houses

thank you for all of your prayers, i'm fine and well in london now. i have been rushing around trying to look for accomodations to stay in and i've finally found quite a neat and decent place to stay in. there are 6 of us (me, kai, bryan, justin, joseph, shu jun) sharing a 3 bedroom and a studio apartment house beside the camden tube station, 2 mins away from the biggest supermarket, 15mins away from school, 10mins away from regents park. it is a very good catch cuz of the location and the furnishing of the flat. i'm hoping to shift in this friday.

well, before we found this property, there were lots of saga going on. firstly, we approached this property agency, foxtons, which provided high end rentals, but they seemed to be kind of biased. although they seem professional, but they didn;t really treat us well as our budget is quite low. we found this really pretty place at myddleton ave near finsbury park which was very peaceful and serene but sadly it was taken up and the agent didn;t really want to serve us the other property. we were not very satisfied with his professionalism and thus we decided to check out other properties. we found this good property in belsize park which was quite peaceful but decided to search for other better properties too. bryan and joseph got in touched with this dodgy guy, mickey whom we suspect to be a porn ring leader, who wanted to rent his 2 bedrm house at 250 per wk. he was quite helpful when we told him that we were bryan's friends and that we needed a house too.. so he brought us to some house near finsbury park. however, the place is really a "shit" hole. if i can grade the oldest one room flat in singapore on a grade of 100 as 20, i would grade that finsbury park house which mickey showed us to be 0.5... it was really bad, broken windows, security cameras everywhere, rubbish dump beside the house, it's just disgusting.

next, mickey brought us to his house which he wanted to rent to bryan and joseph. at first 250 for 2 bedroom at kings cross seem to be a great deal but after viewing the property, it was definitely a nono for them. kai and i had a very eeky feeling about the house. firstly, each of his room has a tv, dvd player and a vcr with a mixer and he showed us his collection of porn dvds. he has this "secret" room which he padlocks it and we are not allowed to enter at all. one of the room has pink curtains and some teddy bears. his house is also full of model posters. we kind of suspect that he is in some illegal black business. we were very skeptical about his "secret" room, what if it's a store room for drugs or it's a torture chamber. we decided that it's best for bryan not to go for that property. it got even more bizzare when he suddenly offered bryan 100 per week, which is too low a price in london. although, the money seems quite attractive, but we will only regret it if we live there.

thankfully, we chanced upon this refurbished flat in camden this morning, if not we will still be roaming for houses.

i must emphasize that singapore is still very much better than here, even though we deny ourselves to be a first world country. the efficiency is very much better in singapore. just take a look at hsbc, which calls themselves to be the world's local bank; their efficiency is simply attrocious, we had to wait for such a long time in settling our bank procedures. even after waiting for such a long time to be served, the bank was still unable to meet our requirements, which is so unlike singapore. secondly, looking at the type of public housing they have here, i can definitely say that singapore's public housing policies are very much superior than most first world countries. be contented, you can't find another place that is as clean and green as home.