I had a bad dream last night. I dreamed that I found the perfect place to live in London and when I met the girl I would be living with, she didn’t use punctuation, was a nail technician and charged me £7 to paint one of my nails. I didn’t want to live with her 🙁
I will be living in London from October and have been wasting time, energy and angst looking at rental ads. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a waste of my brain space because:
- Most of the ads are for moving in this month or next. October ads aren’t out yet.
- I’ve only got three more weeks to wait until I hand in my dissertation, then I can look for places to live more productively.
- I’ve only got three weeks to write my dissertation.
But my brain! My brain is stuck in a loop! I don’t know how to get out except to just make a decision so I can stop thinking about it. But I can’t make a decision because I keep changing my mind about what I want and there are no October ads yet.
My wish list
- I can get to work in less than twenty minutes.
- The neighbourhood is safe.
- There is a park nearby where I can go for a walk.
- I do not feel like I’m wasting money.
- I have intelligent, friendly housemates who use punctuation, aren’t having parties all the time, don’t smoke, and don’t drink themselves silly.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop thinking about it! Aaaaargh!
Another Aussie here (Ollie – if you know him) spent about a month looking for a place in London (after finishing here). He interviewed for a room at a bunch of places and either didn’t like what he saw or was rejected in favour of somebody else.
Apparently, its a really tough market. He gave up and decided to just rent a whole apartment and sublet the rooms to people he saw fit. There’s a real shortage of room-based rentals compared to regular rentals. By taking on the risk, I think he gets to charge them more than the split rent, so he ends up paying a low rent for the best room – with people he actually likes (or at least can tolerate well).
I just got off the phone with a primary school friend, who moved to London from good ol’ Melbourne. I think that’s what we’re going to do. There are three of us and we’ll go apartment/house hunting.
Hehe. I’ve found an unexpectedly larger number of primary and high school friends in London and Europe in general. It’s all thanks to the power of Facebook.
gosh i so understand what you’re going through. i couldnt stop thinking about getting a new place in time and basically it just wrecked my concentration… :S but you will get through it, joan.
Are you going to be in London for good?
And whats wrong with people who don’t use punctuation I dont see anything wrong with that haha
Anyway, you’ll be right. From my experience, it’s almost impossible to find that perfect place without losing an arm or a leg. Just make sure you know your priority when looking for a place to stay. Good luck!
Joan, I’m back from vacation!
That’s a truly gruesome dream you had. Emails without punctuation are so horrid – they almost make me puke. And you know what? It also terrifies me whenever I lose a sock in the laundry. Which happens far too often, given that I’ve got my own washing machine in the flat.
Thanks, GSH. I’m sure I’ll find somewhere nice as well. I just need to stop obsessing about it. In fact, having talked to my prospective housemate/primary school friend, I am thinking about it less because I know she’ll do a good job of house hunting. Now, back to my dissertation and writing about UK houses…
Misscipher, I got a job with a company in London and will probably stay for a few years. Damjan (boyfriend) still has his PhD to do and I think getting some sustainability work experience in the UK would be great career-wise. But I get to go home to Melbourne to see family and friends first!
Mo, you should see the horrors in London rental ads. Some are written entirely in capital letters. I just read one which had no full stops — it was a paragraph long sentence. It made me ill. I felt like I was running a marathon. Then there was the ad written in text message abbreviations. Why? There are no limits on characters in a rental ad. Why?
I totally understand people not using punctuation when they’re chatting online or texting. Speed and saving money are good reasons for abandoning punctuation. But if you’re putting an ad out to find someone you want to live with, the least you can do is spend a bit of time and care on your ad! And that means using punctuation!
I hope you manage to satisfy your wish list, but it sounds to me like you have very high standards.
I’ve been looking for a place to rent for about 9 months, and out of the first four items in your list, the only one that’s ever been true is the one about having a park nearby…
The first item (close to where I work) will probably be easy to satisfy, just because tube and bus connections to the middle of London are very good.
The second one is a matter of degree. As people keep saying, you have to watch out carefully no matter where you are in London. But it seems that some places are clearly dodgier than others. I am definitely going to have to pay more to live in a ‘nice’ (yet may still be mugged) places.
There are parks everywhere in London. The limiting factor will be safety, though. Even if there is a park, it might not be safe to walk around there by yourself.
The fourth item (cost) conflicts with item 1 and 2. I guess it’s working out a balance between my criteria or hunting like a demon and finding a bargain.
The last item about housemates, I’m told, is luck of the draw and most housemates are bad. I have to go on everyone else’s experiences, I suppose. I’ve had six housemates in my lifetime and have liked them all. I’ve become very good friends with three of them.
Ha..ha.. Joan, I think we are in similar situation, because I am looking for accommodation in Nottingham for me to move in at end of Oct. No landlord is willing to hold the room for me for three whole months and I am not willing to pay three extra months of rent! Anyway, add oil with your dissertation! My supervisor is starting his holiday next Thur and he wants to have a look at my whole dissertation early next week – gosh!!! I’m nearly at the finish line – great!!!