Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

A few days back, I visited the city where I will be doing my postdoc to find a place to stay and at the same time to be formally introduced to the group. This was my first visit and my main goal is really to feel the city. For now, I will call the city, the Neat City. The short visit, only two-day swing, was sort of planned hastily and I would have really wanted to make it a longer one.

Anyway, before leaving town, I already made some appointments with different apartment places. BF is coming with me as he will be also moving to the Neat City (well, not right away but soon after me). We left town early morning and projected that if things go smoothly, we will be there two hours before our first appointment. Things had been very smooth and we were almost celebrating and then suddenly just after the second to the last exit #?*!?%!$**?%* traffic jam, the worst traffic jam I ever witnessed. The 2.5 miles left before the final exit took us over three hours! We ended up NOT making our appointment. The guy whom we have appointment with was not totally agreeable. We were pretty pissed off with the entire ordeal already but we just could not call the (looking for apartment) thing off as we did not have the luxury of time. Fortunately, our next appointment pushed through and the guy, sort of realtor, was really nice and with him originally being from the same place (PhD city) we are currently living is an added bonus. He showed us to a couple of places that suits our budget and location of choice. I really wished I will live really close to campus, just like 10-15 minutes walk, but the apartments were just extremely crappy, not to mention very expensive, the bf and I just decided to rule them out immediately. At the end of the day, after viewing six to seven apartments, I cannot even distinguish and remember all of them. Much to my dismay, I found out later that I did not bring any charger for my cell phone and it had died already! I am supposed to visit the research group the next day and I don’t know how long it will take. How am I supposed to contact BF when and where we are meeting?

The visit to the group had been very productive and stimulating; the people were accommodating. The only problem is that it took longer than I expected; it literally took the entire day. I just planned to stay until 2 pm but stretched out to 4 pm. Making a realistic plan has always been major challenge to me. It is alright when I am the only one affected but BF is always on time and he was really pissed off. Also, we have yet to make up our minds about the apartment issue. The realtor from yesterday called again and showed us a few more places accommodating our additional request. We were interested in the last place and immediately decided to apply for that place. We don’t want to come back another time to check out places again. As we left Neat City, we were pretty contented with our decision and were relieved the search is over. We came back to the PhD City very late in the evening for our well-deserved rest as the next day around afternoon we will be on the road again for camping/hiking adventure far from civilization.

Needless to say, the next day, the apartment management approved us and asked if we can move a few days earlier and we said we can’t. When we are several miles closer to the camp site where there is almost no cell phone signal, they called and we figured out in between very bad signal that they are giving the apartment to the other girl who saw the place because she could move in earlier. Great, just what we need! They offered another apartment in the same neighborhood. They claimed that the apartment is very similar to the one we liked and they also promised to install all the things we asked. I am pretty upset about the whole thing. I really want to see the apartment firsthand, it is just that we don’t have the time to go back and check places again. In addition, it gets pretty costly to do this route.

What is surprising to me about this whole exercise is my reaction. The experience made me realize that I might have a mild streak of being a control freak. I get extremely anxious if things didn’t go as planned.

Anyhow, after much deliberation between me and BF, we decided to take the place. Yes, without setting foot on the apartment yet. If circumstances were different, I would have said that this is an absurd decision. On the contrary, I am actually pretty comfortable with it. I am back to my optimistic self!