Sunday, March 15, 2009

Adventures in Apartment Rentals Part Deux

Today we met up with Sirendar, who had read my post on Yuni-Net requesting information on any fabulous apartments in Gurgaon. He had contacted me earlier in the week to let me know that the ground floor under his apartment was available.

Location is Sector 40. A little farther out than I'd expected, but with a car or scooter, fairly close to the malls and shopping. Much farther away from school. Very difficult to find if you don't know where you are going. It is located in Mohyal Colony across from a beautifully maintained park.

Apartment. Fully furnished, AC. Backup power. Satellite TV. Wireless internet connection. 3 bedroom, 2 bath, including a bathtub! Gas hookup in place, fridge, extremely high ceilings, cool... Furniture is all very indigenous Indian - dark, heavy, low and intricately carved. All this for 18,000/month with a security deposit of one month's rent (not a frickin 100,000 like I have now.) No agent to pay a month's rent to, either.

So, Will, Yu Yu and I looked at the place and seriously, there were few flaws to the place... mostly Will wanted to be closer to his friends (as usual), but that hasn't been the best thing so far here in Gurgaon. We'll need to be more organized about supplies since we can't just call and get something delivered, and we'll never be able to get pizza delivered again. We'll need to hang a mirror in Will's bath.

We could seriously party in this house. Host dinners... I could see us living there and making a life for ourselves... finally. We haven't seen anything else and the few others who contacted us initially never followed through. We made plans to meet up again the first week of April to sign a lease for May 1st. We'll try and post photos as soon as we can.

We'll be renting two apartments in May since we'll need to clean up and repaint the old place. This will give us time to move a few things at a time to the new place and we'll be able to do that even if we use bike rickshaws to transport us. I think that's really cool. :-)

We all breathed a sigh of relief today. It's the start of a new life, something we've all been waiting for and desperately needed. It's a sign that life is making a turn towards the better. :-)

later...

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

5 comments:

  1. sounds excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds great! I can't wait to see pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i tell every American I meet, not to move to a third world country without money.

    It appears that this is what you essentially did - i.e. moved to India and are now trying to survive on a local Indian salary.

    I'm still surprised you're not trying to start a business in India. Would it be easier for a white, american woman to do that? I'm sure if you were a man, things might be a little different for you in india.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous:

    I don't my gender hurts me as much as it does for Indian women here. Because I am a foreign woman, I think I'm taken more seriously in my career. The rep, as I see it, is that western women are willing to give up their marriage, families and children for their career. Being single at my age just confirms this attitude. Indian women would be judged very differently.

    With regards to money, yeah, we came here with just a little cash, but far more that most Indians going in the opposite direction, and the purchasing power my money had here was much higher. We should have been smarter, been more concerned with saving...

    I don't want to run my own business. I've stated this numerous times - don't like dealing with the financials, HR, and sales, and those become your primaries as the company gets more successful. If you're not watching these like a hawk, someone will f**k it up for sure.

    Later.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is exciting news! Looking forward to seeing pictures as well!

    ReplyDelete