Wednesday, April 30, 2014

New Year, New Home part 6

What I like most about the new apartment is the kitchen. Most Hong Kong apartments have no kitchens. They all claim to have a kitchen, but a sink against a wall is not my idea of a kitchen. The newer expensive luxury apartments all have kitchens, but they are also ridiculously overpriced. People in Hong Kong are more than happy to pay way too much for something if it gives them a sense of status. If a building is famous or is in the neighborhood that is more fashionable this week, they are more than willing to pay twice as much as it's worth. We found a few reasonably priced apartments with kitchens, but most were smaller than this one.

I predict I will be spending more time in the kitchen than any other room. Now that I have space, I can make more than toaster oven brownies.

What Lily likes most about the new apartment is the gym. Newer apartments all seem to have gyms. Most of the older apartments do not. I don't know when they started putting gyms in Hong Kong apartments, but you can always tell when an apartment was built by the gym. The gym in our apartment is decent. It is not like a club that you would join, but for something just downstairs, it is pretty good.

What Kevin likes most about the new apartment is the balcony. Most apartments in Hong Kong have balconies, but they are usually very small. They all seem to have tiny laundry balconies that are just big enough for a washing machine and a little bit of space to hang your clothes out to dry. Our apartment has the laundry balcony, but it also has a real balcony outside the living room. It was the biggest balcony we saw in our entire apartment search. Even the new luxury apartments had smaller balconies. Some had no balconies at all.

There was a building overlooking the harbour that had great views of the Hong Kong side, but it did not have any balconies or even big windows. That seemed strange to me. They build something with this great view but don't take advantage of it.

I don't know how much time Kevin, or any of us, will spend on that balcony, but it is nice to have. My old apartment only had the tiny laundry balcony which only had a view of the building next door. We can see plenty of other buildings from this one, but we can also see the harbour. Looking out the window and seeing water is a nice change of pace. Seeing anything besides other buildings is a luxury in Hong Kong.

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