Thank God that we finally found our apartment!

Praises to God for His grace upon us!

Finding an apartment here is really hard! We didn't want to involve agent because we need to pay 1 month rent to the agent. So next option is to go internet to search for it. But the portals here for renting apartments is in hebrew and so we need to seek help from our local friends here. But they are very busy and can only help us when they come to our room.

In the end I went to memorise the important hebrew characters such as furnished, number of rooms, budget, refridgerator, elevator and a few neighbourhood names etc and went to search myself. Faster this way than to wait for the local colleagues.

At first I thought finding the apartment is the difficult part. We went to a few apartments to view and realised that right now, it's the owner's market because there are much more tenants looking for apartments. So good apartments are snatched up very fast. Furthermore owners nowadays don't rent furnished apartments because it's too troublesome to maintain for the tenants. So a lot of apartments listed are empty ones!

I found one in a quiet neighbourhood and the rent was cheap at USD700. I brought Joeanne down to take a look and she likes it too because the kitchen was newly renovated and comes with oven. But after we begin to talk to the owner, we found out that this owner is very unreasonable in his terms and conditions. Maybe it's his first time renting out his apartment. He wanted a lot of guarantees deposit. Also wanted open cheques with the utilities companies name in case we run off. Also wanted me to paint his apartment at the end of the lease! Also said that he can give me 3 months notice and ask me to go. I argued with him over many of his terms and we almost reached conclusion. But my friend told me not to sign the contract with him because he will be difficult to deal with in future. Didn't realise that negotiating the contract is even harder!

We were really getting desperate! We need to find a place before 8th nov and hence left more than a weeks time. But no good news from any of the apartments we saw. A lot of time was spent onhe internet looking for newly posted apartments or on the phone asking about the apartments. We prayed real hard. I even cried because I didn't want my family to suffer with me.

Thank God that last thur I found another apartment in a neigbourhood next to my office location and when we went over there on friday morning after our usual market trip, we quite like the place but the rent was USD950. The owner is a boss of a company and so his english is good. He's been to Singapore and he likes it so he quite likes us. We tried to negotiate the price to USD900 but he said if so, he won't be responsible for the appliances. After discussing with Joeanne, we decided to take it at USD950. I called him and told him we want the place. He said ok and will cancel all appointments with others to view.

Now comes the difficult part of the contract.... He said his contract is in hebrew and will email to me so that I can show to my local colleagues. After discussing with Joeanne, we felt it was safer that the contract is in english. I called him but he said he don't have english contract. I told him I have a contract template in english which I took from my colleague who came with us. If he's okay with it after reading, then we sign that one. Thank God that he was willing to look at it and he agreed to use it after we discussed some details of the contract he wanted to amend.

Finally this afternoon at 4pm we signed the contract and i paid 3 months rent and a guarantee sum. He gave me the key and said i can come anytime although the contract stated my lease starts on 7th nov. He promised to repair some of the stuffs I saw and told me to email him the list to repair before thursday. So tomorrow night after i come back from work, i will bring joeanne and joelle over to check the place thoroughly and email him the list. Hope that he keeps his word.

Finally tonight I can sleep in peace.

Sorry for the long story! Now an interesting annoucement!
Joelle has started teething! can see 2 lower teeth coming out of her gums! We were so excited! See photo below.



















Also attached photos of a local food called falefel we ate last night for dinner. It's bread wrapped with salad and deep-fried vegetable balls. Costs NIS14 each which is roughly S$5.60. It's the cheapest outside food you can find here. In Israel they don't have hawker centres or kopitiam where there's lots of choices and cheap too. That's why it's much cheaper to buy and cook
ourselves.