12/12

After more than 5 hours of lost work time, a million blisters in my feet (from running with my leather shoes) just to catch inspection times and about 20 houses checked out (about 80% is shit) I now have my own apartment.  Funny thing is, I wouldn’t have been approved if not for a miscommunication!

This was the plan, look for a place near shops, near relatives and near the train station.  I can’t believe I got all three for the price of one.  This renting crisis in Australia was a totally different experience.  In every inspection we’ve been through there was about an average of 8 competitions, each with their own advantage.  Almost all the applicants are citizens, some single or young couples and most of them already have renting history.  I am nowhere near those advantages, have only been in the country a mere 2 months, just started working, a young family (apparently, landlords prefer tenants with pets over young families with small children) and I am stinky from running to catch the inspection time.  This was worse than looking for a job!  The market was so bad that agencies had to schedule inspections on a weekday just to prevent a bulk load of applications.  Thank God my senior, Lars, is also a migrant.  He said he’s been through the same pains of house hunting since moving in from Sweden, so he allows me to go undertime. 

If I ever saw the guy who created this website, I will seriously make love to him.  Only he’s the brother of my cousin’s friend and he’ll probably tell his brother about it and he’ll freak out and tell my cousin about it who’ll be laughing mad and then tell…anyways, I just had to check www.realestate.com.au and do an advanced search with my preferred suburbs, number of rooms, price range and best thing is I can look at the available properties on a map!  So I’ll just pick those near the fucking train station!  And the bestest thing is it has…PICTURES!  OF THE HOUSE!  So I don’t have to go inspect houses with ugly pictures!  Also take note, don’t trust a property with no photos of the interiors, chances are its FUG-LY.  But if you’re as desperate as I was, you’d still go and check it out early in a cold Saturday morning and just hope for the best and expect the worst.  We’ve seen it all.  We’ve seen old gloomy houses, weird ones with the washing machine under the kitchen sink, no door on the bathroom (which is located near the living room), houses with no neighbours, houses with too many neighbours, etcetera etcetera and then…I ran into this spacious 2 bedroom 1^st floor apartment, freshly painted, gas heating and with cooling system, 1 parking space, 5 min walk to shops and train station, and best of all it bears the perfect number of all time not just once, but twice in its address - Unit 12, Street no. 12 of a south eastern suburb in Melbourne. 

I was the first one to arrive at the property.  I sat on the mailbox and weirdly enough, my ass felt at home.  The agent came and we inspected the apartment along with 6 other applicants.  So here’s the part about the miscommunication.  The agent, Siobhan D’Ath (See-yob…I have no clue how to pronounce it either), called me up the next day and asked if I’d like to proceed with my application so she can forward my papers right away.  I said yes bitch, I thought you’d never ask.  So, after a few hours, Siobhan called back and asked me about the miscommunication.  During the inspection, she asked me if I was the only one applying for the property and I said yes, I was applying by myself.  She was wondering why I’ve included an adult and a child in my application form, and although every adult applying SHOULD fill out the application form, technically I’m applying alone since my family is not in the country yet, which makes me technically a single tenant!  Whoohoo!  I’m not sure if this really was a problem, but the point is Siobhan wouldn’t have forwarded my application if she knew right away that we are a young family with a destructive little boy!  So yeah, we got approved because the landlord has a heart unlike those snob agents.

I was itching to spend my first ever $alary on stuff for the new apartment.  Well, I didn’t have that much left because I had to pay for a bond and 1 month rent and for Trini and Lean’s plane ticket but I still had enough to buy some shit.  A great thing about the western world is its consumerism.  Shops are virtually giving away stuff with interest free payment plans.  Like my whole house furniture package, I got it at 0% interest, nothing to pay until 2010!  And my marked down fridge again 0% interest and 22 months to pay!  I am already in debt and I love it!

So far, the apartment is almost complete.  Only thing that’s missing is my family whom I’ll share this humble abode with.  Best purchase so far?  The Tefal non stick 32cm frying pan!  It’s kickass since I am learning how to cook.  So far, I’ve made the best Filipino pork steak in the entire universe, and the mashiest mashed potatoes evarrr!  I’ve also cooked Japanese, Spanish and Spicy tuna fried rice, Beef stir fry with veggies, roast potatoes, chicken schnitzel, parmesan chicken, lamb and porterhouse steak, and my master piece, breaded fried chicken.  Since living alone for almost a month now, cooking is the reason why I’m excited to go home!  Shit, its 12:19 am right now and I wanna stop blogging and cook!  Also, one of my favourite shows at the moment is Ramsay’s Kitchen nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen.  Every single time I am cooking I hear Chef Ramsay’s voice in my head, “bullocks, that is absolute dog shit!”