Day 5 -- House Hunting

Day 5 -- House Hunting

I'm going to start Wednesday's update with a confession. I'm weak, and I caved. We had lunch at Pizza Hut today. And it was good.

OK, on to the update.

We got up Wednesday morning and took a stroll down to Starbucks. It seems like we're going to Starbucks a lot, but we're actually doing it to save the company some money. The hotel only gave us one breakfast with our room, and so every time I eat there it's an extra $24 on our bill, for a breakfast I don't even like all that much. If we walk down to Starbucks we get fresh air, exercise, time to visit, and our breakfast comes out to about $10. That, and the Toffee Nut Latte is pretty good.

It was cold. Much colder than it has been so far, and no match for my Old Navy fleece. We found out later in the day that it's going to get much worse. Brrr!

After breakfast, we met up with our agent, Jack, to tour some compounds and apartments. If I haven't explained it before, the expat apartments here are all arranged in huge compounds. Each compound is gated with guards, set up with amenity centers and clubhouses, and contains several (or more) buildings with thousands of apartments -- most are high-rise, up to 30 floors high.

We were primarily looking near Century Park, in the Lianyang community, but also planned to tour a few places in Luijazui (financial area) and Jin Qiao (where we are now). Jack's plan was to give us an overview of the compounds so that we could select the one we liked best, and then he would narrow it down from there.

You don't rent an apartment from a complex, but from an individual landlord. They are mostly furnished and everything is negotiable. There is no central database of available properties, and a landlord can list his property with multiple agents. The agent gets a 33% commission, and there are all kinds of other fees and things involved with the lease.

Our agent was basically the English-speaking front man. He talked with us, and his two partners did all the work with the various building managers and landlords. They were always on their cell phone setting up the next visit, and I couldn't keep from laughing because one of their ringtones was set to "SexyBack."

First place reminded us of a bad Embassy Suites. And it was too expensive. But it had really funny signs -- men working on an ATM in the lobby had placed a sign over the screen reading "Debugging." And they were really excited to show me the yoga studio -- kept asking me, "You do yoga?" as if that's just what the expat wives do.

From there we looked at a few apartments in a compound called Yanlord Town, and we really liked them. Then we saw a couple of questionable ones -- an elevator with plywood walls, a door that wouldn't unlock -- and a couple of really nice ones that were in the wrong part of town.

All of the apartments are modern in their fixtures and their basic design. The kitchens are really interesting -- they are separated from the house by a door and have porcelain-tiled walls and marble floors, compared to the walls and wood floors in the rest of the apartment. We were told that it's because of the cooking oils used here. Very few have ovens or dishwashers, and where you would expect the oven to be, they have an oven-looking device that santizes the dishes. The other interesting thing is the "service balcony", also called the "ayi room". This is a small outdoor patio that holds the water heater, a small sink and sometimes toilet, and the washing machine (dryers are rare.)

The front runner right now is Yanlord Town -- we will see more apartments there tomorrow and Friday and attempt to negotiate a lease by the time we leave on Monday.

We looked at a lot of apartments, and they started to run together. We were tired, we were hungry, we were cranky (maybe that was just me) and we were on our own -- and we knew where the Pizza Hut was. The Pizza Hut here is considered a "first date" restaurant, not exactly like the buffet places here.

After our lunch, we walked around Thumb Plaza for a while and then met up with Tony for our "property search debriefing session at the massage place". After that, we met up with Herbert, our guide for the evening.

Herbert wanted to take us back to Puxi, but instead of a quiet restaurant like where we went with Josieanne, we were going somewhere cool. Something I wish I had known when I was getting dressed for the day.

We took a taxi out to Puxi, to a very upscale area called Jing'an Temple. High-end shopping, pretty people, and more Caucasian expats than we've seen the whole trip. We followed Herbert like little ducks as he walked quickly through the crowds, around a corner and into an alley. All of a sudden a wall moved -- a huge concrete automatic door. We were at this hidden Chinese-Japanese fusion restaurant. Everything was glass and concrete, with an open kitchen and a food elevator to bring things up to the second floor. I felt very conspicuous in my Merrells and my purple fleece, but if the power executives sipping hot sake noticed or cared, they didn't show it. Again, mostly expats. We had the house appetizers (basically cubes of fish jello with shaved ginger), hot sake (they brought us a tray of assorted traditional sake cups for us to choose our own), beer served in glass bud vases that rested in frosted glass cubes. I had the world's smallest sushi plate, Tommy had scallops served in sea shells, Herbert had swordfish, and Tony had tempura.

After dinner, we went to People's 6, a secret bar. As in, you have to call before you come to get the password, and then give the password when you come in. More pretty people, and good drinks. A very confusing bathroom, where everything is opposite -- a hallway with some identical doors. Some open, some don't. The doors that open have a doorknob on the left side, but you open them by pushing on the right side. And some unlucky people end up in the bathrooms that don't have any lights -- as Herbert says, you just do what you do and trust that everything is where it's supposed to be. (I found a bathroom with a light.)

Then we headed out to the Bund, the historic street that faces the river with all of the old government buildings. This bar wasn't secret, and was a little less fancy, but the view was amazing. It was a clear night, and all of Pudong was lit up with lights and neon. We had another beer, called it a night, and headed back to Pudong.

That's it for Wednesday. Time is starting to go by fast, and we really miss our kids.