Bad things come in 4s

Nope, nothing wrong here, although I am finding apartment-hunting to be daunting. It seems there’s not a lot here that is as it seems.

Take my 55^th floor view, for example. I thought the elevator moved through those last 20 floors rather quickly, and when I took a closer look at the panel, I noticed it skipped from 40-49. So I’m not as high up as I thought I was.

Yesterday, I learned why. Since I’ve yet to pick up any of the local languages (I’ve asked the word for “thank you” about three times, but it has something like four syllables and I just can’t get it straight), I didn’t know that the word “four” in Chinese sounds about the same as the word “death.”

As a result, there are no floors in any buildings with the number four in them. Sometimes they get around it, like making a 3A, but at least in my temporary apartment, there just aren’t any with the number in them. So it speeds things up a bit.

The actual apartment hunting is going slow. I made a ton of progress yesterday and think I narrowed it down to two, although I started getting some last-minute suggestions from the colleagues I’m meeting every day (still working on those names).

Barring any last-minute entries, the two I am down to are fairly similar. One’s about a 20-minute walk to work and the other is about a 15. However, since my work schedule will be 3–11 p.m., I will have to taxi back every night. That sucks.

The slightly father away one costs less, has a tiny balcony and is smaller (This is relative – they are both studios and not much more than glorified hotel rooms.) The community is a little smaller, as there are only two buildings with about 20 floors each (but no No. 4 or 14).

The second one is in a fairly large complex, is slightly bigger inside and has a washing machine. At first, I thought it was closer to where the newspaper will be moving, but that’s not true. On that one, they want a six-month lease, which means they want all six months’ rent up front.

(OK, as an aside here, I am watching “Fargo” for the third time since I arrived. Indonesia, like Morocco, edits most of the all the sex and violence in most movies, and in Indonesia, unlike Morocco, they take out the F-word

Now, I am a big Coen brother fan – I watched “True Grit,” or parts of it, three times just on the flight over here – but when you take out the violence and F-word from “Fargo,” that just doesn’t leave much. I think it came on about 20 minute ago and we’re well over halfway through.)

Anyway, the fun art of apartment-hunting. This is only my second time ever trying to find rental housing, and both times have been in other countries. In Detroit, I had roommates and never went through this.

The money situation might be the kicker. First of all, I discovered on the first day of hunting there’s no way to get housing in what the company pays for it, so I have to delve into my own funds. It’s just a matter of how much.

The cost difference is 1 million Rp, or about $115 US. For that I get more space and a washing machine. At first I was set on it, but the more I think about it, the more I’m just not sure it’s worth it – especially when I realized this morning the higher-priced one doesn’t have a fitness center. Not that I think I’d become a fitness guru, just that the option of having a treadmill in an air-conditioned room sounded good.

So I think I have until tomorrow to decide; I’m getting a longer stay in this place. I did a load of laundry yesterday, which was cool.

I learned on Day Two that the nice hotel has a great breakfast, which consists of basically three meals. They have everything from salad (not a bar, but premixed), fruit, rice and other Asian offerings plus your slightly stale breakfasts cereals (“Rice Bubbles” and “Raising Brand”) and eggs and waffles to order.

It’s really nice, and basically that’s the one meal a day I eat, only I make it two. I have gone down there and had lunch of rice and some kind of meat topping first, then go for the American breakfast and wind down with watermelon and more tea.

The job is going. I’ve never copy-edited before and there’s definitely a learning curve. The style used isn’t AP style, it’s more NYT, and that takes some getting used to. I’ve never used InDesign but I am glad at the opportunity to learn it. Deadline, though, isn’t the best time to experiment with new software systems.