Fuddland

1. Find two lovely friends who want to share a flat with you for the next six months.

2. Contact a few estate agents and give them your specific requirements — in this case: three bedrooms [due to there being three people], two bathrooms [due to two of the three being of the female variety], convenient location, and under a certain monthly rental price.

3. Start viewing the possibilities offered by the agents, which will include:

   • places with only two bedrooms and a sofa-bed in the living-room
   • places with only one bathroom
   • places with asking prices above the limit you’ve specified

4. Emphasise to the agents that the requirements you gave were actually requirements, as in: we require three whole bedrooms, two whole bathrooms, and we can’t pay more than the figure we gave you.

5. View places that satisfy all of the requirements except for the price. Discover that, like everything in China, the price can be negotiated once an interest in a particular place is expressed.

6. Express an interest in a particular place.

7. At this point one of the lovely friends who wants to share a flat with you will sadly have to pull out for various reasons, leaving the remaining lovely friend and yourself with a budget two-thirds of the original, and unable to afford the very nice place in which you’d just expressed an interest.

8. Explain your new requirements to the agents: all numbers are now two-thirds of the previous requirements, to the nearest whole number.

9. Wait a week or so, then get quite nervous because the moving date is rapidly approaching and if you’re going to have to go through the rigmarole of negotiating prices, then things need to get sorted out pretty darn quickly.

10. Receive a message from your most promising agent asking if you’re still interested in the three-bedroom, two-bathroom, too-expensive place you were interested in before.

11. Explain, again, slowly, your new requirements to the agent.

12. Wait a few more days.

13. Lose all hope when the agent tells you that, for all the suitable flats she’s found, none of the landlords is willing to let them for just six months — they all want a contract of at least a year.

14. Go out for a drink.

15. Casually mention to the owner of the bar that you frequent that you’re looking for a flat. He’ll tell you that he’s moving house this week and you’re welcome to take his old place, which just happens to tick all of the boxes in your list of requirements.

Hurrah!

#1

susannah | 2007 / 07 / 12 – 20:44

I’m glad you aren’t homeless :)

#2

Thanatos | 2007 / 07 / 18 – 01:34

That’s one of the most magnificent, wondrous and wholly Chinese stories I’ve ever read.

You’ve surpassed yourself!

#3

David | 2007 / 07 / 18 – 16:32

Re #1: Me too! :)

Re #2: All credit must surely go to the estate agents involved? ;)

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