New Furniture & Helping Strangers

Daniel and I took off early this morning (well, early for a Saturday, anyway) on a furniture run. As fabulous as our new house is, it came fully unfurnished (a dishwasher being the only white good included), so we've been trying to acquire various bits of furniture the last few weeks. Today, Daniel was after a bookcase, and I wanted to find a bedside table or a small chest of drawers.

We first headed to Revolve, which is a fabulous second-hand shop next to the rubbish tip. People can drop usable stuff off there instead of paying to take it into the tip, and then it's resold to the public. They had tons of various furniture items to sort through today, but the only good bookcases had already been sold. I did, however, find a small chest with three drawers just the right size to go next to my bed.

It's not in the best of shape, having scratches here and there and a rather serious gouge on the left side, but it also has the distinction of being made of real wood, none of this particle-board-clad-in-wood-like-vinyl-veneer crap. Another interesting feature of Revolve is that nothing has a price on it; one has to dicker over the price with the employees. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at this after nearly a year and a half in Indonesia. I got the price down to $10 (currently USD $7.50).

I was disappointed we didn't get Daniel a bookcase, so we next headed to the Salvos at Jamison Centre. I'd been there twice already this week, and I hadn't seen any bookcases, but op shops turn over stock quite quickly, so I was modestly hopeful. Fortunately, they had a fabulous, almost-new bookcase on the floor for only $30, so Daniel bought that.

Whilst we were moving some other furniture to get the bookcase out, one of the employees asked us how we were going to get it home, and I told her we'd brought a trailer. At this, a little old lady came over and asked us if we did indeed have a trailer. When I told her we did, she asked if we'd be willing to take the bed she'd just bought to her house in the next suburb. This seemed like a great opportunity to help, so I said sure. We left the bookcase and went to get the bed for her.

She told us that she would pay us $20 for making the delivery, but Daniel told her we didn't need any money, and I agreed. I was just glad to help. We all need assistance now and then, and the world's a better place if we jump in to give that help when it's needed. Anyway, we got the bed out to the trailer, and, whilst I was tying it down, Daniel went back into the shop to get the address. The lady had written it on a sheet of folded paper for us. She'd also slipped a $20 note into the fold of the paper.

We got the bed to the house OK and carried it up onto the front verandah. I was then going to suggest that we leave the $20 somewhere the lady would find it, but just then she pulled up in her car, so that plan fell through. She thanked us profusely for helping her out. I told her we were happy to do it and tried to give her the $20, but she wouldn't take it. I guess sometimes one has to let people do their thing.

On our way home, we stopped by a servo and used half the money to put some petrol into Keiran's car (which we'd been using all morning since mine doesn't have a towing hitch). After that, we used the remaining $10 to buy us lunch. Since we had Hungry Jack's vouchers, we were able to buy two whoppers with cheese and two bacon deluxes with it. That made us a nice lunch!