The days are really rolling fast hey! February has gone down in my personal records as one of the fastest 28 days ever! It is already March!!! Here is to a very happy March to you all. I do hope March doesn’t roll as fast as Feb did though :-).
At the top of any couple’s marital plans especially after a wedding is to move into a nice house which they can call home. For those who have ever had to do some sort of house hunting for whatever reason, you will agree with me that this is no small deal.
Tendai and I also have as one of our wishes to move into a nice place that we can call home and we have since started a gradual hunt for such a place in November 2014. Nothing turned up and by January we turned up the heat a bit especially as the lease for where I am staying was due to run out in February 2015. The end of January came and we still had not found a place despite our spirited search.
The agent of my current flat had written to ask if I am renewing the contract and I tried to delay responding hoping to get a place first to avoid the awkward situation where I don’t renew and the contract runs out and we have not found a place. I eventually came clean and told her of our plans and she was so supportive and offered me an option of a monthly contract at the expiration of the 12 months lease I had signed last year. This was such a huge relieve and took off some pressure from our over burdened shoulders.
We kept on with the search though and prayed that God will favour us with a nice place which is affordable too. We got a few rentals advertised and most of them fell either in the category of “too expensive” or “too far” from the area we would love to settle in, those that fell within our bracket of “affordable rates had massive competition. After several hours of drive time, emails, calls and appointed viewings of several flats all ending in rejects or not meeting our specific requirements of our dream 1st flat, we were beginning to get a bit worried.
All this however changed last week Wednesday, two days before we had fixed two appointments for same day to view two different flats at two ends of the city, one in the northern suburbs and the other in the southern suburbs. We started with the Northern suburb…it was a north facing flat on the 10th floor of a complex and had large glass windows opening to breath-taking ocean views. I fell in love with the flat immediately! It was quite far from the area we had in mind and we will have to battle heavy vehicular traffic daily if we end up there though and I thought if that is the price to pay then I will happily do so. Tendai however had issues. She just can’t handle heights and living on the 10th floor with such massive glass doors is a nightmare she can’t live with. So we had divided opinions of the flat but agreed to put in an application anyways.
After filling the form and getting all required documents faxed to the agent we headed off to the second viewing which was at the southern suburbs. Before leaving Tendai was tired and suggested we stay back as she remembered our many other applications in the southern suburbs which all didn’t favour us. She was certain there will be a lot of competition too as the rate at which the flat was going for was almost too good to be true. I encouraged her we just go give it a try as we have nothing to lose. As our GPS announced to us “You have arrived at your destination,” Tendai said something is wrong this may be a wrong address because there is no “crowd” as expected. I also thought it is strange as we usually see at least 6 couples waiting at each of the other flats we have viewed. I parked anyways and I looked up to see an elderly looking woman smiling at us. I asked Tendai do you know her. She said no, and we said maybe she is also here to view the flat so we got out and greeted her. She asked if we are here to view as she is the agent. It was the first time we have arrived to find the agent waiting alone.
We went in and this time the flat was on the 2nd floor and was also a lovely flat. Tendai loved it from the door…it also had a balcony which Tendai had always loved as she wants to grow her potted plants and some vegetables. So yes we put in an application too…this time we did right there and then as the agent waited…Tendai just didn’t want to lose this flat as I could see from her eyes she would be deeply pained and disappointed to miss out on this. For the rest of that day all we spoke about is that flat and Tendai was already elaborating on her plans for when we move in. It was an older building so had lots of space and Tendai can think of a million ways to utilise all the spaces.
The following day at 12:24, my phone rang, I looked and it was a strange number, I picked and it was the agent for the 2nd flat…she had been in touch with the owner of the building and the flat is ours if we are still keen to sign the lease contract.
WOW!! I thought so this is how it is…I smiled and said my million thanks and reminded her again how keen we were, we fixed a time and date to meet so we can sign the papers.
This afternoon at midday, we signed the lease contract so come April 2015 we will be moving in to the flat which Tendai and I will be calling home for the foreseeable future. We are both very pleased with the flat and now all the stress of emailing, calling, driving and receiving rejections seem to be a very distant memory.
With one month 15 days left to our big day, we have struck out one more item on our “to-do” list. A home is now sorted and we look forward to the next item to be accomplished. There is this joy that comes with achieving something…anything, it does not matter the size…just that knowledge and feeling of sharing the victory of achieving something with someone you love is so exhilarating.
zealthinks 