So, 2 weeks ago, I packed up 40 years of my life (well, almost all of), lugged a suitcase halfway across the world (London actually isn’t all that far, really) and found myself in London, all ready to get started on my cuisine diploma at LCB (more later on why this is how I’m referring to the esteemed institution).
But first, I need to sort out the logistics of living here. Firstly, I am extremely grateful to Wen for letting me stay at his parent’s fabulously located apartment in Gloucester Road. But that had a limited time on it, as the flat was due for renovation sometime in April. So I really need to find something fast.
Due to a confluence of factors, I was completely stressed and stretched before leaving for London, and wasn’t able to get that sorted before coming here, or even have a real sense of where I should be living, which areas were good, not good, convenient, cool, cool, but inconvenient. I looked at everywhere!
I quickly learned a few things: rooms for rent that are rented by agents tend to be quite horrible, and honestly, not all that cheap. Flat shares are a much better option, price-wise, and aesthetics and general care of the place, but because there are more people looking to rent than people letting rooms out, these tend to go quickly, and the people who are already living in the flatshare can afford to be picky about who they want to live with.
I would’ve thought that my being a culinary student would make me a very popular candidate for a flat mate (hello, free food!!) But apparently, not. Firstly, the student thing wasn’t working in my favour, because I was only going to be around for around 9 months (anything longer is as yet a question mark). The flat shares I was checking out were mainly with professionals, because frankly, I cannot live in a party house with young people, almost half my age (who would prefer someone closer to their age group anyway), and the professionals I met would prefer someone with a little more longevity. I saw a few fabulous rooms, and I thought I got along quite well with the people living there. One of them told me honestly the only reason he didn’t pick me was the fact that I was only going living for 9 months with any certainty, as he was hoping to find someone who could stay longer and not have to go through the hassle of finding someone else to take over the room when I leave.
Secondly, most of the kitchens are quite small. If there was already an alpha cook in the household, more often than not, they didn’t want any competition (well, at least,that was the vibe I was getting). In all honesty, I have no idea how much cooking I would be doing at home. After a full day of dealing with food, would I want to come home and do more of the same? Still, it is very important to me, that the option to cook as I wish is there.
The first place I saw was in Willesden Junction. I figured as long as I stayed somewhere where I only had to change once for a line that got me to school (either Central or Piccadilly), that would be OK. Preferably somewhere not further than Zone 2, but I would consider Zone 3 if they were within walking distance to either the Central or Piccadilly lines. This was a bedsit.
Now, a bedsit is something fairly unique to the UK. It is a bed-sitting room. Not really a studio, because it usually doesn’t come with an attached bath or toilet, but usually has some form of kitchenette area and occasionally a wash basin also. It’s often associated with poor people in the past, and now, I think mostly students or young couples starting out.
Anyway, so, this bedsit I saw was actually quite nicely done up. The landlord lives on the property, but downstairs. He had converted his house into rental bedsits upstairs, and he occupies the lower level. The rented rooms have a separate entrance, it looks new and clean, and when I got there, there was a cleaner, cleaning the laundry area. There is a shared washer and dryer, and the room, while not big, was decent and the kitchen was fairly well kitted out, with fairly new-looking, or at least well-maintained equipment and appliances. It’s a quiet residential area, with a window looking out to the garden of sorts. There was a bathroom and toilet outside, which the landlord told me is for my use exclusively, as the other 2 rooms have their on ensuite. Not bad. However, it was just a bit out of my budget, and also, the local area around the train station was all rather depressing. It was also a good 20-minute walk from the station, and not a pleasant walk either. I felt, I had to look at more properties to get a sense of what was available.
The afternoon viewings that day were rather depressing. I saw a room for let, which was tiny with a rather horrendous bedspread in a miserable shared flat, with a grotty kitchen and bathroom, shared with 4 other people. Each room had an improvised lock on the outside, and there was no living room, or even any shared area, other than the tiny kitchen. That was struck off my list immediately. The location, though I quite liked. It was a 5-minute walk to Bethnal Green station, which would take me to Holborn, where my school is, in under 15 minutes. Walking around the area, I liked that it was pretty ethnic, had a lot of different eateries and grocers and butchers. There were a lot of school kids on their way home, which indicated to me a fairly safe neighbourhood since there were lots of kids and therefore families (and lots of schools too, I noted). I liked that there was a big old church, and just round the corner, the London Buddhist Centre, which had a nice little cafe called The Larder next to it, with all kinds of teas and tisanes, and a Thai eatery next door. There is a nice park with a community library just at the park, and I love parks and librariesIt wasn’t a pretty neighbourhood, nor the cleanest, but I kinda liked it, because it feels real. Like a place that real people lived. I made a mental note to check out more places around Bethnal Green.
The next viewing was at Shepherd’s Bush. It was a bedsit. Having seen the one this morning, I was somewhat unprepared for the one I saw at Shepherd’s Bush. Firstly, it was in a Victorian terrace house, which I thought, ooh, ok, quite nice. Then I rang the buzzer, and the current tenant showed me the place. It was literally just a room. There was an old wardrobe, a foldout bed facing a rather giant window, and next to the window was a desk with a small TV and on the side, the kitchenette, which was rather depressing, including something I saw again in a few other bedsits, a microwave oven with built-in hot plates on top of it. The toilet and shower were obviously added in and constituted a tiny wooden box on the other side of the room facing the kitchenette. I think I would have been too depressed living there, and I would feel poor. That was also stricken off the list.
That night, I had signed up for a Speed Flat Mating event organised by spareroom.co.uk. It is like a Speed Dating event, except instead of looking for a date, you’re looking for a flat mate. So I registered online, paid £3 at the door (£2 if you pay online) of a club near Holborn called Sway, got my pink label which says “I need a room” and stepped in intrepidly, wondering, what kind of people I was going to meet there, while peering nervously at other people’s labels, looking for those with a similar, but white, label, stating, “I have a room”.
Speed Flat Mating: I need a room
The first person I encountered was a man called Marcin, of Eastern Europe origin (possible Polish), who was looking for a flatmate, to share with him only. There was a living area (aha!). He was fairly well-prepared, and had photos to show. The place was at Turnpike Lane (Zone 3, but on the Piccadilly line, so that was alright with me). I found him a little odd, and awkward, but I thought perhaps it was more a language issue. The next guy I met was possibly an agent. He had several rooms, but it was not an area I had hitherto really considered, so I didn’t really plan to follow up on that either.
The next person I met seemed like a possibility. Young English chap, probably gay. Working in Burberry, but moving to Mulberry, and hoping to work his way up from Retail Associate to Management. He was looking for a flatmate to share his place in South Ealing as his existing flatmate was buying his own place and moving out. I asked, “Piccadilly line?” and he replied, “Yes!” enthusiastically. It was just within my budget (£500 per month, plus bills, which would bring it up to around £600), and although in Zone 3, was on a direct line to school. Plus he seemed nice, and I would be sharing with only him, and there was a living room (yay!). So we exchanged numbers, and he said he was doing viewings on Friday night and all day Saturday. (As it turned out, his flatmate’s deal fell through and he was not going to move out after all, so that didn’t work out).
The next few weren’t that positive, as they were in areas I’d never considered. Just as I was about to leave, I saw this lady, easily the most well-dressed lady there that evening. She had a room in Stratford, just opposite the Olympic stadium. I wasn’t too keen on that area, but she seemed very interesting. I asked her what she does and she said, a bit of writing, a bit of modeling, a bit of everything, really. She does restaurant reviews and I was immediately very taken by that. So I gave her my details, so she could email me some additional information about her place and some pictures of the room. I left the event, feeling rather optimistic.
The next few day, I looked a few more rooms. There was another one of those rooms to let in a flat share with 3 other people. The rooms at least, were a decent size. But the kitchen is rather depressing. The rent included all bills and a cleaner who comes once a week to clean the common areas (bathroom, kitchen and corridor), but seeing as all the common areas weren’t terribly clean, I thought it was all rather dubious how much cleaning was actually done. Also, I think it was a council or ex-council flat. The block was named “Needwood house”. The block next to it had broken windows on the ground floor flat. The whole area looked rather unsavoury. The same agent, then told me, he had a studio if I was interested and I thought, OK, let’s check it out. A studio means, kitchenette and ensuite. That might be good. Well, it wasn’t. It was along a rather busy street, and entry was via a back alley (where garbage is taken out to, including food waste, as I think there was some restaurants there). There were a few other bedsits. It was even more depressing than the one I saw at Shepherd’s Bush and there was no wardrobe. The bathroom had door that opened to what the agent glamorously called “the deck”. It was more like a service ledge. The agent asked, “You like?” and I could not muster an appropriate response, really. Nyet.
I also saw a flat share in Pimlico. It was a teeny tiny room with a single bed. Was very nice and clean, and there was a rather large kitchen with a lounge area. But it was shared with 4 other people, and apparently amongst them there were 3 chefs. Rather intimidating. The area was nice, it was set above a beauty salon, along a pleasant street, and it’s in Zone 1, but I couldn’t get beyond the size of the room. Plus the main lease-holder had a slight sleaziness about him that I couldn’t get past.
I saw a house share in Seven Sisters, but it was a 20-minute hike from the station. The room was not too bad, but I felt I needed to view more places. It didn’t wow me. Saw a place at Kensal Green. Initially I was a little concerned, because the area seemed so set away from everything, but it was a short walk from the station, and the room was large with a television! It would be a flat share with the main leaseholder, a Moroccan musician who “travels a lot”, and works from home. The kitchen was a tiny tiny room. While the room was quite cosy, the kitchen really was small, and I felt I still needed to keep looking, because I didn’t love it.
After looking at a few rather dodgy places, I saw a lovely room in an Art & Craft cottage in Hampstead Gardens Suburb. Quite a bit further out than where I wanted to live, but it was the nicest room I had seen, and within my budget, and I was totally taken with the idea of living in a cottage, with a garden and an allotment (Farmville for reals!). The landlady was a lovely lady, who cracked open a bottle of French organic wine, while we chatted and got to know each other a bit better. It’s a tiny cottage, but well-appointed and very cosy. Apparently, the row of cottages located there were all artisan cottages. They were given to the poorer artisans, in an area where a lot of rich people lived, and because they were not as well-off, they were given an allotment of land to grow their own vegetables. I was all ready to move in. So excitedly I told my friend Pat, who lives in London, who very quickly brought me down to reality. She had had bad experiences with live-in landlords. “They always seem nice initially and then after a while, it’s like, oh, are you cooking? are you using the kitchen? you seem to cook a lot, huh? are you watching TV? oh, i wanted to watch TV….” She said, at the end of the day, they don’t want to be your friend, they only want your money.
That gave me cause for pause, so I decided to meet with the cottage lady again and hash all these out. She still seemed lovely, but when we got to the nitty gritty of it, it dawned on me that she really didn’t want someone who was going to be there a lot. As I hadn’t not gotten my class schedule yet, I had no idea how much time I would spend in the house. And then we had a discussion about best time to move in, and I also noted her business partner and best friend was also always in the cottage, and she had family visiting and a whole host of stuff going on. So I decided, it’s not going to be a cottage, after all.
Back to square one! And I was already exhausted. I got better at reading between the lines and picking out the better rooms, and saw a few of the aforementioned fabulous rooms. However, after a week of optimistically waiting (while checking out other, not so great rooms), they didn’t pick me. How could they not?!!!!
Oh, some info about flats/houses in London. Unlike in Singapore, where it’s pretty much open plan for living areas, most of the houses and flats have a dedicated room for the living room and sometimes if you are lucky, there is also a dining room. So a lot of landlords convert the living room into a large bedroom (usually for couples). There is also the concept of single room and double room, which is basically an issue of size (fits a single bed, or a double bed). Kitchens are usually not big. Dryers are not common, nor laundry lines. People apparently hang them on racks and the stuff dries because the air is dry. Some of the dreadful rooms I saw were literally room lets. You rent the room, there is a kitchen which you can use (small) and it’s not uncommon for 4-5 people living in the same flat to share 1 toilet and bathroom!! Also, there’s the concept of separate toilets and bathrooms. Which while i i think is a fabulous thing, in case people need to go and someone else is bathing, but! the toilet doesn’t always have a washbasin! in fact, 8 of 10 of these separate toilets I’ve seen did not come with a wash basin. I think this is why a lot of people have this idea that it’s ok NOT to wash your hands after going to the toilet. Lemme help you. No!
But it wasn’t all bad. Some of the people I met were really nice and interesting. There was a lady (live-in landlord), who doesn’t work. She is a freelancer. Does a bit of writing, bit of modelling, bit of everything. Rather glamorous with a lovely apartment in Stratford, right across from the Olympic Park. I decided against it for practical transport reasons, during the Olympics, but she is fabulous. A friend thought perhaps she’s a mistress, which is why she doesn’t have to work. Heh.
There was also the 2 guys with the gorgeous place in Stoke Newington, that I desperately wanted. I practically stalked the apartment. The location isn’t great from a transport perspective (no tube), so I tried the National Rail service (not reliable and I only used it twice), and the bus. But I love the area! It’s got such a great vibe. A lot of people said it’s a bit rough, but I like it. It’s got Jamaican, Turkish and Jewish influences, and apparently Vietnamese too, on another street that I didn’t get to. There’s a lot of community action going on, mainly art and music. The cafes are funky, got meat places and those vegan ones too. There are thrift stores and markets. Apart from the area (which is in Hackney and was quite rough, but very up and coming), the room is a great size and the 2 guys living there already seem fun and chill. Alas, they didn’t pick me (how could they not??!!!).
There’s also the architect originally from Hong Kong. The “flat” is actually a converted 2-storey terrace house, with the downstairs converted into a flat, and the upstairs converted into another small one. The place was not great, but he’d done up his room very nicely and we got on fabulously, but my short stay was alas, an issue with him.
At last! At last! 2 weeks after I arrive, I find a place. I’ve not moved in yet, and the room is quite small (really small), but the location is good (10 minute walk to the station, 15 minute tube ride to where I need to go), the place is clean, the kitchen looks decent and the people living there seem nice, and I was getting to the end of my tether. I cannot look at another house!
Well, hopefully, that’s my apartment hunting chapter closed!
Next up, school!
elceebee 