Buying a Sofa

I had picked out my "Karlstad" sofa, received the deposit from Gary (former flat mate) and had enough time to actually go to IKEA and buy it. So I set out in the mid afternoon with a clear goal and high spirits. However, once I had arrived at Kowloon bay IKEA and written down exactly what I wanted the woman (or I should say girl) found that they didn't have the 2-seat part frame in stock, neither did they know when they would, later it turned out that they should have gotten it last month but hadn't yet and after pushing the girl about it she guessed it would take at least another month.

So I had to consider my options; IKEA also has a sofa called "Kramfors", it is similar size and price but with a few drawbacks; 1. It doesn't come in any color that I'm looking for (closest is a dark gray), 2. It is about 15cm wide than "Karlstad", that is 15cm I don't really have and 3. It is not nearly as comfortable as "Karlstad". There is "Tylösand" from IKEA as well, this one comes in a reddish purple that is close to the brown I was looking for originally and it is only 7cm wide than "Karlstad", however this one costs 2000HKD more. Or as a final option I could look in other stores.

I set out to MEGA-BOX where they have a B n' Q, another furniture/hardware store, they didn't have many sofas to pick from though and all of them were quite bad, they did, however, have a wide selection of other interesting stuff, for later. Next we an exhibition centre near MEGA-BOX where they exhibit and sell stuff, and two floors are for furniture. Most of these are actually selling designed homes rather than separate furniture, some did though and actually the first place had these really cool luxury sofas in leather where the two side seats in a 3-seat sofa had an electronic unfolding, and these were actually price worthy; the original price ranged from 15 to 18 thousand HKD but they were mostly down to 6 to 9 thousand, e.g. within my limit. I decided against this though, it might be cool but it wouldn't really suit my home, it is something of a combination of luxury and tacky TV-comfort and it just don't go with my vision.

So after several hours of sofa searching I ended up in IKEA again and was close to buying "Kramfors" despite the negative points when another idea came up; most of IKEA's sofas are actually unit based and can be combined a little bit like you want it, this basically means that you can buy one part now and another later, and in the case of "Karlstad" it was only the 2-seat frame unit that was missing. Unfortunately the lounge part (the 'L') is an add-on and cannot be used separately, so this idea failed, but "Tylösand", which is actually slightly more comfortable than "Karlstad" suddenly became possible since I could buy a 2-seat part now and but the lounge later when I have more money.

After serious consideration I decided on "Tylösand" 2-seat unit and the footpad for it, together with a "Lack" coffee table and a knee "table" for my computer I know have what I need to survive for a while. This actually turned out cheaper than the original plan but the total cost for the sofa will be higher, e.g. today I had planned to spend about 6500HKD, or slightly more, for sofa and coffee table but finally only spent 6300HKD, I will have to buy the lounge later though for about 4000HKD more, can be much later.

A new home.

For a few nights now I have slept on the 50th (actually 44th) floor in a Tin Shui Wai Central Park Tower One. The rent started on the 1st of this month but I got 7 days for free so I got the keys on February 22nd and on the Tuesday after (which was a day off for me) Shirley (who also was not working) helped me to buy some cleaning stuff and clean the place up. Moving went really smooth, day after Janice's birthday party (last Wednesday), which really was a lot of fun by the way; I could get help from Ariel who had taken the day after the party off. A group of movers, skillfully arranged by Man, came and carried my stuff downstairs and loaded it in a truck, 45 minutes later we arrived in Tin Shui Wai and they carried my stuff up and it was done.

Since then I have visited IKEA like 5-6 times to check out furniture I want, the only thing I can actually buy is a "Karlstad" 'L'-shaped sofa which I will buy as soon as I get my salary next week. I did buy a lot of kitchen wares (IKEA has a set called "Tillaga" start set which contains most of the basics for a kitchen) and other small stuff. I have looked at stuff and drawn plans for how I want it and calculated the total price; I will probably be able to pay back Mom and my friend within a year and furnish this apartment, excluding the very important TV, stereo and game consoles that will decorate some of the furniture.

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.