Never….been….so….hot… Part Two

[Still relating to Friday 13th June…bear with me!]

We look at five apartments that are all very similar to each other, and to the places we saw in Kennedy Town on the island – decent-sized master bedroom and living room; tiny second and third bedrooms (apparently I could use one of these as a ‘reading room’ if it’s too small for anything else… er, don’t know about you Cris, mate, but I’m quite happy ‘reading’ in the comfort of my bed). None of the buildings have facilities onsite, except for the odd outdoor swimming pool (“oh, you poor thing, only a pool”, I hear you say) but it’s actually quite common, especially in the newer high-rise places to get a gym, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis court, possibly a pool room and a basketball court. [left: view from one of the apartments]

Turns out the reason for this (quite frankly deplorable) omission is that one is supposed to frequent the ‘Siena Club’, a ghastly place quite clearly designed for bored housewives or their ‘domestic helpers’ (as they call the nannies here) and the brats they’re paid tuppence an hour to look after. You have to pay a monthly fee to be one of the members, and then to use the gym you have to pay out more dollars on top. Hell, I don’t like looking stupid trying to lift those 4kg weights that much! My (by now) good friend Cris asks me if I want to see the other ‘club house’ site, to which I want to reply “dear God no! Are you trying to make me cry?”, to which I actually replied “oh no, that’s fine, you’ve shown me loads of things to think about already, thank you”. I’m nothing if not sycophantic when needs must!

So off we whizzed again on the golf cart, which means we topped about 15 miles an hour max; any faster than that mind you, and I think I’d have ended up being flung out the side. All that’s there to protect you from the elements is some flimsy bit of plastic which you zip up down the side of the cart (very similar to a tent). In the absolute downpour we were swimming through that day, there was no protection whatsover: I was soaking. [Needless to say, the photo below is not mine, nor was it taken on the same day, as evidenced by the lack of rain.]

Much as I was somewhat apprehensive about the return boat trip, I practically ran across the ‘plaza’ and down the hill towards the ferry (“there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home!” Now if only I had some of those ruby slippers…) God again, however, had other ideas. The weather had turned even worse and the boat was heaving from side to side, while bouncing extremely high on the waves (like you’d expect from a speed boat one 27th the size of this hydrofoil) all the way back.

And just to add to my already extreme displeasure and abject nausea, one of my fellow passengers was a very unhelpful American woman who kept making ‘noises’, leant over to tell me she gets “soooo seasick” and then got up and moved one of the bins from the aisle so that it was between her knees and then continued to make the ‘noises’ with her head practically in the bin. Sweet Lord.

Eventually, by nothing short of a miracle, we docked back at Central and I went to meet Colin for lunch, where he said I looked a little ‘green’. Hmmm…thanks very much!

The afternoon, you’ll be pleased to hear, was much more successful. Agnes showed me a couple of flats in all three of the main developments just outside the station, that I had viewed from the outside the day before. And finally, in the third one (so that was apartment viewing number five of the afternoon), I actually said “Wow!” in reaction to the size of the living room. Things were looking up – I could see us living in this place, and even the bedrooms were of a decent size. Plus, and this is a big plus knowing how much Colin wanted to spend as little as possible, it was the cheapest place I’d seen so far. Exxxxcellent.

Went to meet Colin and work pals that evening and told him I’d found us a new home for HK$5,000 (about £325) a month less than we were thinking we’d have to pay. As you can imagine, he was quite excited but also reminded me that we can live rent-free for another four weeks (in the serviced apartment that Lehman are paying for) so we shouldn’t be too hasty in taking the first good place we see. Especially as we might be able to get an identical apartment in the same development for less money if we use a local estate agent rather than the international property company that Agnes works for. Drat. Damn Colin and his maths brain – why does he have to be so clever?!

Guess that’s my next job then!