Ole ole - super germany ...

[location: Singapore @ work]
[mood: mixed]

Did u see that amazing game (ref: Germany - Equador) last night?? Wohooo ... great game! It took them quiet a while, but this was again an interesting & amazing game to watch. Let's keep the fingers crossed, that it will remain like that for the next games ;)

Very cute tho: In order to be patriotic, my parents actually sent me a Germany flag, to give mental-support from Asia. Funny enough, I read an article in a german newspaper, that since 1990 (Germany's reunion) - it has never happened again, that so many 'Germany' products are sold: Flag / T-shirts / ...
From what I've heard - unfortunately I can't actively take part in the whole spectacle - the whole of Germany is covered in an 'let's_show_where_we_come_from'-euphoria.

I am sure most of you have actually heard about the 'Zuhause bei Freunden' campaign - which basically should encourage germans to rent spare rooms etc to people travelling to Germany for the world-cup. Also this seems to be a huge success. People are renting out their rooms (some of them even for free) and enjoy the visit from other countries.
That just reminds me to the 'Emirates - commercial: Football - one language!' ...

Pretty amazing - even though I am 10.000 km away from my home-country and am honestly a bit disappointed, that I miss the whole world-cup but also here the parties / games are an huge success. The time difference can be a bit a pain, as some of the games are shown at 3 am and especially the final etc are laaaate at night. Anyway - I am already looking forward to that!

What else (will) happen(ed):
- This weekend is my cousins wedding and as usual I miss all the fun - anyway all the best to the both of you! Would have loved to come back home!
- I just heard that my other cousin and his girlfriend will come to Singapore to visit me end of July. woooot wooooot ... It is gonna be awesome to have them here!
- An old workmate from the Philippines will arrive this saturday and move in with me. He will start working for the same company on monday.

That's it for today ... will be back soon!

Stephan

One day after another ...

[location: Singapore]
[mood: sleepy]

'wohoo' ... Time is passing by quite fast! I've just moved into my new place. It feels sooo good to have my own place again, after living in hotels for the last 11 months ...
As mentioned before, I was quite frustrated about the service & customer oriented thinking of some of the house agents here in Singapore.
I am really not too fuzzed about places or set the requirements too high, but the places some of the agents have shown to me were just **censored**. Holy cow ... I mean I wouldn't even allow my dog to life there.
Everything is just about comission - they only want to have more & more money. Obviously it is always like that, but I 've never experienced it so directly before. One of them - my absolute favorite - she showed me a place which I liked (my level of expectation was already at the bottom!!) and I told her to send the 'letter of intent' to the owner, stating that I'd like to take this place. So I forwarded her a lot of information / documents and she filed the application. In the same evening she calls me and told me that someone else has offered 500 Dollars more. I was like 'Hu ... That is way above the average for these places' ... she asked me if I'd like to extend my offer as well.
To fully understand the whole scenario I should mention that the apartment was a so called split lease contract. It means, that the current tenant is intending to leave the apartment before the end of the contract and now has to search for another person to take over her contract. Basically these people are most of the time so desperate, that they are even willing to pay a part of the rent as long as someone takes over the rest and with ith the apartment.
So yeah ... First of all I'd ask myself why someone would offer to pay 500 Dollars more, even if this is not required at all. Secondly my gut feeling told me not to do it.
About a week afterwards I met the current tenant in a bar around the corner from where I work and I was talking to her - she was quite nice, while I visited the place and I had a long chat with her that time as well. She then asked me what happened and I told her about that 'suspicious' offer and she said, that this was sooooo not true ...
Basically the agent just tried to rip me - or even worse - the current tenant off.

Hmm ... how interesting - me talking about bloody agents in Singapore!
So yeah ... I got my place now - Happy to life there and still running around in the city and picking up lots & lots of stuff from department stores and move it in my place.

Quite funny - Since I moved to my new place, a lot of friends came over to my place and men always tend to ask me the question "Where is the plasma?!" ...
What is it with a plasma TV? Hu ... Honestly ... I got this question about 10 times already. Interesting to see what people are expecting. If you buy a car, it has to be a sportscar ... If you buy a place, u need to have a plasma TV ...
Funny ... And I don't have one (yet) ... I might think about getting one ;) but at the moment there are more important things on my shopping list.

Today is already friday and I am looking forward to the weekend.
More to come soon !!

Stephan