends had been really tight since the very beginning, and that bond was made even tighter as we played basketball together every evening (well, not every evening for me since I was away at boarding school, but I always played with them whenever I came home for my vacations).

Earlier this year, we had a group dinner together, just before the CoVid-19 outbreak. As I had been blogging only about the pandemic since then, I realized I never got to write about this dinner on my blog, and so before this year ends, here it is.

That night was a special dinner event because not only were we all dining together again after a really long time, it was also a private function to commemorate those of us who had lost our fathers recently.

The event was held at Arie's grandparent's house, and we specifically selected this venue because it was also the main house of three of our Ryder members, all brothers, who were no longer with us. Maremtea left us on 24th November 2010, followed by his elder brother Mapuia on 8th November 2015 (Chp 580. Farewell Mapui) and finally the eldest brother Matea on 8th January 2018 (Chp 695. RIP Matea).

With three of them no longer with us, the least we could do was hold the programme at their house to honour them and keep their spirits alive.

Sanga chaired the programme, followed by Bible passage reading and prayer from Robert.

After that we had the ceremonial presentation of citations to those of us who had lost our dads recently. I received the citation from Arie to remember my father Pu V.L.Rema.

Mazualtea received the citation from Mary Ann to remember his father Pu K.Thangchuanga.

Tlantea received the citation from Zomuani to remember his father Pu Vanlalmuana.

Johnson received the citation from Thianghlimi to remember his father Pu Liandinga Pachuau.

This was the beautifully framed citation I received that day.

After that, the floor was thrown open to any of us who wanted to share a few words with the group. A lot of good messages were shared, from reminiscing about the past and how we all grew up together as kids around 40 years ago to how we all still hang out together even today.

The rest of us listened attentively...

Usually, BSa above would be the one to pray and give us all sacrament etc., as he's an unofficial Pastor, but he decided to take a break that night.

We ended our programme with the Lord's Prayer. After that, it was group photo time. :)

Dinner was set up on the lawn outside by Dam Dam Catering.

Since the caterers were still setting things up, we decided to take another group photo because Machris-i wasn't there in the earlier pic as she was busy putting her baby to sleep. :)

Yes, with most of us now married with kids and some of us even divorced with kids, it was indeed a big challenge to find the time to get together at one place at the same time. That was also one of the reasons why we hired a caterer because a couple of years ago, we would have just cooked the food ourselves as that was the fun part, but we didn't have time for that anymore. Welcome to adulthood.

Soon dinner was ready! Yumm yummmm.

You've probably heard of a romantic candlelit dinner, right? But I bet you've never heard of a Taxi headlight lit dinner? :D

Yeah it was dark outside, so we relied on the vehicle lights to see the food, while others shone their mobile phone flashlights to see what they were serving on their plates! :D

My delicious plate. :)

Biakropuia missed the function due to work but he made it just in time to eat. :D

Chhangchhe laif. Below is how Koreans eat dinner apparently.

After dinner relaxation time. Notice the window reflection behind. Wow, such cameramanship! :P

We took a couple more of group photos before we dispersed.

With the wonderful Arie Ralte, also known as "geu yeo-ja-ga neo-mu ye-ppeo" [예쁜 여자].

Ignore my speckled face above as my pimple outbreak was in the process of healing but hadn't quite healed yet back then [Chp 793. Pimples]

Mary Ann too was busy with her photoshoot session as her diehard fans hounded her and clicked her pictures everywhere.

And of course while we Ryder-guys were happy with the main group photo, the Ryder-ladies had to take separate group photos of just them ladies alone, for various social media uploads, like the main group photo would be set at public visibility for everyone to see, while their exclusive ladies group photo would be set at "crush visibility" where only their "stars" could view the pictures. Aaahh, women. :D

As long as they're happy, who are we to judge? :)

And with that, we ended the fabulous dinner and I thanked them all for the heart-warming citation about my dad. Special shout-out to Tluanga who really went out of his way to make this dinner happen, as he pestered everyone endlessly for many weeks. It wouldn't be wrong to say he's the main glue that stick our group together.

Though this coming Christmas and New Year will be different from other years as we won't be hanging out together as a group because of CoVid-19, knowing that they are all just a couple of houses away fills my heart with warmth.

This year had given a lot of us bad experiences and memories, but having childhood friends who will always be there for us no matter a Pandemic or Armageddon puts me at ease.

Here's to the Ryders, past and present, including the ones who couldn't make it that night like Adam, Hriatpuia, Rami, Rintluanga etc., even the ones who are no longer with us like Zela, Zothana, Maremtea, Mapuia, Matea, may we all ride forever. Cheers.