My Fifth Place in London (a retrospective)

Apologies for the gross lack of updates. I'm just not much of a blogger.

But the bigger disappointment for me is that I still live in London. On to the fifth place then.

I was sick of the rude drug addicts, vermin, and freezing conditions in the previous hole I was renting but I didn't want to get a taxi to move my stuff because it's a pain and it's expensive. Fortunately, I found a new place within walking distance.

So I moved in. No roommate and it was a small room but slightly bigger than the box room in Tottenham. The window wouldn't open, however so...the place became like a jungle. Theres horrible ventilation in the houses in this country so if you don't open the windows, mold grows all over. That's what happened. After three months living in thie place, I ended up having to throw out a lot of my clothes and my $200 mink hat that I bought in Finland was also destroyed.

But I'm jumping ahead. The place had about four Indian guys and an aboriginal Australian. I would cook hamburgers and these Indian guys would get offended. They wouldnt make occassional comments about how I dont have to eat hamburgers because theres good vegetarian options and they'd close the kitchen door when I was cooking.

I understand that they're Hindu or whatever, but it's absurd to push their beliefs on me and expect me not to eat beef. If they're that devout, they should have let another Indian person into the place instead of an American.

So these Indian people started to come and go. One would move out and they'd be replaced by another Indian person. I never really talked to any of them so I don't know who was who.

It also was quite a struggle to get a key to this place. When I first moved in, I was told that there was only one key among the four Indian guys. So I asked them why they don't just make copies. They said "theyre busy". They were students. How busy could they have been? Even if they work full time, nobody is too busy to stop and get a key made. Eventually, they gave me their key so I had to open the door for them fairly often.

But the most outrageous thing I had to put up with is that I was asked to leave whenever the landlord came over. The reason -- this asshole who rented the place to me (and lived in the house) wasn't authorized to do so. He was required to tell the landlord every time somebody moved out and the landlord would then find a replacement. And the landlord only wanted to rent to students because he gets tax benefits for doing this or something.

But this asshole thought he would let anybody in and then tell them to leave when the landlord came over. Never mentioned this to me before I got the place, of course.

So every week I'd have to go for a walk for an hour or so until this asshole called me saying its ok to come back. Totally ridiculous.

This went on for a couple months. Then for reasons that I don't remember, this asshole told the landlord that he was renting the place out to random people. So the landlord told him that everybody has to move out, including him.

I had recently quit my job, by the way, so wasnt in a position to find yet another place. Anyway, the landlord came in and said everybody has to go. I talked to this asshole who rented the place to me and he said that he's trying to convince the landlord to at least let him stay because hes a student and almost finished with his studies. Well, great.

In the end, he did convince the landlord to let him stay. And I saw an ad by him advertising the rooms. This time, he specified that you have to be a student and you'd have to be approved by the landlord. Everybody else had to move out, though.

The guy was a total cock. He also asked me to vaccuum my room before I left. I said "what's the landlord going to do?" and he said "nothing, but it was clean when you came in so it should be clean when you leave". I informed him that it wasnt clean when I moved in (which was true) but he disagreed.

A real asshole. And a lot of my stuff had to be thrown out because mold was growing on it.

Next update (whenever that may be) I'll talk about the current place Im at. Or maybe by the time I write it, it'll be the previous place.