Status: 2 individuals exhausted after another, this time half of it, sleepless night
Time: 7 AM, 9 August 2019
Main goal: Coffee – this time in the room, because I bought the instant one
Other goals: … well, we do need to find this flat. A meeting with an agent would be nice.
The coffee was awful!

  e went to McDonald’s for another one – we really hoped that in such a familiar place we would get a decent one. Nothing further from the truth! First – it was a white coffee… second – it tasted like a mixture of tea and coffee. O Gosh! We are in hell!!!

My morning went on, I was watching adds and preparing for our meeting in the afternoon. Some areas that were chosen had to be thrown away – the neighborhood was terrible. We had to find more options.

And in the afternoon – easy. All I needed to do was to get to Tsing Yi Island, look around and meet Damian and the agent. And this was the place, yes!!! A wonderful boulevard, where I was dying from heat and breathlessness. But I was delighted as well, imagining wanking here in the evenings. The flat was 2000 HK$ more expensive than everywhere else, but so what. Whit this space and air around us it was worth it. I had some time, so I browse the adds again, found a swimming pool and went to a shopping center – Maritime Square 1 and…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

I found Starbucks! I don’t like it – but coffee there was the first good thing I had in days. Was… my tummy hurt… but it was so good… worth it! And where one Starbucks is, uncle google will find another one…

But later. Damian appeared, and then it was agent X’s turn. Why not, let’s call him like that.

X had some flats for us to see. All of them on Tsing Yi island. We decided to start here back in Poland. We thought it would be easier to find some green color here. After yesterday, we were really happy with ourselves and our, alleged, brightness. Getting to work was a factor too, but each day was telling us that there will be no problem with that in HK.

It was 6 flats? Or 7? My memories fade, photos are identical and only an impression lasts.

I am sure that we visited three housings – I started to call that the groups of identical skyscrapers, growing everywhere like bunches of flowers. Each one – 30 stories high, and each group had at least 4 towers. One of them was guarded, we had to talk to the guard and show him our pass, just the enter the area.

Another one – was accessible through the shopping center and the metro station! This is when we learned that this is the Cantonese dream. The price of a flat rises with the proximity of the MTR (metro station). And if it is possible to get there without showing a finger outside, in the fresh air… it rises even more. This information anchored in our minds together with a small story, where a grown man takes his mother for the job interview. He declined the offer because the time to get to the job was 30 minutes! Improbable! – but hey, it was August and the heat was pouring out of the sky. The rain, or rather buckets pouring down on us, came later. All things considered – for us it was an abstract idea. We explained it to our agent X. His face spoke volumes – priceless! We couldn’t understand HK – he couldn’t understand how you can drive/walk to work for an hour. 

We were watching flats one after the other. It went quite fast, we were interested in the layout and getting as many examples as possible before we decide.

Our conclusion was as follows and quite surprising for us:

• The photos are awful there and tell nothing. And it goes both ways. Flat that looks wrong has a good layout. A big and beautiful flat in the photos can be unacceptable.
• The photos tell you nothing about what is inside, the state of the furniture and all the machines, scraped walls or the smell and the temperature inside. A great place, sunny – ideal!… can be hell after 5 minutes spent in the sunny room. AC or not – it will become an oven. And HK is not Gdynia, where the summer ends fast and the cool of the evening brings some freshness. Plus, the possible AC expenses…
• The layout can be gold. From the country of straight corners, we came to the world that had something called “the diamond” layout. No – not posh but shaped as the famous stone. And where in a triangle living room will you put the sofa?
• Empty or not – that is a question. In Europe we thought – doesn’t matter, the kitchen and bathroom are the most important. Nevertheless, after a few flats, we found the elevated floors and handy closets quite impressive and very practical. Flats were small and all these storage places had a potential. We had two possible winners: a flat with a small closet and an elevated bed vs. a flat with an elevated bedroom and a closet room but with no logic in the layout. Hmmm…
• Big or small? That was vital because big was too big and small – too small. Especially for 2 people. We couldn’t find the balance between space/layout and the price. We didn’t need those acres for 19000 HK$ per month. What would we do there? Ant this tiny, cozy thing… how on earth it costs 17000 HK$ pew month? And it went like that…
• The price… Well, this first day we were shocked. Too much information I suppose. But with each flat, it changed. New country, new rules.

When we came back to the hotel we were too exhausted to go through anything. We only managed to find some food and drink…

to be continued…