With an Uber XL jam packed with suitcases and bags, we
pulled up into the parking garage of my new condo.Balboa and I jumped out of
the front seat, the driver helped me unload and then he left. It was moving day and we were ready and eager
to move it.
Then sh!+ hit the fan.
Condo security approached me.
“You’re not allowed to come into this building”, one of
told me. “But I now live here”, I
replied. “No dogs allowed”, he added.
No dogs allowed?!
As in no dogs allowed in the place we just slapped down a few months
rent and a deposit on?! No dogs allowed
in the condo where I dropped off some of my stuff yesterday?! Was he serious? Three security guards later, yes, he was very
serious.
Turns out he was right, the condo doesn’t allow
dogs. My real estate agent had gotten it
wrong and the dog she said my would-have-been new neighbor is very much a
smuggled-in-on-the-daily dog.
Great. Regardless, she should
have inquired about it, if the building allowed dogs or not, because that was
my make-it-or-break-it. I would never
have agreed to this apartment if I knew no dogs were allowed.
And just like that I was homeless. “Homeless in the Philippines”, add that as
another story I can’t tell my father and add that to proof that life IS an
adventure. I was homeless for exactly 6
hours and 18 minutes while the real estate agent pretty much pooped her pants and
stressed over the mistake she had made.
I sat in that parking garage for so long before I was finally able to
get a key and put my stuff in the would-have-been condo for storage until I
found a dog-friendly home. Skittles and
I took it to milking Tim Horton’s for free wifi so that we could check out
other online condo ads and contact other real estate agents we had originally
dealt with in the search for a new home.
At 9:57am this went down and it wasn’t until after 4pm
that I stepped foot into my new home. It
was one of the places I had seen that one day when we did a condo hunt and saw
7 or so condos. It was my second
picking. Moving my stuff meant moving it
from my old condo in Makati to the parking garage at that condo,
from the parking garage then to the actual would-have-been condo, from that
condo to a truck and then from the truck to my second picking condo. There was a lot of moving, it was quite
ridiculous. I hadn’t eaten all day
either so I was just running on anxiety.
It wasn’t until about 8:30pm, after I had moved in and fully unpacked
that I had my first meal for the day.
Am finally living in The Fort. Today’s move was totally not the move we were
planning on, it wasn’t even the condo I had planned for, but such is life. I really wasn’t stressed about it, I was more
disappointed and annoyed that I had to cancel my day of meetings and training
to deal with a problem that so easily could have been avoided all together if a
certain someone had asked one single question.
Does this condo allow dogs? That one question would have changed everything, instead
my real estate agent assumed the answer.
She’s human, I know, she makes mistakes like the rest of
us, true, and I can't stay mad at her because it doesn't solve anything. Moving forward. Plus I
have bigger things to worry about then this, seriously. So I have to be uncomfortable for the day, at
least I have the means to be able to even afford a condo. I’m not living on the streets. I may have been homeless for a brief moment
today but I’m in the Philippines. People
speak English here and I have so many friends.
If all else fails I could have crashed at The Refined or accept one of
the many offers that friends here have extended to me today when they caught
wind of what had happened. Today was
really not a big deal when you look at the bigger picture.
I’m not even suppose to be living in the Philippines,
that wasn’t part of the story that I had mapped out for myself back in the
day. I was suppose to return to Canada
after a year in Korea, get married and then possibly move to Portugal with
Poo. I never did marry Poo, instead I
stayed in Korea for 11.5yrs, I married Snickers, and then I left him and the
beautiful boxing club (Hulk’s) that we made together, the very thing that gave
me what I thought was my existence, my purpose.
Such is life though, you just never know what’s going to happen though
you may plan as much as possible.
Today I moved into a cozy studio condo in The Fort. Didn’t see this coming a year ago, or even a
few months ago for that matter.
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