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