7 Down, Lots More to Go

Finally got out of here on Saturday evening just after 11pm. It wasn't particularly stressful, just tedious, with much baby-sitting as I made the newbs do the real work. Varen spent the evening watching a dance-off ... unfortunately for him his little sis only came on at around 10pm. Rather later in the evening than he was hoping for based on what he was subjected to, I gather.

And then it was Sunday. We had a relaxing morning around the house (his house ... well, hopefully only for the next 3 weeks!) until about 11:30 when we headed off to start the house-hunt. I must say, this conflict in show-house times is most frustrating and means it is awfully tricky to actually plan a decent route with no back-tracking. I'll say that we certainly didn't get it right yesterday afternoon, with some show houses starting at 12:00, others at 12:30, still others only at 2pm and a handful that were "on show" as per the paper, but didn't even have anyone home, we did plenty of back-tracking across Gauteng. Well, to be fair, my criteria limits me to within the highway boundary - I am a girl from Cape Town, I cannot commit to being stuck in the 4ways traffic each and every day of my life from henceforth on.

So, the house-hunting tally: 17 property blurbs cut out of the paper, 7 show-houses visited, 8 crossed off the list (based on a few drive-bys and eventually ruling out all of Windsor completely! I'm going to be a girl living on my own, before traffic chaos comes area safety), 1 agent no-show, 5 view by appointments and today I have 12 viewing appointments to make (that's an extra 5 off private property).

On the plus side, it wasn't total chaos. I saw a very funky place in Melville / Richmond that looks like a very cool new building (although the lifts look a bit dodgy, but I assume they're busy with final maintenance), we'll call it Unit One (Melville). And a nice new place in Rivonia, we'll call it Unit Two (Rivonia).

Unit One (Melville)
Pros:
1)I doubt traffic is much of an issue to either work-site.
2) It's a very funky new building.

Cons:
1) The safety issue may be questionable.
2) The unit I can afford is quite tiny ... and I know I said I had very minimal requirements, but still.
3) The bathroom of this unit is en-suite (although the bigger, more expensive unit has a separate bathroom)
4) Looks like all the parking is outside, without cover ... and quite a way from the complex. Imagine this in the rain ....

Neither here nor there:
1) The units only have showers.

I'll be doing a call-back for this one since they also apparently have a loft unit for sale that I didn't get to see, although I should probably check the price first.

Unit Two (Rivonia)
Pros:
1) New complex with lovely finishes in the Kitchen & Bathroom.
2) Separate bathroom.
3) Good area safety-wise (although there were all those hi-jackings on Rivonia offramp?)

Cons:
1) The traffic from Rivonia is likely to be a nightmare, I'll be further than ever from both work-sites.
2) The visitor parking is all miles away from the actual units.
3) There will be quite a lengthy un-covered walk from the unit parking to the unit entrance. Imagine this in the rain ...

Neither here nor there:
1) The units only have showers.

I'll be doing a call-back for this one too, since the unit on show was actually a bachelor version (bedroom & lounge in one ... so not what I'm looking for!). But we did get to wander a proper one-bedroom unit of some friendly neighbour. Plus there are two more units in this complex in my private property list. A little worrying that so many are for sale, but I guess it is a fairly new complex and these are all people who bought off plan as an investment ... I hope.

Anyway, after all that driving around and pretending to care what the house-sitters had to say, Varen & I headed off for a much needed late lunch. We ended up more than frustrated as place (Luca's) after place (Sale Pepe & Europa in South Road) were closed. We ended up having a lovely lunch at Simply Asia tho.

I think we were both impressed with our food (and the fact that they were open!). We shared 6 cute little veggie spring rolls (Po-Pia Je) and some chicken satay (Satay gai) to start. He then had Preow-Wan Gai (Sweet & Sour chicken) and I had Sen-Yai Goong Pla-Muk Prik-Phao (Prawn, Calamari & Cashew nuts with noodles in roasted chili paste). On the plus side, Varen preferred his and I preferred mine.

Mine was really different (I thought, and certainly from the sort of thing I usually have at Cranks) and I especially loved the calamari.

We ended the evening with a little House Season 4. At the moment we're watching lot's of different shows because they're all being downloaded as fast as they're aired in America. I don't really like watching this way ... because it really limits the number of episodes you can do in one sitting (we're up to episode 6 of How I Met Your Mother S3 and episode 4 of House S4). But I guess it'll be okay because we have so many different series to keep up with, by the time we've watched the first few episodes of everything, there should be another round of episodes available - well this is what I'm hoping.