Friday, October 23, 2009

Our new apartment

What it has:
  • Two bedrooms, one bath, one kitchen/living room, balcony
  • Two king beds with bedding
  • A really nice shower with HOT water
  • Snack-sized fridge/freezer, oven, and 2-burner stove

  • Enough pans, utensils, and small appliances to cook a pasta dinner, or fry some eggs
  • Plates and silver for four
  • A big table where we can all sit down to dinner together
  • A couch and big comfy chair, and flat-screen TV
  • A Euro-style all-in-one washer/dryer (that does just a double-handful of clothes; we'll do at least a load a day)
  • A 'green' attitude: all electric outlets have on/off switches, there's a note on the wall to conserve, and you have your choice of toilet flushes.



 Push the small button for a small flush, and the big half-moon button for a big flush.

What it doesn't have:
  • Space: an unfortunate design means that an unacceptable proportion of our 53 square meters are occupied by the front hall; thus, there is not enough space to even walk between the bed and walls on two of the three sides.
  • Toilet paper: After traveling for 28 hours, the last thing we wanted to do as the first thing we did was to find a convenience store.
  • A lock on the balcony door: We risk home invasion by Spiderman.
  • Heat: Um, yeah. The building simply does not have a heating system. We were warned that central heating is unusual in NZ, but we did think that "Heating Included" on the website indicated that heating would be included. No such luck; it's not available. It's 60 during the day, and 30 at night, and would be nice to have heat indoors. It was suggested we should purchase plug-in heaters, and get used to the weather, what are you, pansies from California or something?

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