The New Apartment - Freedom at last
Trip Start
Sep 18, 2007
1
20
28
Trip End
Apr 17, 2009
Taoyuan,
Taoyuan,
Taiwan
Sunday, March 23, 2008
from Thailand. So much has gone down since mid-February...where do I start?
Alex, who used to live at the dorm and then moved out into an apartment with 2 other dudes originally invited me to go live with them.
Apparently one of the dudes was gonna be leaving soon (to return to Canada) and there would be a vacancy. I was excited at this
prospect, but my many requests to hop over and see the place went unanswered (Alex: I'm busy, I'm working, I won't be home, it's
too late, etc...) and I never did get an exact hypothetical 'moving in' date from him...and so this lead me to re-think the option. I knew that I wanted to stay in Taiwan for at least another year (let's face it, I make good money here) and also knew that I did not want to continue living in the dorm. Sharing a bathroom, kitchen and two showers with 12-18 people is NOT as cool as one would think (that was sarcasm, in case you missed it ;). This then led me to think about striking out and getting my own apartment. I didn't want to go live by myself, I did that in Brazil...and you don't save much money. I then thought of getting a roomate....which then led me to start thinking of candidates.
My candidate list was very short. It only had one person on it, really: Meghan. I knew we got along very well because in the times we were together (usually day-tripping somewhere) we never really had any problems...and we both lived on the 4th floor of the dorm and managed to co-exist peacefully there as well. I approached Meghan with the idea of getting an apartment together...and she showed interest. She plans on being here at least another year too...so it seemed like a reasonable proposition. We set aside early March as our apartment-hunting time.
We were lucky, we found 'our place' after only a few days of 'hunting'. We started on Thursday night (saw two places), saw two more on Friday night, one on Saturday night and then saw some 10 other places on Sunday. The place we settled on was the one we saw on Saturday night. It was fully furnished and modernly decorated. The bedrooms were not very equal in size or layout (one room was much smaller but we decided to switch bedrooms after 6 months of apartment living. We signed the paperwork...and also placed our thumbprints (in red ink) on every single page of the contract (we don't have cool name stamps like the people of Taiwan do...so we had to use our fingerprints :p). We gave them two month's worth or rent, the security fee and also paid Century 21 their commission. We moved in on March 23rd. I got my personal trainer from the gym: Jerry, to come over and use his truck to ferry our belongings back and forth.
Meghan obviously had WAY less stuff than me. I left Brazil with pretty much all of my worldly possessions...and this was AFTER I had thrown a bunch of shit out and donated a ton of clothes to a church charity. So, the 3 suitcases and two bags really WERE all I left Brazil with. I'm still amazed I managed to keep it down to that and didn't get killed on 'heavy bag' fees and what-not at the airport (I didn't pay from Rio to Vancouver...but I paid from Vancouver to Taipei). Anyway, I digress. We had Jerry's help to move the heavier stuff (the suitcases, bedding, etc...) and then just spent the rest of the week making small trips here and there between the new place and the dorm.
