For a while there it was a battle of the landladie…
For a while there it was a battle of the landladies. My old landlady wanted to get the apartment I currently inhabit off of her hands so that she could return to Canada unburdened by any Taiwanese real estate-related issues, but my new landlady kept insisting on fixing every little thing that was wrong with the place before closing. The old landlady would pay some joker to come in and do a substandard job, the new landlady would see it and have a fit, and the cycle would begin anew. Bulbs were replaced, electrical outlets fixed, cracks fixed, etc. This went back and forth for some time, and I did take advantage of the time to do a little house hunting. Other than some smallish places in other outlying areas, I didn’t find anything I was truly happy with. Well, that’s not true; I did find one place I was almost ready to move into, but I decided to follow my own rules and wait a bit before deciding. Sure enough, the place was snapped out from under me. This just goes to show I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time. In any case, finding a new place doesn’t excite me the way it used to, since I already live in a place I’m really happy with. Any other place short of a luxury high-rise is going to pale in comparison, and you’re not going to find many of those reasonably priced and near an MRT stop.
So I ended up signing a lease at a higher rent. The agent had negotiated it down a bit from the new landlady’s original offer, but it’s only a 6-month lease, so I may find myself looking again around Chinese New Year’s, despite her assurance that she wouldn’t raise the rent any more, because I can barely afford what I’m paying now. In any case, at least I won’t have to deal with housing stuff for a while.
This is good, because Dean and I are gearing up to start filming the sequel to Clay Soldiers. We have a script and most of our actors, but this one’s going to be a much larger production than the last, possibly even feature-length. It will be tough, but it should also be a lot of fun and a chance to learn a lot more about filmmaking.
