When I left you last time I had a butt-load of 'real-life' stuff still to sort out. Well, the good news is that it is mostly all done! I've got a new cell phone (number on my fb page should you ever need it - I get unlimited international text messages, but I guess you don't), my resume is ready to rock and... I've moved into a new place! (Yes, sorry that I haven't got a job yet, Mum.)
After a couple of days scouring craigslist for apartments it seemed like the whole process might be a bit of a headache. Initially I was looking for 2-bed apartments for Mark and I, but soon started looking for 3-bed places with our good buddy, Daniel, your typical gift-of-the-gab Irishman, who we'd met in the hostel. We didn't even want to move in with him but somehow he talked us into it. (j/k Danny boy!) We figured an extra person to split bills etc could only be a good thing. The bad news was we were only hearing negative stories when apartment hunting. Someone in the hostel was saying 2-bed places are hard enough to find, 3-bed impossible. From the ads I'd seen and the stories I was hearing it sounded like most places a rented unfurnished too, which would be a bit of an expensive nightmare for us. Anyway, unperturbed, I carried on the hunt for 3-beds.
On Monday I found an ad for place in Collingwood, a residential district about 12 mins from Downtown on the SkyTrain, that Mark and I had been to have a quick walk around previously. I arranged a viewing and the 3 of us went out there to take a look. The place was great but, as feared, completely unfurnished, so we had to say thanks but no thanks. So the search continued. The annoying thing with craigslist is that some people include photos, others hardly any descriptions, some with phone numbers and others you can only email (not to mention the site has a lot of scammers).
On Wednesday morning I had a promising lead on a 3-bed place in South Burnaby. I made the call and we went to view the place a few hours later. We met this guy at his restaurant (more of a Filipino fast-food cafe) and he drove us round to the place. It's even further out of town than Collingwood but still on the same SkyTrain Line, so no more than 20 minutes from Edmonds station. I'd be pretty happy with that commute if I was in London, I thought to myself. The place itself was fantastic. It's the upper floor of a house that this guy, Jun, had only recently bought. 3 big bedrooms, a large living room and a decent size kitchen with all the required appliances. It actually seemed too good to be true, so I was very cautious and acted somewhat like a character in Spooks during the whole process. However, everything seemed to check out and Jun appeared to be a stand-up guy, promising to provide even more furnishings than were in the place at the time and he even gave us a quick drive around the area whilst we struck up a conversation about Manny Pacquiao. Another benefit of this place was that we could move in straight away, rather than waiting for the 1st or 15th of the month, which seems customary here. We shook hands on a $550/month rent each (approx £350/month), which would include all of our utilities (water, electric, cable TV, 20mb wifi etc) - very happy! I even managed to bag myself the room with en-suite - a reward for finding the place I guess! It turned out that some of Jun's relatives would be living in the basement suite below us and he even said that they would do all our laundry for us! I didn't really know what to make of that. I'd feel bad lumping all my laundry on the poor lady downstairs!
The whole thing had worked out really well for Mark and I, as we were due to check out from the SameSun on Friday morning and could move into our new pad Friday afternoon. For those that are interested, here we are on google maps - at Mary Ave and Edmonds St. It seems to be a nice area, with most things within 5 mins walk and a couple of decent parks nearby for runs etc. It's certainly a lot more peaceful than Granville St. Here's a shot of Edmonds:
Sorry, here you go, the real Burnaby-Edmonds:
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| Not our view unfortunately, but looks alright, don't you think? |
Here's a few shots of the place. Sorry, no wide-angle camera to take decent room shots. Very bare at the minute but once we've all got jobs I'm sure we'll start to fill it with junk.
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| 7237 Mary Ave |
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| Living room 1 |
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| Living room 2 |
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| My room (very interesting) |
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| Kitchen |
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| Little balcony/back yard. (Taken from inside the kitchen as it's pissing down) |
It may be a little way out of Downtown Vancouver but as I previously mentioned it's only 20 mins on the SkyTrain. We're on a month-by-month basis too, so we're not tied down.
There hasn't been much adventuring done over the past week as you can imagine. I've done my first couple of food shops, got myself the equivalent of a Tesco clubcard, scouted some gyms ready for signing up once the job is in the bag and we've tried out the few bars that are in our area. Nothing too thrilling!
So today is the start of a new week - job week. It's a typical rainy day here. I best stop procrastinating/blog-writing and get on with firing some resumes out!
Catch you later!
Simon x
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