Home and car

It's been a whirlwind week for me here in Perth.

My last day of work at my old company was last Friday. I bought some pastries and cakes for my colleagues to enjoy during tea break. They were of course very happy to have free food and they all wished me well in my future endeavours.

Hubby had already arrived a couple of days ago. We rented a car for a week to run around to do house-hunting and car-hunting.

I don't really like car-hunting... very sakit hati to pay a hefty sum for a depreciating piece of metal... we are planning to get a used Mitsubishi Mirage to start with... can upgrade to a better car in the future...

We went around looking at different Mitsubishi Mirages all over Perth. Spoke to different people... test drove them all... but somehow or rather there was always something not right. Either the price was too high, or the condition of the car was not quite up to standard. Felt so sian going around asking the same questions, and playing the same bargaining game, and opening the car hood to peer at the engine (I do't even know what I'm supposed to be looking at!)

But like most things, when it happens, it just happens. So this morning, a new car for sale ad urned up. It was Mitsubishi Mirage 2001, low mileage, relatively good price. So we gave them a call and popped down to have a look. We negotiated a final price, paid a deposit and sealed the deal there and then. Tomorrow we will bring the car for a final check with a local mechanic to make sure everything is ok before we pay the balance and take the car.

As for house-hunting. We were thinking of settling down in a small 3-bedroom villa in St James (quite near Curtin Uni). The owner is a friend of MH's from UWA uni days... so she was offering a very good rent price for us... and the house seems quite nice and is even equipped with a basic security alarm system...

HOWEVER, almost every person we spoke to in our circle of friends had nothing good to say about St James... plenty of stories about break-ins and robberies... I was starting to feel quite downhearted and discouraged because I didn't want to start all over again with the house-hunting process...

But then we decided to try and be as objective as possible about the situation. We drove around the area at night to see what it was like. We went around and spoke to a couple of the neighbours to ask them what living in the area was like. They were all nice people... not weird at all... one was a young Indonesian family with small children, the other one was an elderly woman living alone. The elderly woman was quite insistent that there were no issues with safety otherwise she wouldn't be out there living by herself.

So I think St James seems like a good bet. We might consider getting some coverage for home contents insurance just in case.

So that's that.

P.S. I start work on Monday, October 9th.