Three Outlets, One Phone Jack, Six Recessed Lights, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Before we move in to our new place, we had to do an inventory of the flat and mark down the state of things before we move in so we could get our deposit back when we move out. It's a pretty simple process back in the US. You usually just fill out a worksheet they hand you and turn it in within a week of moving in, and that's all she wrote.

It's a much more serious business here. For example, the landlord hired an independent inventory person to go over each and every element of the flat.  I met him at the property, and I just wandered around the flat familiarizing myself with the place again (it's almost been a month since I was last there) while he went around speaking into his handheld recorder. He was very thorough; I actually heard him counting the light bulbs in the master bedroom and describing the state of the outlets at one point.

He pointed out that the instruction manuals for all of the appliances were missing, but he assured me that I could probably figure things out if the remodeling crew couldn't provide them. I told him um, yeah, no. Then we got into a surreal conversation about the differences in dishwashers in the US versus the ones in the UK. He seemed fascinated - or maybe he was just being polite and was a great actor. I'm going with the latter option. But in the end, he agreed with me that I probably couldn't figure things out on my own. Luckily, the remodeling crew told me I'd receive them upon move-in.

The whole thing didn't take too long and lasted about an hour and half considering that our flat is new built and unfurnished, and there shouldn't be any issues since everything is brand spanking new. I spotted a couple of things and took pictures just in case he overlooked anything, but we have five days after we receive his report to update it with anything that we should happen to notice once we're moved in. It all sounds pretty fair.

The only thing that kind of sucks is that we have to do an inventory when we move out, and we're responsible for the fee, which costs anywhere from 100-200 GBP. Yikes. Considering the horror stories I've heard about evil landlords and deposit disputes that go on for years (Dickens would be feeling pretty smug right about now - don't know what I'm talking about? Read Bleak House. Great book, but you can tell he hates lawyers), all's well that ends well. Let's hope this ends well.

I'm so excited about moving in, but not so excited about the fact that it's going to take 3 weeks for the internet guy to come and install our broadband. What did we do before Al Gore invented the internet?! Anyway, I'll be decamping to various cafes and libraries in search of free wifi. I've already scoped out a pretty sweet library by the new pad, but I haven't had to lug my laptop around since law school. It seems heavier now for some reason. Or maybe I'm just older and weaker. Maybe.

It's Too Early for Philosophical Questions

I may have mentioned a time or ten that we're moving into our new flat next week so I'm gearing up for the big move and trying to get everything all set up and running before our move. Only thing is, our flat does not exist. Well, physically, it does - it's got the walls, the floors, the roof and everything that you would normally think constitute a pretty nice crash pad. And I don't think we're paying the exorbitant rent to live in a place that doesn't exist but in our wildest dreams.

The Royal Mail and utilities providers beg to differ. I don't get it; haven't they read Descartes?

I don't know much about our flat except that the whole building was pretty much redone. I don't know what it was before, and I never thought to ask, but in order to get water to our flat, we need to answer the following questions:

"If the property has recently been converted, please could you confirm the following details:

• The exact date the property was converted from
• Confirm the number of properties which now exist
• The mailing address and floor number of each property
• The names of each occupier and the date they moved in
• Number of bedrooms in each property
• The number of occupiers in each property
• If any water meters were fitted, their location, serial number and who installed them

If you are also able to provide us with the landlord/owner details, we would be grateful.

I look forward to hearing from you."

Dude, I don't know. If I tried to find out, I'm sure someone would call the cops on me for exhibiting stalkerish behavior.

Basically, no one recognizes our flat as an actual address so I'm kind of stuck as to how to proceed. It's funny, I never thought this would be a problem. When we were preparing to move, I read all about how difficult it is to find a flat since there is no centralized renting agency. We found a flat in two days flat, but I never came across an article entitled, "What to do when your flat doesn't exist, but it does."

My head hurts.

There's No Place Like Home...

Or should I say, I have no place to call home? Corporate housing is just that - an impersonal space that offers all the necessities of everyday living without any of those "offensive" personal touches. I'm not complaining, this place is like a freaking palace compared to some of the places we saw yesterday that were charging obscene amounts of money that almost made me cry.

For anyone thinking LA real estate is bad, London is oh so much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, you can have the grand privilege of paying over $5k US per month for 900 square feet of outdated living. Honest to goodness, I saw a wooden tub. Honestly, who lives here? The queen?! Well, yes, yes she does, along with a bunch of other aristocrats that own a lot of the property around the nice part of London. Thank you very much, Duke of Buckingham!

So J and I set out on our second day of house-hunting today. We crawled all around Marylebone yesterday and viewed a couple of properties and came home disappointed and exhausted. After a 4 hour power nap (hey, we're still trying to recover from jet lag), we resumed the search online and came up with a few properties we wanted to look at in Kensington.

I did a ton of research before we got here, and that's how we narrowed our search down to Kensington and Marylebone, but I figured you could only know for sure after actually visiting the neighborhoods in person. Google Earth can only do so much.

After having explored Marylebone for a day, we were ready to move onto Kensington today. Just in case, we paid another visit to the estate agent in Marylebone and he showed us two(!) amazing spaces that were just too good to be true. I can't describe it here since I don't want to jinx it - but I've got my fingers breath and J is waiting with breath that is bated.

Marylebone Village, Photo by: Stephen McKay

 Anyway, we then moved on to Kensington, and the feeling was all just wrong. We walked into a couple of estate agents and made appointments to view properties later in the afternoon, but after walking about a bit, it just couldn't compare to Marylebone. We ended up sitting on a park bench in Kensington Gardens (Kensington Palace was behind us, and a Spanish band was singing - you can't make these things up), and canceling our viewing appointments.

Kensington High Street, Photo by Thomas Blomberg

So all of our eggs are in one basket, and we're waiting to hear back on our offer.

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Some English things I did today:

1. Ordered a cheeseburger without cheese at Mark & Spencer's food hall in Kensington - I was told that I couldn't order a hamburger, which wasn't on the menu, but had to order a cheeseburger without cheese. Um, okay.
2. Went grocery shopping at Waitrose, bought their reusable grocery bags, and bagged my own groceries

London Day 1

We landed! After the longest flight I've been on in a while (11 hours) on the crappiest airline ever (United, I'm talking to you), and a 45 minute ride in our first London taxi, we arrived at our temporary corporate housing.

But before I go on, let me enumerate the many many compelling reasons why one should never ever fly United:

1. They only feed you two meals on an 11 hour flight, and no option to buy additional food.

2. The said meals include a sandwich with cream cheese, a slice of American cheese and a lonely sad piece of turkey on an extremely dry loaf that's incongruously slightly damp on the outside, and a chicken dinner with chunks of chicken (I hope!) floating in an unidentifiable gelatinous brown sauce with orangey rice dotted with sickly green peas.

3. They destroy your luggage and the things within after rummaging through them all - I don't know what my eyebrow pencil did to piss them off, but it was snapped in half! And my canvas bag had 3 large holes ripped into it. United, please teach your security staff what a bomb looks like, and that a Shu Uemura pencil is not it.

4. We almost didn't even get onto our flight since they had a grand total of 3 agents serving 28 kiosks. Needless to say, there was lots of screaming (not on our part) by a lot of angry would-be fliers, and the only reason we got on the plane on time is because a nice agent agreed to help me after I begged him for 5 minutes. This was after we were patiently waiting at our kiosk for 30 minutes for someone to help us.

YOU SUCK HOT BALLS UNITED.

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But onto happier and funner things, our corporate apartment! It's a newly reburbished building in South Bank, and we got a two bedroom/ two bath.


Some things that I expected:

Smallest laundry machine ever that takes 3 hours to wash 4 shirts tops

Switches to turn on every single power outlet

No screens on the windows - I've already battled two large horseflies

Toilets w/ two different flushers - a small one for pee, and a larger one for poo


Things that were unexpected:

We live right by Tower Bridge! We caught a glimpse of it after grocery shopping at Mark & Spencers, and we somehow wandered into Potters Field, which is a nice smallish park right by the Tower Bridge entrance. It felt surreal walking toward the Bridge, like we were walking into a movie set. There were a surprising number of tourists about, considering it was Sunday night, and we heard an unbelievable amount of different languages being spoken around us.

How often the waitstaff say thank you while serving you dinner. They even say thank you while filling your water. Like we're doing them a favor by letting them pour our water. =)

How long it takes for it to get dark. I don't think it was proper night until 9PM.

It hasn't rained yet...