when you're as
peripatetic as i have been, you get used to house hunting. a tip: treat it as a fun way to see the city and meet a few kooks.
kookiest bangalore experience: middle class home in bangalore with a reasonable rent, and a loo without a flush.
i didn't even notice, and moved right in! and then, gave my notice and moved right out.
washington d.c.- very odd experience involving ads placed on a housing website for flats at low rent in great areas. when contacted by email, the putative landpeople asked for a photograph and a message to be recorded at a slow speed on their answering machine. a quick search of the sender's name took me straight to a site for russian mail-order brides.
ye gads!
london- the oddest experience. flats offered for rent in fabulous locations in central london, for a pittance, practically. salivating at the thought, and having learnt nothing from my DC experience, i wrote to an owner, asking for pictures of the flat, and scheduling an appointment to view it. i got a diatribe in my inbox- about how the lady was alone, her husband dead, she didn't live in london and people asking to view the flat never seemed to actually have the money for it. references, bank statements or salary slips were no proof. she wanted money to be transfered about and proof of it sent to her.
i try not to be cynical sometimes, so i charitably ascribed the email to a poor ol soul, lonely and mistrustful.
until i got an email from the next apartment owner. who said that he wasn't in london either and would have to be really sure i was interested in the flat. he found it necessary to add that he had to be with his children, since "there (sic) mother was dead (sick)"
either it's me, or some major mortal coil shuffling off is going on.
