New Apartment

I've just "shifted" (as they say here) into a new apartment.

I'd written another post about the trouble I had with my other landlord over it, but didn't have a chance to post it. As is I'll just summarize that (especially as it's now been resolved). Anyway, back to the place itself.

It's in Nakawa, which is where I walk about half an hour now to get a taxi to work, so it'll cut my commute in half or more. And that I still have the steep walk up the hill at the end means I'll still get some exercise, if perhaps not enough. But now I'm close enough that I could walk the whole way, or some of it and get a taxi part way, for the exercise, too, in less time.

It's also rather nice and quite spacious. It's a bit more space than I really know what to do with -- my room in it's quite big. It also has a living room and more of a real kitchen than my tiny place before had.

Now, my old place was quite nice -- it was cozy and relatively nicely furnished (so is this) and in a nice compound with a courtyard and lawn and such. But it was quite far from my work (and most other things). This is at the top of a large building with a variety of businesses (including a good grocery store) below.

So living here for my last few weeks will definitely save me time, likely encourage me to eat better, and is a nice change. Also, the old place was in a relatively deserted (in terms of the streets) and visibly rich area, which made me a little wary at times (especially when the power was out -- the roads could be quite dark). Speaking of the power, it also failed more there than I get the sense is quite standard.

All in all, this is a nice change. The white noise of the road is nice for a change. Also, I gather that (likely because of being on the 5th floor) mosquitos don't really make it up here. Even with a net and burning a mosquito coil on my porch my place got kind of a lot of mosquitos. And mentioning my porch reminds me, this place has a big balcony off of the living room as well as a smaller one for each bedroom. They've got very good views. I'll post pictures of the place and the views shortly.

Another thing that I like better about this is that it's with someone else, which I actually miss. Now, granted she's German and works all the time, so I probably won't see all that much of her, but she's nice and I know her and she seems like a good roommate, and just living around people is nice. Living alone's nice when you're near people (like last summer at my, Carter, and Jon's apartment, right near TH, or even in summer TH [Tellefsen Hall, the Cal Band house]), but when you're far away from people you know it's not as good; getting home from work knowing it was my last human contact wasn't always pleasant. So this will be a nice change.

And then, finally, is Rolex. Rolex is the cat who lives at the apartment. It's been almost exactly four years since I've lived with a cat (since I left for school) and even then, in the lengthy reconstruction following a fire in our house, the cats had been at the house while we'd been living in an apartment. So I haven't lived properly with cats for a long time (except visits home). I'm pretty excited (although granted it is also only like three and a half weeks).

Briefly, regarding my old landlord, he demanded I pay more for moving out with short notice. Now it was short notice -- about a week. BUT, based on what all of my Ugandan friends have said, that's completely normal here. If you pay for two months (which I did), you're free to leave at the end of it (without saying anything at all ahead of time). So, while I felt a bit badly about it, I also feel like he was taking advantage of my not knowing that's standard practice here. And there was, of course, never any lease or any sort of written or verbal agreement about that (or anything else, for that matter).

In any event, I was able to talk him down to 50,000/= from the original and totally unreasonable 100,000/= he asked for, and felt it was a partial victory. As it is I'm still saving money by moving. This morning his wife tried to ask for more money for cleaning it, too -- for one, the amount they charge for cleaning is unreasonably high, and second, I had already paid them more than the cost of cleaning extra for nothing. And she made the mistake of letting slip they'd already found somebody for it, which was how her husband justified charging me, for the delay before they found somebody. I told her the extra money I'd already paid that I didn't owe more than covered the cleaning costs, and she actually accepted that (rather unexpectedly).

Anyway, it was frustrating, and not particularly reasonable, but worked out OK -- it neither required a particularly serious or difficult confrontation nor ultimately really cost me anything I wouldn't have paid otherwise.

And now I'm quite happily composing this from my new and very comfortable living room, and I think I might head downstairs for some fresh vegetables in a few minutes.