Things are improving in our home. Chalerm now does both the laundry and the fish tank cleaning without making any scenes. I could get used to this.
While on the subject of homes. I visited our old apartment, the one we were kicked out of last year when the landlord decided to renovate the building. The apartment we used to have is now a furnished show unit and the overly polite staff duly showed it to me.
Our apartment had gone from having three bedrooms and three baths to having one of each. Before the floor plan was good, with efficient use of space. Now the apartment is bigger in the wrong places, and darker. The fittings are new of course, held in modern but sterile hotel style. For this they want four times as much as I paid when Chalerm and I lived there.
The contract we had said that if either party breached the agreement before the lease period was up he had to pay a month’s rent as compensation. I foolishly thought this applied to the landlord breaching the contract too, as he did. But I soon saw my error. This clause would apply if I breached the contract. If the landlord breached the contract it doesn’t apply. Simple, really.
The security guard at the gate was the same. He greeted me as a long lost friend. He knows everything about us as Chalerm used to sit by his desk at night and gossip. I showed him the sheet with the new rents. I also told him how the new apartments looked. This was the first time anyone had informed him about what they had done to his workplace. He is just a security guard, what does he need to know?
The original building had reasonable rents and was full, with waiting lists. The renovated building has a new grand-sounding name, sky-high rents and it is empty.
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