Monday BLAH

Apparently Mondays in Paris are no good.
Today is full of crappiness...

Househunting

Before I even considered moving to Paris, a coworker of mine who moved from California to Paris told me about his difficulties in finding a place. My information may not be totally accurate, but it would seem that one of the reasons why it's tough to find housing is due to the following factors:

1. If a person rents a place from you, you may not raise the rent during your duration of living there - even if you have lived there for 20 years (no lease is signed).
2. Should you die while you are renting a place, it is possible for you to pass your apartment on to your family (e.g., your wife) so that they can continue to live in the place without a rent increase.
3. It is almost impossible for you to kick out a tenant without them suing you and them actually winning.

For these reasons, the renting environment is like this in Paris:

• Landlords require you provide them with a ton of information before they will rent a place to you - including things like a guarantor who is parisien and owns a house and something like your grandfrather's employment contract. (kidding with the last point, but a lot of info is needed that you wouldnt have imagined)
• A lot of times, it's difficult to find a good apartment unless you know someone who is renting a place out because landlords do not like to rent to ppl they dont know.
• If you are looking up places yourself, you must be monitoring the websites 24-7 because as soon as an ad goes up, a ton of ppl will call right away. If you wait a couple of hours, the landlord/agent will have gotten 100 phone calls already.
• If you happen to get a visitation right to the apartment, you need to get there quick. Preferably within the next few hours. An apartment generally doesnt stay on the market for a couple of days. A good apartment maybe a couple of hours to one day.
• If you do happen to get lucky and found an apartment you want and the landlord is happy with renting it to you, you will need to move in within the week.

Although there are always exceptions, those are the information i received to maintain my expectation. Thus, I was ready. I'm a tad luckier than my coworker because I have an agent paid for by my relocation that helps me look up places, but even then my first day of house-hunting did not go down smoothly. 

First off, the agent is unable to give you a full day's notice on which apartment you will be visiting. The morning of the day we agreed to look at housing, he texted me and told me to meet him at a metro station at 9am. When I got there at 9am, I saw a missed call from him. He called to inform me that the apartment he wanted to take me has been taken off the market.

I waited around the area for another 20 minutes because the agent needed to go secure my second appointment and the dude is not picking up his phone or something so he was going in person. He picked me up and we headed over. Although the other agent said he'd be there in a minute after we got there, he didnt arrive for another 20 minutes while we waited in the cold. The worst part about this was that after the other agent got there, he actually had no idea which unit it was and wandered around like an idiot for quite a bit. When we finally got in, the place was so musky and dated that I immediately know I wasn't gonna be too excited about it. 

Apartment 1:

• 500 sqft
• super dated furniture and smelled musky
• toilet room is literally a closet with a door, while the bathtub area does not have a door
• cannot have a standing shower as showerhead does not have a place to hang
• whooping 1150 euros without internet included

We got out of there pretty quickly, but it was only 11am and we were unable to get an appointment for the next house until 1:15pm so I took the metro back to the hotel and had lunch before meeting with my agent again.

Apartment 2:

• 250 sqft
• sofabed
• very modern and newly renovated living space with potlights on the closets and cabinets
• decent bathroom and kitchen
• a little secluded and quiet (not very lively at all)
• up on hills and you must climb all these weird stairs before you get to the unit
• closest metro is 10 minute walk up and down hills
• closest RER station is down the hill but rather inconvenient
• 1050 euro including everything

Although I really liked apartment 2's living area, I felt like i shouldnt just pick a place without having seen more places. I asked my agent how often he comes across a flat that's this updated and he said about 20% - which means chances are a bit low. Obviously the apartment is not gonna wait until i see more houses before it gets rented out so after some discussion, we decided that we were gonna keep looking and that we might start looking in the 17th arr rather than the 16th, which is very "bourgeois"

And that concludes day 1 of my house hunt. hopefully more to come.

Aujourd'hui

I feel depressed.
Maybe it's the misty rain.
Maybe it's the discovery my metro weekly pass ends on a sunday rather than after 7 days.
Maybe it's the sheer slowness of the trains.
Maybe it was yesterday.

Already looking for the week to be over.

Comfort Zone

On Saturday, I slept in until 3:30pm. I guess the jet lag finally kicked in - if you think about it, I actually woke up at 9:30am in toronto, which I personally think is pretty impressive for a Saturday, n'est-ce pas? I finally dragged my ass out of the house at around 5pm to get some food and go grocery shopping. Last November, when I was in Paris with Caleb and Lidia came to visit, she found this Japanese area by the 1er arr., near the Louvre and Opera. The main street that stretches across this area is called Rue Ste. Anne, and within this little area, there were a ton of Japanese restaurants, ran by actual japanese people, and my favourites are the ramen shops. We had eaten at this really authentic ramen place but while we were in search of it, we stumbled across this place called K-mart (read: Korean Mart). You have no idea how excited I was at the time - they not only had all types of Korean and Japanese groceries, but also pre-made food like banchan and onigiri to take home. I can't remember if it was the same day or a couple of days later, I dragged Caleb back and bought a couple of instant noodle, because Parisien food just hasn't been sitting well with me.

 Alas, the first thing I needed to do now that I'm actually living here is to stock up on things I actually want to eat. I had a pretty good routine back in Toronto. I knew exactly what I wanted and where to go when I needed it. But now that I'm in Paris, it's really a challenge for my comfort zone. In Toronto, I always bought these milk tea. It's the only beverage I really drink besides water when I'm at home. Here, there is less Chinese influence, but more Korean and Japanese, so with the abundant availability of Calpis, will I be changing my ways? For the moment, I just bought all these new types of Japanese and Korean instant noodles. I haven't bought anything new to try yet. But needless to say, I will be figuring out what the French eat regularly and see what I like and don't like. All the restaurants serve really weird things, even the starbucks here.

The place in which I am staying is a bit out of my comfort zone as well, and I need to veer very far from my old routines to feel completely adjusted. For example,

• I never make my bed. Both my landlord/roommate and I sleep on a pull-out couch. If I do not put away the pull-out couch after I wake up, then my room will have no room to move around. So I must make my bed daily and put the bed away.
• I never wear shoes in the house. I can't walk around barefoot here at all, so I am always wearing a pair of water-proof flipflops in the house.
• I never do my dishes right away. She does, so I have to. 
• I would never let an animal that roams outside regularly also roam freely in the bathroom. The cat here roams around outside and inside wherever she wants. The only place I can keep her out is my own room. Seeing pawprints all over the tub and the sink makes me cringe so hard.

Among other things, there are things like, i can't have a stand-up shower here, there are no clothing dryer here, the kitchen is tiny and cluttered, etc., etc., etc. But the bright side about all of this is the fact that i live in a gigantic penthouse apartment between the eiffel tower and the invalides. The penthouse, of course, is not a penthouse we see in the playboy magazine or anything but just the upper floor of an apartment building. For Paris, this nearly 1000 sqft apartment with back to back terrace is probably worth over 1M Euro, despite how dated the apartment is. A coworker of mine had mentioned that what i am paying to stay here is extremely expensive, but after she saw the place, she said it wasn't expensive at all. 

 
I will eventually go apartment hunting and see what my options are, but I wonder if I were to find my own apartment, I'd learn nothing about stepping out of my comfort zone.

First Weekend in Paris

I took the metro down to Chipotle today. I guess it's a part of my daily adventure over the weekend. The spot is actually directly accessible from where i am staying now (M8 to Richelieu-Drouot stop) and it takes about 5 to 8 minutes door-to-door, which is pretty good. I was hoping to eventually find a Starbucks after I get there, but as soon as I got out of the metro, there was an SB right in front of my face. I thought to myself how perfect all this must be. 

Nevertheless after I got my starbucks and got into the chipotle's, I was pretty disappointed. The line was slow, the quantity small, the price high, and the quality is definitely not comparable to the one even in London. I think there's a reason why they only use brown rice though - likely because it's more filling for the smaller amount. The experience is pretty droll though because as soon as you are near the joint, you are surrounded by only english-speaking people, talking about chipotle. The Americans explain to their friends the concept of chipotle and how it compares, the non-americans exclaim at the concept of burritos, the assembly, discussions on what kind of things are available. The idea of having a full conversation on chipotle is so weird. Maybe that's what it's like when the french listen to us talk about the louvre and the eiffel tower? I don't know. I guess what i find funny is the fact that every single person in there is talking about chipotle while eating in there. 

 After i sat down upstairs with my tiny bowl (i need to mention that the steak here is not well-done but really pink) and i listened to the two ppl sitting next to me talk about chipotle. the girl is american and the guy is british. The american girl seemed to have been in paris for a while now and has been waiting for this chipotle since its announcement in 2010. the british guy has never had it before and every time he took a bite he would exclaim that the burrito is very "nice." i find hilarity in having hear a burrito being described as nice. After i finished eating, i wandered around in the direction of home. 

The more I walk around paris, the more i am impressed by it. Although i have been here several times prior to moving here, I never took time to notice how beautiful it actually is. In spite of all the times that i've been told paris is beautiful, i've never truly appreciated the city until today. 

 

    

It took me about an hour to get home and the walk was quite enjoyable, even though everything besides restaurants are closed. When I was near the intersection of the place im staying, two guys and a girl about my age asked me if i spoke french and i said "un peu" and one guy asked me if i knew whether there is a grocery store, supermarket, convenience store that is opened where they can get some drinks that's not are restaurant. Although I just walked around for an hour in the city, i couldnt think of a single place that's opened. I told them all the stores are closed today and the only thing i can think of is starbucks down the street. they looked disappointed and thanked me. i felt really bad for them. This must have been the third or fourth time i've been asked directions while walking around in paris. I think it has to do with being alone. If you are walking around the city alone without a map in your hands, then you must be from around here. Hopefully the next time someone asks me about directions i'll have better things to tell them.