I think I also have to offer a small defence of First Air here as well. Lord knows I have my complaints about the northern airlines. I still think they charge too much for plane tickets. But they've been getting a bad rap the last week on northern blogs, with Clare and Jen (I'm assuming it was First Air with Jen, although she doesn't name the airline), both having pretty severe problems with them.
Now granted, that could have to do with food mail, which is a program in deep need of an overhaul. I don't think anyone in the north is particularly happy with the way the program is run these days. We basically abandoned it about two years when we felt we were getting robbed, both in terms of the quality of food and how much we were paying.
However, I have nothing but nice things to say about First Air and how our cargo got up here. First of all, I won this cargo through a donation they made to the curling club. It was 100 kg of cargo, which is about a $400 prize, and that wasn't even the biggest donation they made for that bonspiel. So they're good like that when it comes to giving to community groups.
Secondly, we had no problems at all during the transportation process. I went into First Air Cargo in Ottawa essentially waving a piece of paper and they didn't give me any grief at all. They guy who took our stuff couldn't have been nicer and slapped a whole bunch of "Fragile" and "Glass" stickers over our boxes.
Also, we dropped them off on Saturday, the guy said they should be up in Iqaluit by Tuesday. And Wednesday morning they called and said to come and pick them up. All three boxes arrived safe and sound. One of those boxes was our framed print. The other was a box containing a curio, which was essentially nothing more than sheets of glass with a tiny bit of wood and metal thrown in.
I know Clare and Jen are not yelling at them just for the sake of yelling at them. They have legitimate grievances. I'm just saying, in this case, they did all right with us.
So, we have new things for the apartment. Let's show them off, shall we?
First up, the slightly boring, a shelving unit from IKEA. But you can never go wrong buying IKEA, especially in Iqaluit. People love it up here, so if you sell it later, you can easily make back what you spent, if not more.
Anyway, I think we're good on storage space for the next while, at any rate. Next up in the curio, which Cathy is very happy with and I'm mildly astonished made it up here in one piece.
And finally, our Dorset print is framed and hanging on the wall, a mere six months after we bought it. Don't ask how much the framing was. But we are happy with it and it looks great. I give you Grand Entrance by Kenojuak Ashevak.
And to give you some idea of its size, because it's a big damn picture and frame...
Anyway, we're happy with it all. We're broke, but at least the apartment looks nice and is well organized.
Last Five
1. Drawn to the rhythm - Sarah McLachlan
2. Days of rain - Bob Mould
3. Heal over - KT Turnstall
4. The sharpest thorn - Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint*
5. Safe in your arms - Joel Plaskett
10 comments:
It is hard for me to get all warm and fuzzy about FA these days. When you think that essentially you're offering praise for their doing what essentially they're getting a lot of money to do. Deliver your goods timely and safely.
While they do throw around stuff like free tickets to different organizations etc, I'd much rather have regular tickets that are affordable for everyone. My chances of winning a pair of tickets or free freight are pretty slim here, and even if I won a pair I'd have to pay $8000 plus to bring the rest of my family with me.
Sorry, I have my own space I should be ranting in. I really should be saying "The apartment looks great with the new stuff, and the print is awesome!"
It does, and it is.
looks fab!
And for the record, I agree with everything you're saying. I am essentially saying nice things about a company that just did it's job. Plane ticket prices are far too high and food mail is a mess and one suspects First Air is partially involved in that as well.
I wrote a couple of months ago that I'd rather see cheaper tickets and few freebees for the local communities, and I still stand by that. I'd still like to see Westjet come to Iqaluit, something that appears fairly unlikely in the current economic climate, but you can always help.
Both First Air and Canadian North need to take a hard look at how they're doing things. They're essentially two peas in a pod right now and I'm not sure they're taking care of Nunavut customers as well as they could be.
But at least in this instence, they did their job, did it well, and we're grateful for it.
and stating that you can get your price back "and more" on anything IKEA being sold in Iqaluit is just plain tasteless
it's akin to whining about all the ills of the north and counting the days till ya leave
Oh Christ preserve me from anonymous idiots who can take the smallest comments and twist them completely out of context.
We've lived in Iqaluit for four years. We've been looking at buying a house or a condo in the next year or so. I think we're here for a bit.
But IKEA is pretty decent furniture. So, if we decide in 10 years or so to move, we might get back what we paid for it, as IKEA gets snapped up a house sales pretty damn quick.
Is that enough explaination for you, or do you require pictograms as well?
^ Well said, TB
But back to the task at hand.
Your print is just unbelievably gorgeous. I'm really very picky about many of the prints up here. I don't like very many.
But this, this is absolutely divine.
And I actually kind of like the "boring" shelving unit.
Ah, the time-honoured Expedit shelf. I just helped a friend assemble the exact same one about two months ago actually. You can't go wrong.
It's even in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/25/interior-design-rented-accommodation and I reported a sighting of Craig's curio case in our local post office yesterday. Now THIS is globalization. But no one's mentioned the best bit of Ikea - meatballs, partridgeberry sauce and beer for lunch. Yay!
They don't serve beer at the IKEA in Ottawa, although we did have the meatball lunch when we were there.
Sara, I don't think you can come back to North America because there aren't enough random strange places that serve beer...;)
Your place is looking great, I'm envious. We still treat our place like a hotel, trying to save our money instead of decorating, but it's bugging me a bit. I think we are going to stay for a while and that requires making home more "homey". Print is gorgeous, the minimal glass works very well for showing off your sculptures.
Post a Comment