No. 99 Ming Hua First Rd. 4F Zuo Ying District Kaoshiung, Taiwan ROC

We are finally moved in enough to our place to share pictures of it on the internet. It took almost a week after securing the keys to get it this way, but sometimes that's how it goes.

After meeting the money-crazy landlady from our last potential apartment, May decided to take action, and the next day we had an appointment to see an apartment in the same building complex where her parents live. Her father had negotiated with the landlord and was able to secure us a rent price that included both a parking space in the basement garage and the security/maintenance fee. Considering the location of this apartment and it's size, it was a really good deal.

We went and looked at the apartment with Paul and May. It was big, nicely furnished, with hardwood floors, and nice wooden trim and cabinets. From our quick inspection it had everything that we needed, and it's location was ideal. We could walk to Paul and May's house in just one minute, to my work in 5 minutes, and was really in the heart of our favorite neighborhood, where we lived in the past. With the rent we were getting, we couldn't pass it up, and so we put a deposit down and two days later signed the lease.

The biggest mistake we made when looking at this apartment, was going to see it at night. Perhaps we were tired or perhaps the lighting was not favorable, but we somehow overlooked all of the dust and dirt that covered this apartment. Had we noticed how much cleaning was going to need to be done, we could have probably asked the landlord to send in a cleaning company to do it, but now it was too late. The lease was signed, he had his money, and he didn't really seem to care about all of the cleaning that needed to be done. I think it was probably better we did it ourselves, because a cleaning crew would not have meticulously cleaned every inch of that place until it shone like new. But Jonathan Cutillo did.


The poor man spent hour after hour, day after day, scrubbing and mopping and dusting. I helped with what I could, but all of the hard work had to be done by him. The landlord was quite apologetic, but not enough to send help. Although I do think that all the grief Jonathan gave him about the state of the place helped us get the bigger refrigerator we were asking for. The funny thing was that this guy mentioned multiple times how important it was to him to have clean tenants. I kept thinking to myself as we were cleaning that he must not know what the real meaning of clean is.

But now that it is clean, we are happy and comfortable living here. It really did clean up nicely, and the addition of Paul and May's old living room furniture certainly brought more character and hominess than the plastic-y blue couches that were previously residing in the living room. There are two big balconies and lots of large windows for good sunlight and nice cool breezes in the evening. The work we had to put into this place, although difficult and irritating, did pay off, and we are blessed to have a nice place to begin calling home.