darryn

Popularity: 3% [?]

darryn“. This is not disappointing, everything is still going according to plan.

For those of you who rely on my unreliable blogging for information: We have moved house. We moved over 3 weeks ago, to a 3 bedroom house in Dundas. If you know both Lane Cove and Dundas, you would be thinking that I have taken a step backward. In some ways, you are correct, but in many other ways my life has improved thanks to the move. The big reason is that I can now sleep. There is not a Pizza Hut one floor below my bedroom balcony (there aren’t even any shops within 1 km of my house). No Pizza Hut means no local P-Plater hang, means no revving and tooting horns, no doof-doof, no sleeplessness. My health has improved. I think Kirsten has had some difficulty sleeping here, but this is my blog, not hers.

My house is about 2½ times the size of my apartment. It has polished wood floors, only one room (the spare room) has any carpet. I like that. There are all of the necessities, such as air-conditioning and a dishwasher. The laundry is a room, not a cupboard in the lounge room. There is CABLE, which is why this website loads so fast. We have a beautiful large yard, which the cats think is absolute heaven; it is obvious that they are much happier here. My morning commute takes about 7 minutes, 8 minutes if there is heavy traffic. Tomorrow (NYE) I will ride my bike to work, should take me 15-20 minutes. We have 3 bins! A little one for rubbish, a big one for recycling and a big one for garden waste. In the apartment complex we shared a little bin with another apartment. We save $65 a week in rent. We have a kickass phone number.

With the good comes the bad, but I think that the balance is in favour of the good; not through any complex calculation, but because we all feel happier in this place. Anyway, the downside starts with: Location. We are in the suburbs, this is very clear. The nearest business of any kind is a service station, more than a kilometre away. Slightly further are the ‘Dundas Shops’, a pitiful collection of C-grade shops struggling for survival around the train station. There is nothing within easy walking distance. In Lane Cove there were possibly 100 shops within 150m of our apartment, the closest being about 80cm away. We could buy any ingredients for our dinner fresh on the night, or choose from all types of restaurants and takeaways. Here we can choose between Dominos delivery or Pizza Hut delivery. I pick Dominos, fuck Pizza Hut and their noisy drivers and failure to address their behaviour. The other negative with this house relates to electricity. The power supply is dirty (to say the least). Our lights change brightness many times per night, and sometimes the computers reboot by themselves. The spikes are the real problem, and one has easily wiped out any rent savings over the duration of the lease by destroying the motor in one of my hard disks. Said hard disk contains a lot of source code and all of my digital photos ever, and all of my documents since 1989. Not all of this data had been backed up. Realisation brought a particularly unpleasant emotion, a kind of loss with the understanding that it was my own fault. The drive is with a data recovery bureau now, who have opened it in a clean room and are painstakingly restoring the data onto a matching drive that I supplied. They tell me that this will cost $2000. Stop reading this and backup your data, right now. Don’t wait. My words do not adequately convey the terrible feeling of loss associated with a catastrophic hard disk failure and subsequent loss of data. Why are you still reading? Go and Back Up.

I still think that this residence is better than the last.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tristan’s townhouse, and Kellie’s also. It has 2 car spots. It is more than $100 a week cheaper than my current apartment. After we saw the place on Saturday I immediately went to the real estate agent and applied. I even offered $5/week more than they asked for, just to increase my chance of beating what I assumed to be many competitors. I have a good job and good references, and I have the $5 edge. In the bag.

On Monday afternoon I found out that my application was not accepted, and suffice to say I was a bit disappointed. I asked the agent why I had been overlooked, unfortunately she was “not at liberty to disclose that information”. Privacy Act, I guessed. I could only imagine the stellar qualities of the applicant who had beaten me.

Yesterday I went to the real estate office to pick up my application form (I wanted to use the references again). Imagine my surprise when I noticed that the townhouse in question was advertised for next Saturday’s open house round. I had not been beaten, I had simply been rejected. The owner had decided that it was better losing $530* than having me as a tenant. A kick in the guts.

Since no applications had been accepted for this property, I took it that it was open for applications. It was my guess that I was rejected because I was applying for 2 people, yet Kirsten did not submit an application (she had to go to work). Luckily Kirsten had the day off, so she organised her references and we met at the agent’s to apply jointly. Whilst filling out the application we found out the truth - I was rejected because I have a cat. It must have taken a bit of sleuthing to find that out, as I had not included Stimpy in the application. I intended to give her a better home (i.e. Dad’s or Michelle’s). We re-applied on the understanding that we weren’t bringing any cats with us.

Tonight Kirsten informed me that she wanted to withdraw the application. She couldn’t live with herself, farming out the cats for her own convenience. At that point, picking a property just got a whole lot easier, as 99% had just become unavailable. Although there are a lot of cats in the townhouse complex that we applied for, it is pretty certain that any application that mentions cats will be rejected out of hand. Even after we had privately negotiated with the owner of our current apartment, who likes cats, the real estate agent rejected our application (pre-approved by the owner) on the grounds that we had cats. The owner had OK’d cats. Cats are allowed in the building. Real estate auto-reaction: no cats allowed. The owner actually had to stand up for the tenant, against the agent!

Today (i.e. in the morning, not the middle of the night) I will inform the real estate that I wish to amend the application to include cats. I will offer to include a clause in the lease which specifically deals with us making good any cat-caused damage to the premises, to the satisfaction of the owner. I don’t know why such a clause would be needed, seems to me it would be implied in the Agreement. I think it would be good for the owner because they get security. Good for us because we could get a quiet place to live. The owner would have to have some real cat prejudice to reject this offer. At least, that’s what I hope.

If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter. Other places will come along. I do not have to move out of my current apartment by any particular date. I may stay here for another year. Who knows?

I’ll keep you posted, although I won’t find out anything until early next week.

*$530 is the lost week’s rent, plus a year’s $5 extras.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]