Free At Last
Recently, I haven't had much time blogging because of the grueling month-long apartment hunt. Last Friday, I finally signed the lease for an apartment! It's in midtown east, on 46th St & 1st Ave, which is about 4 blocks away from my work place, which means I can sleep for one more hour everyday now!! Or I can go to bed one hour later, which is more likely, unfortunately for my health and sanity. For $2,100 a month I get to share a one-bedroom apartment with someone else. It's kind of depressing that even though I work for an investment bank and he's a stock broker and we both have decent-paying jobs, we can still only afford a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and this is one of the best deals we have seen. Granted, this place is a HUGE 1BR (700+ sq feet), which is why we are planning to convert it into a 2BR by building a wall in the living room to create a new bedroom. All the real 2 bedroom places in our price range are so tiny (I'm talking about bedrooms that are only large enough to fit a bed), we gave up trying to find one. The real, liveable 2 BR places start somewhere around $2800/month I hear.
The apartment complex itself is pretty bare bones. The most significant amenities are the doorman, the elevators and the laundry room in the basement. That's it. No gym. No pool. No parking (the nearby garage charges almost $300 a month). No landscaped lawn and beautiful fountain. Yep, it's not nearly as nice as Srini's $1600-something 3 BR/2BA apartment in Mountain View. I hate you California people with your affordable housing.
The move-in date is 7/1, although we may be able to move in the weekend before. Now we need to figure out how we will get the wall built. We need to hire a subcontractor or pay the supervisor to build it. This whole "conversion" thing is just so totally foreign to me. When my roommate first brought it up, I stared at him in disbelief: "You want to do WHAT??" I calmed down a little bit after I checked out the place he's living in right now, which is a 2BR converted into a 3 BR. I was pretty impressed with the wall that they had put up. It looked pretty solid and actually had doors. I would have never guessed that it was put in afterwards just by looking at it. I hope our wall will look just as good. Of course, I also hear that it will cost us $500 to $600.
The most unpleasant part, or the least pleasant part to be more accurate, of the whole moving experience is not the moving itself. It's the fact that I will need to drive my car back to MN since I can't possibly afford to park near the new apartment and I don't feel like coming back to my old apartment every weekend to move it around just so people won't think it's abandoned and try to jack it. Yep, I will celebrate my big move by driving more than 1200 miles alone right afterwards, and then fly back!! Sachin suggested that I ship it to MN. I checked with the shipper that I used to ship my car to here from California and found out that it will be at least $730, which is a bit steep. Plus, I feel pretty retarded shipping it all the way from CA to here and then from here to MN.
Inspite of all these issues, I'm still very excited to finally move into Manhattan. No more retarded one-hour-and-fifteen-minute commutes. No more dry cleaning my suits because they've been contaminated by that God-forsaken smelly apartment. No more feeling weird walking down the neighborhood because I'm the only guy wearing a suit. My friends will actually come visit me now!! Now if only I can get a big raise.
Recently, I haven't had much time blogging because of the grueling month-long apartment hunt. Last Friday, I finally signed the lease for an apartment! It's in midtown east, on 46th St & 1st Ave, which is about 4 blocks away from my work place, which means I can sleep for one more hour everyday now!! Or I can go to bed one hour later, which is more likely, unfortunately for my health and sanity. For $2,100 a month I get to share a one-bedroom apartment with someone else. It's kind of depressing that even though I work for an investment bank and he's a stock broker and we both have decent-paying jobs, we can still only afford a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and this is one of the best deals we have seen. Granted, this place is a HUGE 1BR (700+ sq feet), which is why we are planning to convert it into a 2BR by building a wall in the living room to create a new bedroom. All the real 2 bedroom places in our price range are so tiny (I'm talking about bedrooms that are only large enough to fit a bed), we gave up trying to find one. The real, liveable 2 BR places start somewhere around $2800/month I hear.
The apartment complex itself is pretty bare bones. The most significant amenities are the doorman, the elevators and the laundry room in the basement. That's it. No gym. No pool. No parking (the nearby garage charges almost $300 a month). No landscaped lawn and beautiful fountain. Yep, it's not nearly as nice as Srini's $1600-something 3 BR/2BA apartment in Mountain View. I hate you California people with your affordable housing.
The move-in date is 7/1, although we may be able to move in the weekend before. Now we need to figure out how we will get the wall built. We need to hire a subcontractor or pay the supervisor to build it. This whole "conversion" thing is just so totally foreign to me. When my roommate first brought it up, I stared at him in disbelief: "You want to do WHAT??" I calmed down a little bit after I checked out the place he's living in right now, which is a 2BR converted into a 3 BR. I was pretty impressed with the wall that they had put up. It looked pretty solid and actually had doors. I would have never guessed that it was put in afterwards just by looking at it. I hope our wall will look just as good. Of course, I also hear that it will cost us $500 to $600.
The most unpleasant part, or the least pleasant part to be more accurate, of the whole moving experience is not the moving itself. It's the fact that I will need to drive my car back to MN since I can't possibly afford to park near the new apartment and I don't feel like coming back to my old apartment every weekend to move it around just so people won't think it's abandoned and try to jack it. Yep, I will celebrate my big move by driving more than 1200 miles alone right afterwards, and then fly back!! Sachin suggested that I ship it to MN. I checked with the shipper that I used to ship my car to here from California and found out that it will be at least $730, which is a bit steep. Plus, I feel pretty retarded shipping it all the way from CA to here and then from here to MN.
Inspite of all these issues, I'm still very excited to finally move into Manhattan. No more retarded one-hour-and-fifteen-minute commutes. No more dry cleaning my suits because they've been contaminated by that God-forsaken smelly apartment. No more feeling weird walking down the neighborhood because I'm the only guy wearing a suit. My friends will actually come visit me now!! Now if only I can get a big raise.
posted by Gary at
9:33 AM
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