Updates - Finding a place to stay..........
There is no doubt that it certainly hasn’t been an easy transition the second time around. Things have been hard at times and difficult and I have found myself asking myself what am I doing here when I wake up in the middle of the night.
Most of that is down to my accommodation and living arrangements so far. When I first arrived back in November I got to stay at a colleague’s wee cottage near Diamond Head. She had the cottage for another month but herself had moved out to move in with her boyfriend. It was a nice place but with no furniture apart from a bed it was a little eerie. It was far from work and the first night I almost had a heart attack as I thought I was away to get attacked as these shouts came from below the window. Jet lagged I cautiously peeked out and it turned out the deaf neighbours bedroom window was only 5 foot from the back of the cottage. I didn’t stay there very long.
Accommodation number 2 was about a week later when my friend Alex (from the first time I had lived in Hawaii) had just got married in Rome, she was only back in Hawaii for a fortnight before moving to Virginia. She let me stay at her flat until she left and she moved in with her mum.
Now in this whole time I was looking for places, but they were either filled with cockroaches or the roommates were just weird. One guy asked me if I had a problem with the fact he had an African bride coming to live with him who he had never met!
After my week was up and Alex had left I still hadn’t found anywhere so her mum offered me a spare room in her plush apartment. I moved in and stayed there over Christmas & New Year where I got to spend Christmas Day with her niece who is a PA for a Chinese Billionaire. Alex’s mum and her niece asked me to come along and I got invited to hang out at a small private party with them and the three pilots for the Chinese Billionaire. Two of them were Aussie’s and the other one was English. It was a cracking way to spend Christmas and they had a lush spread of food and kept on giving me beer after beer!
After 3 weeks I felt I was getting in the way so I had placed an advert looking for an apartment when a Navy Officer got in touch with me saying he had just moved here from San Diego was renting a brand new condo and was looking for a room-mate. I met him and he was a decent bloke and he asked me to move in. Part of the problem that why rent is so high in Hawaii is that the military get a standard rate for living expenses which is higher depending on the city. Most landlords raise prices as they know the military can afford to pay more. The place was awesome. Brand new, my own room and bathroom with a pool & Jacuzzi downstairs and it was cheap compared to the overall price of the unit. Accommodation Number 4 and this was only early January.
His furniture and possessions were meant to be arriving from San Diego that Thursday and he had a big plasma TV and told me about all these other gadgets that he had that I was able to look forward too and I had to “treat them like they were mine” Game on.
Sadly on the Friday I came home to find no furniture and for him to break the bad news that he was getting shipped off to Iraq for a year. Arse! I had to either move out or find a sucker who would pay the 2/3’s of the rent he was paying.
Needless to say I moved out and was on the search again for Accommodation Number 5. It came about via a really generous colleague who let me stay at their house for 2 weeks. The only problem was it was on base at Pearl Harbour and I could get in, but really couldn’t walk around anywhere so I was stuck inside outside of work.
I was getting really desperate and had to find somewhere. I wanted somewhere on my own, but it was tough going. Prices were high and still are. I finally met two guys who had a spare room and bathroom going in there high rise apartment overlooking Waikiki and it was in the area I had lived and knew well back from 2001. They liked me and asked me to move in. Accommodation number 6 and it is not even February. Two weeks after moving in I come home in a rush to get out again. I take a quick shower and throw in some towels into the washing machine. I had to go grab a clean towel from my room after I had shaved and as I opened the bathroom door I see water gushing over the side of the washing machine flooding the apartment. Nobody was home and I didn’t know what to do. I managed to get the water stopped eventually but was scared the water would drip down to the floor above. We live on the 35th floor and it’s a nice building. The last thing I would need would to fork out to decorate someone’s home after it flooded. I grabbed towels, sheets any thing I could to soak up the water before calling for an emergency carpet cleaner out of the yellow pages. It was a real scare and an expensive encounter but after an engineer checked out the washing machine I wasn’t too blame. Lint had filled up in the cut off switch over time and it didn’t know what to stop. We got refunded from the landlord and it now works again.
I was only meant to stay there until June, and had wanted to move out but the market has still been so tough that I am still there on a month to month deal. It’s a great place with awesome views and downstairs there is a pool, tennis court, bowling alley, sauna etc but the two guys are great but we definitely lead different life’s and they always ALWAYS have people over. It can be a bit annoying when it’s nearly every day of the week. They are moving out of the apartment in December so I will either hopefully have found somewhere new before then or move out then too.
Most of that is down to my accommodation and living arrangements so far. When I first arrived back in November I got to stay at a colleague’s wee cottage near Diamond Head. She had the cottage for another month but herself had moved out to move in with her boyfriend. It was a nice place but with no furniture apart from a bed it was a little eerie. It was far from work and the first night I almost had a heart attack as I thought I was away to get attacked as these shouts came from below the window. Jet lagged I cautiously peeked out and it turned out the deaf neighbours bedroom window was only 5 foot from the back of the cottage. I didn’t stay there very long.
Accommodation number 2 was about a week later when my friend Alex (from the first time I had lived in Hawaii) had just got married in Rome, she was only back in Hawaii for a fortnight before moving to Virginia. She let me stay at her flat until she left and she moved in with her mum.
Now in this whole time I was looking for places, but they were either filled with cockroaches or the roommates were just weird. One guy asked me if I had a problem with the fact he had an African bride coming to live with him who he had never met!
After my week was up and Alex had left I still hadn’t found anywhere so her mum offered me a spare room in her plush apartment. I moved in and stayed there over Christmas & New Year where I got to spend Christmas Day with her niece who is a PA for a Chinese Billionaire. Alex’s mum and her niece asked me to come along and I got invited to hang out at a small private party with them and the three pilots for the Chinese Billionaire. Two of them were Aussie’s and the other one was English. It was a cracking way to spend Christmas and they had a lush spread of food and kept on giving me beer after beer!
After 3 weeks I felt I was getting in the way so I had placed an advert looking for an apartment when a Navy Officer got in touch with me saying he had just moved here from San Diego was renting a brand new condo and was looking for a room-mate. I met him and he was a decent bloke and he asked me to move in. Part of the problem that why rent is so high in Hawaii is that the military get a standard rate for living expenses which is higher depending on the city. Most landlords raise prices as they know the military can afford to pay more. The place was awesome. Brand new, my own room and bathroom with a pool & Jacuzzi downstairs and it was cheap compared to the overall price of the unit. Accommodation Number 4 and this was only early January.
His furniture and possessions were meant to be arriving from San Diego that Thursday and he had a big plasma TV and told me about all these other gadgets that he had that I was able to look forward too and I had to “treat them like they were mine” Game on.
Sadly on the Friday I came home to find no furniture and for him to break the bad news that he was getting shipped off to Iraq for a year. Arse! I had to either move out or find a sucker who would pay the 2/3’s of the rent he was paying.
Needless to say I moved out and was on the search again for Accommodation Number 5. It came about via a really generous colleague who let me stay at their house for 2 weeks. The only problem was it was on base at Pearl Harbour and I could get in, but really couldn’t walk around anywhere so I was stuck inside outside of work.
I was getting really desperate and had to find somewhere. I wanted somewhere on my own, but it was tough going. Prices were high and still are. I finally met two guys who had a spare room and bathroom going in there high rise apartment overlooking Waikiki and it was in the area I had lived and knew well back from 2001. They liked me and asked me to move in. Accommodation number 6 and it is not even February. Two weeks after moving in I come home in a rush to get out again. I take a quick shower and throw in some towels into the washing machine. I had to go grab a clean towel from my room after I had shaved and as I opened the bathroom door I see water gushing over the side of the washing machine flooding the apartment. Nobody was home and I didn’t know what to do. I managed to get the water stopped eventually but was scared the water would drip down to the floor above. We live on the 35th floor and it’s a nice building. The last thing I would need would to fork out to decorate someone’s home after it flooded. I grabbed towels, sheets any thing I could to soak up the water before calling for an emergency carpet cleaner out of the yellow pages. It was a real scare and an expensive encounter but after an engineer checked out the washing machine I wasn’t too blame. Lint had filled up in the cut off switch over time and it didn’t know what to stop. We got refunded from the landlord and it now works again.
I was only meant to stay there until June, and had wanted to move out but the market has still been so tough that I am still there on a month to month deal. It’s a great place with awesome views and downstairs there is a pool, tennis court, bowling alley, sauna etc but the two guys are great but we definitely lead different life’s and they always ALWAYS have people over. It can be a bit annoying when it’s nearly every day of the week. They are moving out of the apartment in December so I will either hopefully have found somewhere new before then or move out then too.
posted by Scotsman in Hawaii at Tuesday, November 14, 2006
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