Super humid

It is actually only about 85% (it can be as high as 98% in summer I think) but the whole world seems to be covered in a shade of white mist; when I look outside my window now I can't even see the water just a few hundred meters away, and just barely make out the buildings next to me. This also affects the drying of laundry; for example I haven't had a dry towel in 4-5 days now and it gets very sweaty very quickly these days.

Anyway, last week I made my final decision to move in to that great view flat in Tin Shui Wai, I'm still not entirely certain that it is a great idea but when it comes to work and transport I will be able to save a lot of money and time. So next Sunday I will put down the deposit and the first payment (I get one week staying there for free and will have the billing date on the first of each month later), get the key and I think even stay there the first night, since I work early there on Monday morning. Then over the week I will move myself and my life from Tiu Keng Leng to Tin Shui Wai.

Unfortunately it will probably be a while until I can afford furniture, but I can live with that for a month or two I think. That time I can spend planning what furniture I will get, admittedly I'm pretty excited about moving there, my own flat. I want to say that it is the first flat I will have alone, but I did stay alone in the flat in Chengdu, maybe that isn't counted though as it was a studio apartment without kitchen, and it was furnished already so I didn't get to do that.

Work is still quite slow, as it is now both February and March is around 10000 but I haven't lost hope to fill up my Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays also, When I finally do that it should double what I make now. April will be a slow month either way I think, with Easter and a long holiday I don't have many commitments at the moment so if I don't get more it before then it will be bad, still a long time away so it should be fine.

Apartment search

I've been looking for a place nearer to my work and there is a new estate in Tin Shui Wai (where Joyce lives) that I'm extremely attracted to, it happens to have exactly the same style and very similar layout to the place I'm staying in right now. So over the last few weeks (first time was actually in early December) I went to see different flats in those buildings. There are two very different sides to the buildings; at the North side they are still building club facilities for the estate and three more towers, this won’t be complete until sometime and 2010 so living on that side pretty much sucks (once the construction is finished the higher flats should be ok as it will give a kind of sea view), on the South side however is Tin Shui Wai park and most of the flats have a really nice view of that, especially the Easternmost tower is very close to the park centre and even the lower flats there are nice.

I have basically discarded all flats on the North side despite them being slightly cheaper and when I finally got to see a bigger selection of South flats this week when I went with Shirley, one of Joyce's sisters (not to be mistaken with Almen). I saw a really awesome 3 bedroom flat, quite high and in the easternmost tower, this one is way too expensive for me though. After that I saw three other flats, all 2 bedrooms and pretty decent layout, I didn't like the last one because it is quite low and located by a busy street, it will make it pretty noisy there especially in day time. Unfortunately both the other two was lost to me before the evening was over; I found out the owner had rent the second one out already and the first one was under negotiation and if I started to bid I would just push up the price.

That's when they told me they could show me a fifth flat. So Shirley and I went back again and we went up to the 50th floor in the Easternmost building and was suddenly enchanted with this amazing view that is very hard to describe but I will try my best; just below you is a big green park that extends to a small (small as it is very far down) stadium in the East, but when you lift your eyes a little you reach above all the other buildings in the region and you realize that you have a view of the mountain range around the town. When you start looking around you realize that you have a panoramic view of the landscape stretching all the way to the sea in the West and mountains and sea in the South. And of course I got there in the evening so we got to watch how the sun was sinking down over the sea.

I want this flat! The rent is reasonable, 6500HKD for about 666sqf (70sqm), two bedrooms, a decent bathroom and a kitchen, compare with I’m paying 4500HKD now for the smaller bedroom in a similar apartment with one and a half hour travel time to work instead of 30 minutes and 10HKD instead of 60HKD per working day. The one drawback is that the kitchen is one of the smallest in this estate. However 6500HKD is just the rent, before I can rent it I must put down a deposit of two months’ rent and pay the agent one half rent for their service, this adds up to 22500HKD, which is a lot. They also want me to make a quick decision, have me put down some money (just a minor amount) to not show it to more prospectors. I don't know what to do but I know I want that flat.

Procrastination

Since a very long time I've had a project called Procrastination; Procrastination is a stat-builder game I started working on in 2006 and I tend to fall back into that once in a while, its work in progress and not going very fast but I use it to kill time anyway. Recently I decided to start another project; I call it Irresponsibility and it's a strategy RPG game. I also decided I should log my work on this so I created The Procrastinator, another blog, for this.

Omelet

Last night I had a small "Spring Festival" dinner with Joyce and Ariel and I came up with the, according to me, great plan of making omelets. The great idea about this is that we could do several omelets with different ingredients, satisfying everyone's wants and needs. With my small frying pan two eggs is more than enough for one omelet, still I tried with four in the first one and that was simply too big. I made spicy omelets, which I like but Ariel don't like, Ariel made one with mushrooms, which I can't eat, and Joyce did a rather normal one.

Museums

With the Spring festival holiday and more time on our hands Ariel and I decided to check out some of the museums in Hong Kong. So on Friday we went to Tsim Sha Tsui and to the museum of history and the museum of science, which are in adjacent buildings in TST east. We did go about it in the wrong order but basically had to since the history museum closed earlier; first we did Hong Kong's history and then the very boring French revolution part that is visiting until next month. The science museum was a lot more fun; they have loads of stuff you can play and at the end of our visit we found a section where you test your health buy doing simple tests like blood pressure and jumping as high as you can and stuff. I don't think the tests are very reliable but it was still fun too.

Since we had bought a one week ticket for all the museums in Hong Kong each and Ariel work the whole next week we figured we should do one today as well. We went out to Sha Tin in east part of New Territories and visited the heritage museum there. Some of the things there were very similar to the history museum in TST but a lot more focus on culture and especially Cantonese Opera, which sounds really boring and I think it is, but I tried out a costume and took some photos.

I will check out the space museum and also the art museum in TST by Victoria harbor someday next week, since I have the one week pass and quite a lot of time to kill still.