Upstairs, Downstairs

Living in SIN
Living in SIN

Another hole to dig my soul in…

Singapore Some say I’m the luckiest girl in the world, while others would say bad luck follows me wherever I go. I guess it’s that whole glass half full/half empty thing. Depending on how you look at the events that have plagued me over the past 12 months, you could argue that whenever a door has slammed shut in my face, a window has always been left open somewhere in the back.

Singapore was my window after San Francisco, but it definitely wasn’t smooth sailing when I got here. The day after the incident with the Footballer, I moved into a new house. It was the first time I had ever chosen to live in a place where I wasn’t exactly alone, which seemed to prove that not only was my career on a backslide, but so was my lifestyle. Singapore is one of the most expensive places in the world (especially for rent), and I was determined to beat the system. I thought I had lucked out on a place (master suite, bathtub, tonnes of space for cheap-ish), but as soon as I had moved all my things in, the landlord became creepily preoccupied with me –  spying on me, letting people into my apartment without warning and opening my mail as well.

At the same time that my home life was deteriorating I also met a new guy. He was cute and pretty much the opposite of the Footballer in every possible way (that’s right, eveeeerryyyy possible way!). Three weeks into my stay at the nightmarish hell that I called home, the new guy had just returned to the island after a brief trip to Australia. We had plans to have drinks on the rooftop terrace of his penthouse that night, and despite the fact that he knew that a Duty Free bottle of the Chocolat Luxe Bailey’s (which you can basically get anywhere in the world BUT Canada now) was the key to my heart, I had already planned to use the opportunity to avoid going home that night.

Lucky him.

While we were drinking champagne on the roof, a suspicious text message from my real estate agent left me a bit uneasy. Of course, Penthouse already knew all about the situation, so I jokingly asked, “Can’t I just live up here on your roof? You wouldn’t even know I was here!” He said he wouldn’t be so cruel and would probably let me come inside from time to time. The next morning, as I was about to embark upon a 3.5 km walk of shame with hair you would not believe (think equator level humidity and lots and lots of sweat), I told him to have a good day at work and laughed as I said I probably needed to go home and find a new place to live.

The following day Penthouse was on a business trip to Malaysia, and I happened to have a run-in with my landlord as I was heading off to an appointment across town. Rent was coming due in the next couple of days, and I asked him if I could pay him in cash since I had literally opened a bank account the day before and hadn’t set up the transfer yet. All he said was, “Yes, we need to talk about that but not right now.” I obviously found this suspicious especially after the message I got while I was at the penthouse, so I messaged the real estate agent to ask if he knew what was going on.

As it turned out the landlord had asked the real estate agent to evict me. His reason for doing this was that he didn’t like that I had asked him to give me notice when letting people into my apartment. The week before he let three different people in for three different “reasons.” I asked him politely to just tell me the day before someone needed to work in the apartment, so I could put away my valuables. I’m sure there were other non-ridiculous reasons that he had for actually wanting me to leave, because I have a hard time believing that he would rather find a new tenant than give the tiniest amount of curtesy to the one he currently had. But anyway, that is what he said. Obviously, the real estate agent refused to evict me since I hadn’t broken any rules, so naturally, the landlord fired him. And the landlord was waiting until the last possible second to verbally tell me to leave so that he would get to keep my deposit money once the new month started (as rent) as I looked for a new place to live.

Umm no.

I raced home after my appointment and immediately started condo hunting. After what I had just been through, I realized that I was willing to pay a significant amount for my freedom and privacy, and Singapore rent didn’t seem quite so scary anymore. The only issue was that I had a time crunch. I needed my deposit back so I could, you know, pay another deposit on a new place. So I exclusively looked into condos I had already heard about and that were in the general area, and well, I knew a pretty nice one 3.5 kms up the road.

It was 11am when I got home that morning. By 1:00 I was viewing condos, and Penthouse’s building was the clear winner. The unit was already vacant and the pool was much, much nicer. I signed the contract that night, moved my stuff in the next day, and threatened my old landlord with police involvement (illegal eviction and opening my mail) if he even thought about keeping my money.

Of course, there was that moment of doubt. I had to be at work on that fateful day at 4pm, and as I was taking the train back home that night to sign the lease on the new place, I wondered if this eviction was actually my window out of Singapore. I had just been paid. With my paycheque and my deposit money returned, I could have packed up my life and hopped the next plane to Canada. But then what?  I was still mentally scarred from San Fran (and I say that not as a victim, but as a realist) I knew that I would maybe survive two months back in Canada before having to make another plan, which would likely involve going abroad again given the complete and total disgust I was still feeling toward corporate North America. So I decided to stay, and signing that lease was basically my way of finally committing to Singapore.

Anyway, after all was said and done, I still had to break the news to Penthouse.

“Sooo something happened while you were in Malaysia, and well, now we’re neighbours. Hope that’s not weird.”

I wasn’t sure how he was going to take the news. A lesser man with a fragile ego probably would have shunned me and just skated off to his friends bragging about how he has a stalker because he’s, you know, *that good.* But Penthouse surprised even me by taking the true man approach to having me live a mere three floors downstairs from him for the past two months now. This approach is, of course, no longer locking his front door when he goes to bed at night. I may or may not have started showering with my front door unlocked as well. So I guess you could say my current living arrangement is pretty awesome right now, but obviously all good things will come to an end and it’s not a question of if, but rather when this situation will get awkward and totally blow up in my face. After all, if this year from hell has taught me anything it’s that what goes up always comes back down again…

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