Prologue: The moving

Alhamdullillah, we have settle down in our new place. Phewww... what a day we had, opppsss 3 days actually, moving, unpacking, cleaning, rearranging, shopping, discarding, yadayadayada .

Am still feeling tired and sleepy while typing this... got to have some coffee..... planning to spend the day writing some stories for next week....bilo la nak abis tulis report nie oiii!!.... well can't do that right, my brain refuse to work today ahaks.... Anyway, will be in the office even on Xmas day (dah bukan hari kita kan, buat ape nak cuti) only.... but not on boxing day, yeah!!

I need some caffein right now (mana kupi aik cheong ku?!!)......

BRB

(update @ 11.28am : alamak baru perasan, tinggal sorang2 kat ofis, pagi tadi ada sorang minah, la nie dah ilang.... ofis nie aku yang punya...yah yah!!)

We are moving...

...to a new apartment this weekend. Yup, we have found a new place, 2 bedroom apartment or known as a unit, a bit smaller than the current one, but a lot cheaper. We could save about AD100 p/w with the new apartment.

So we are now busy packing. We have packed almost 60% of our stuff, sold and gave away some of the unnecessary furniture.

This is Yaya's room, there used to be a queen size bed in this room. We bought it last year for mak and abah when they came to take care of us during my confinement.

We have already made arrangement with the movers. Oh am a bit emotional of leaving this apartment, our first home in Brisbane.

Will be very busy this weekend and probably a few days after that. May have problem with the internet connection due to the moving. Regardless, I have created some entries for next week. Have a great weekend kengkawan. Jaga diri, jaga kesihatan.

House hunting

For the past couple of weeks, me and atang have been looking for a new place to call a home. Our contract with the current unit is going to end in January. We are not going to renew the contract because of the rental. We now pay $350 per week. Yes my friend, you are reading it correctly, $350 per WEEK. With that amount of money, you can pay mortgage for a semi-D house in Malaysia. But it is nothing ordinary with the rental price here in Brisbane. Especially if you want to find a house that is closer to university. Not that it matters to me, because my university is right in the city. So technically I can live where ever I like. However, when we moved in at our current home, we want to be near with other Malaysian, plus there is also a musollah (surau) nearby. Furthermore, at that time our option were limited, in fact we didn't have opportunity to enee-minee-mainee-moe, because it was difficult to find a rental unit in vicinity. I have wrote about our difficulty in house hunting in this entry.

Our rent started at $300 per week. At that time, we didn't bother much about the price. The unit is big, with 2 large rooms, a laundry room inside the unit, separate bath and toilet, 2 balcony, a garage that can fit 2 cars and a spare room for storage. In addition to that, it is just a short walk to a bus stop or I can also walk to citycat jetty. We have renewed the contract 2 times, and have been living for 19 months now.

Property in Brisbane is getting expensive. The mortgage price hike is unbearable. And that was why our rent increased from $300 to $320 (1st renewal) and $350 (2nd renewal). So atang and me decided to look for a new, smaller and cheaper place because we knew the rent will increase to maybe $380 when we renew the contract.

So looking for a new place is currently our agenda. Here are the steps that we go through for house hunting:

1. Search for available rental unit via websites (there are a number of websites that provide this service).

2. Before that you must know suburb you have interest in, and your max rental price. You must also take into consider number of rooms, say if you have 2 kids, you can't rent a 1 room unit. They have some rule that you have to abide.

3. Once you have find a property of interest, write down the particular or print out the brochure.

4. Call the agent to arrange a visit to the property. You MUST visit or inspect the property before applying. Sometimes the agent has indicated a date for inspection in the brochure.

5. Visit the property as scheduled.

6. If you are interested with the property, fill in the application form. And you also need to supply some documents to support you application. Documents include photo ID/passport, bank statement, utility bill, your rent ledger, pay slips/fund script etc. You have to meet a specific points (determine by agent, and it is varies across agents) in order to be eligible to rent the property.

7. Submit your application and wait for their call.

8. Repeat this action, until you have succesfully obtain a rental unit.

How tiring right? So far we have call out to ask about 8 units, and visited 5 units (the other 3 have been taken up). And we have only submitted 1 application (1 application for 1 unit). Why only 1 application?.... You have to wait for another entry, my friend.

Ebel car rental (March 12) and about house hunting

Today we went to Ebel to rent a car, hyundai getz, for a week. The main reason that we rented it is to get around searching for a house. We have submitted several applications and made several appointments for house viewing. We just hope we could settle down this week. We bought the Brisbane UBD, you need to have it to get around the city. It is easy to understand the directory, I just need 10 minutes to get used of using it.

Oooo several things to point out relating to the house hunting. Now is the peak time, so competition is very high. There are some requirements, based on our experience, that we should aware and expected. 1. You have to go through agenst to find a house. 2. Some descrimination you will be expecting such as, you are Asian, you have a family, you have a children. That were some of the things that we think influence the success of an application, in this case our application. So we have noted down something or tips whilst searching for a house, 1. Dont bring your children along (which it is not possible), 2. Act like you know your way around here. 3. Act like you really like the rented unit, no matter what it rental cost.

And, we were advise that we should expect the rental cost will be higher this year. Initially we were looking for rental unit that will cost less than $250 per week. As it is getting harder to get that kinda price, for 2 bedrooms unit, we decided to increase our budget to max $300 per week, and that is final. With that kinda range, there were a lot of options available, but again we need to remember about that 2 things that I have mentioned above. Yup there are still some discrimination thing around here. I have in mind a few rental agents who are unmistakeable on this. But I wont mention it here. I will take it as an experience that I will never forget.

But the most important is you have to have faith, Allah knows everything you dont know. And Allah surely will give the best for you. And that kept us going.