so, after we secured a place which neither of us liked, guess what happens?

the properties that we did like are now calling us to tell us applications are approved.

way to go canberra, your rental market is fucked so bad. first by rental auctioneering, next by irresponsible landlords.

Over the weekend, we found a place. for the price it was advertised for and the location it is in, it was a steal. i decided to have a quick look and honest to God, if we weren’t so desperate, probably not the place i had move into for the price. but we are desperate, and so we are now moving to Braddon, into “half a house”. It was, basically, a 3 bedroom house, shoddily converted into a 5 bedroom, and then split into half. This time, i am staying in the back half.

To describe it as it is now, quickly, it’s a 2 bedroom bedsit kinda place. the bedrooms themselves are almost the same size, if not larger than, the living room and the kitchen combine. The kitchen itself is really a part of the living room area, and everything is carpeted except for the double ensuites. There’s a small verandah, a GIGANORMOUS shared yard and garage. really, they are so big, and considering how the house was converted, i was surprised he didn’t convert the garage into a living area either.

The thing is, the previous tenants kinda trashed the place real bad. The sliding glass doors leading to the verandah were broken, the carpeted area next to the kitchen sink was brown from a rusting fridge. walls were obviously not cleaned and stained with moulded food and grease. There were pockmarks all across the walls as well as actual marks everywhere. showers were obviously not cleaned either, and neither were the carpet. not to mention the overwhelming smell of spices running through the house.
The landlord is obviously trying to please us though, so he’s been trying to re-paint everything, get everything done today for us so that it’s liveable by FRIDAY.

and on my part, i am going to start vanilla candles burning there for nights on an end until there’s no more spice smell. i love spices, just not living in it. it’s not an unliveable place as it is, just needs lots of work to make it homely and the way i had like it.

and there you go! we found a place, photographs will follow once we have done it up so that it doesn’t look half as trashy! :D

you see, i really love mushrooms in its cooked form. grilled, fried, even burnt, and definitely mushroom sauce. i have noticed, in my 2 years and 9 months of working in this wonderful *ahem* job, that perhaps all asians are united in that one love (seems like most other people would go for diane) - not that loving mushrooms is a racial thing.

a few months ago, as i have mentioned, i dumped a whole pot of mushroom sauce on my head. it wasn’t out of sheer joy. i was doing my readings after work, i was looking at the monitor, i wanted music with my readings. i reached out for a black thing from the corner of my eye, assuming it was my headset, and bam - mushroom sauce dripping off the left corner of my head.

the amount of swearing that went off after that….

tonight, i just proved to myself i am wonderfully more absent-minded than i thought - or perhaps i am turning senile prematuredly. while at work, i threw forks and bowls into the bins, while leaving the MUSHROOMS out to be washed… not to mention, how i ran from table to table, wondering why i haven’t ordered their food yet, when i did.

and then… and then… wait for it…

i just topped myself with mushroom sauce again.

i should probably consider stress therapy.

oh. and meow… is meow. she just went through her first heat, which was incredibly EXHAUSTING. so we are definitely de-sexing her. howling for 3 days in a row, 24 7 left me almost DEAD! and worst thing was:

she slept IN THAT POSITION!! 2 HOURS! LIKE THAT! wah lau eh, can you find a less lady like cat? $#$&*$*@ and seriously, trying to pack a house with a nutter like her, was a freaking nightmare. every box is a FKIN playground. she pops into everyone of them, then looks up at me like “whaaaaa…? i am just helping ya”. she even ended up in the DRYER (first pict) for some /wrist time.

even my luggage wasn’t spared. took it out, in she hopped. i didn’t even noticed her, till i dumped the hangers in and then she jumped out, yowling like some justice was being undone right there.

cats. i never knew how my life was great until i own one. now i am stuck with her, . i am so cooking her on monday night

it’s been a flurry of action around this house lately. what with the serve of notice, we tried to get our gears in action and started hunting down houses. with our combined annual pay, we are somewhere up in the 100k mark per annum (which btw, honestly, is slightly less than average far as i can poll in this damn city).

With that bunch of papers in my armpits, consisting of my payslips and referrals, i could easily rent a place in town for up to 450 per week, hands down. hell, considering how i am earning 3 times as much as i did 2 years ago, i can probably rent for more and still survive and scrape past.

The problem is, the rental market won’t agree. and obviously, if i was also them, i probably had disagree too. Jobs like mine aren’t permanent and have fickle players. Considering the week past, i am dead certain of that even more. So with that in mind, i faced my first denial of application today.

i was just a little bit stumped, to be honest. despite the “great” view and location, the area in question ISN’T worth 450 (what the person counter offered the landlord, versus the intended 370p/wk on the papers) a week - it’s about 15 mins away from town, and approximately 30 minutes in the morning jam. the other places though, are pretty worth it. so hopefully something calls back in the next 2 days, because i am starting to panic. and a panicky Panda bodes no good. not that i will stop viewing houses, but there are less and less properties within budget and areas we can afford, and more and more inflated rental rates for the most absurd reasons.

the house has gone from some what neat in 3 months ago, to spewed out 2 months ago, to getting into boxes. unfortunately, i am one of those stupid anal arse people who likes to mess things up so “i can see what i am doing” and this is the case right now. The other unfortunate effect is, i now no longer feel like being friends with a particular person.

the thing wasn’t about her complaining to people about how shitty my home was, it was her point being “so glad i only have 5 days left here!” and that pretty much i wasn’t giving her time alone. considering how most conversations started with her proclaiming one problem or another, and how i sat down and try and offer suggestions and solutions, i am pretty bummed by it all. So, honest to God, i really don’t see how i became so terrible to live with (which seems to be the aura emitting from those paragraphs). if we were to talk about cleanliness though, she lived with me in my previous home too - which was neat while she was there. so, it baffles me that she can’t see that she came at an extremely trying time (in terms of packing yet trying to make the place look liveable).

The day that i found that out though, i decidedly let myself zoomed into nothingness. Things got to me twice as much, and i got pretty sensitive and reading too much between lines. I finally snapped when my boss’s best friend told me that i could walk out the door if i didn’t like him being rude to me, which was twice in a space of 7 days, and so i “kindly”  reminded him that he was about as respectful as a rock, and walked it.

and then i bawled like the nut that i am and called up dad.

Oh dad. my pillar of strength. It’s funny. I was walking out of work, about to tear but willing myself not to. It was a shitty day in all, and i can kind of understand why J snapped at me, “if you demand respect, you should give respect”. unfortunately, of the whole restaurant, there’s no one else i respected more than J, boss, head chef and Gracie so pardon me if i believe i have already handed out respect on a platter. In my head, all i could think of was, “geez, am i not wanted or what?” and infront of me loomed H’s work place - where i would used to go to when i need to bitch about work.

Suddenly, i felt like i couldn’t tell her anything anymore, since i might be “not giving her the down time that she needs”. I can’t “go home”, because it’s not mine. I can’t talk with my “best friend”, because she really isn’t. And since i walked out of my job, i don’t even have that income - i felt so alone. So, of the only 2 people i had in mind to talk to, neither of them were HERE for me to grab and hug.

And then i cried all the way home on a cab, because i felt so alone. the poor cabbie, i think he was totally not prepared for that.

and i called dad. and i bawled like a baby, trying to understand is going on. and for all his wisdom and age, he still sound sad that i was bawling like a baby over the same thing i bawled over exactly 10 years ago - my job, my useless friends and having to move out of our then home. Ah, sometimes, time just don’t change anything.

and as for the other person i wanted to call? bless his soul, he was fast asleep way out in the U.S.A. and didn’t have to listen to my wailing rambling.

a long time ago, my washing machine at home broke down. instead of replacing it, or even consider replacing it, my mum switched to hand washing everything - “because all of those clothes leaks colours anyways”. That same washing machine has since been moved around from home to home, whilst we move, and is now… basically a bookshelf (that is circular, metal, and opens from the front )

Today, in an effort to cancel out the “wet floors” and possible “water damage” blah blah blahs, we have removed the washing machine from the laundry area and letting it air dry to death. this of course also meant that we can’t do any washing. it’s back to the usual stomp-on-wet-clothes hand washing methods. considering what cat has done in the past couple of months, that’s a mountain load of washing to be done all at the same time. Most have already been done immediately, some just retained the smell however, so it’s going through a re-washing as well.

This is beginning to be a nightmare, and i just want to move right now to be out of it.

the light at the end of the tunnel: boss just bought washing machine and dryers for work :D and said i could use it :p