New Apartment

We moved to the city of Kaohsiung. For several reasons. It is where Kevin's company relocated, it is where I got the best job offer and it is home to one of Lily's two school choices.

Most foreigners go to Taipei, at least at first. That makes sense since Taipei is the nation's capital and largest city. Expats like to have as many tastes of home as they can find. Taipei is far more international than the rest of the country, though not nearly as international as Hong Kong. I have no idea where to find authentic American food in Taipei, if possible. KFC and McDonald's are all over the place, but I do not consider that food.

Kaohsiung is the country's third largest city, and almost as far south as you can get. I spent a weekend here before we moved. Most of my time in Taiwan was always in or near Taipei. I have no idea where to find anything even close to American food in Kaohsiung, but I know where to get Israeli hummus. Even though I have spent more time in Taiwan than Lily or Kevin, none of us really know Kaohsiung. Yet.

Finding our new apartment was exceptionally easy. Kevin and I took separate trips and looked around. It took about a month to find my first Hong Kong apartment, and I was living in the city 24/7. Knowing the culture really makes a difference.

The new Kaohsiung apartment is slightly bigger than our last Hong Kong apartment, at about 1/4 the price. Everything is cheaper in Kaohsiung. A bottle of water is half the Hong Kong price. The downside is that pretty much everyone makes less money. According to one website, for whatever that's worth, the average salary for a 7-Eleven clerk is roughly US$6.50/hr in Hong Kong and US$3.50 in Taiwan. One of the reasons Kevin's company moved was for the lower labor costs. The incentive/bonus Kevin got from his company to move was that they would not cut his salary too much.

I like the Hong Kong kitchen better. Both apartments have separate rooms, with doors, cabinets and counters, but the Kaohsiung kitchen has no oven. There is a stove, sink and everything else one might expect in a kitchen, but no large metal box that gets hot. Apparently in Taiwan, just like China, most people eat out most of the time. Genuine kitchens are seen as a luxury. The new kitchen has room for a variety of appliances, but no space to put an oven even if there is a store somewhere that sells them.

Like China, Taiwan apartments seem to all come with laundry balconies. Ours is larger than average. We can't have a party on the balcony, but we can easily hang all of our clothes out to dry. We have enough room to hang every stitch of clothing we all have, if such an urge ever struck. Our Hong Kong apartment had a large balcony outside the living room, with partial views of Victoria Harbour. This one has tiny balconies off each bedroom and the living room, with views of other buildings and a surprising number of trees lining the streets below. It looks like every building in the neighborhood has tiny balconies everywhere, and none of them are laundry balconies, as far as I can tell. Like our building, they all might be hidden from the street.

The Kaohsiung apartment has the usual amenities of 24 hour security, ample underground parking and a small gym. An unusual feature that I have never seen in any other apartment anywhere in the world is what someone did to the master bedroom. The room was originally designed to look like the other bedrooms, only larger. But some tenant at some point in time added some kind of acoustic treatment/soundproofing. Yes, those are two different things, but this room seems to have a combination of both. Every apartment I have seen in Taiwan is relatively soundproof already, by American standards. Since all of the buildings over two stories are made with steel and concrete, it is much harder to hear the neighbors than it would be in a New York tenement. Our apartment does not share a wall with any other apartments. Our neighbors are on the other side of the elevator shaft and stairwell. There are people above and below us, but with all that steel and concrete, we cannot hear a thing. The reason I call the master bedroom soundproof is because, with the door shut, you can make a fair deal of noise without anyone in the rest of the apartment hearing anything, unless they stand in front of the door.

Someone tried to hide the upgrades with wood panels to match all the wood throughout the apartment. We figure that either whoever put it in did not want the owners to know about it or the owners do not want future tenants to know. I assume a previous tenant was a musician. If he needed a soundproof room with good acoustics for some other reason, I might not want to know about it. When we were first shown the apartment, the agent apologized and offered us a discount on rent. I'm not sure why they don't seem to understand the advantages of an acoustic quiet room.

Ordinarily, Kevin and Lily would share the largest bedroom and I would choose among the others. Whatever was left would be our guest room. In this case, we did the obvious thing and made the master bedroom our music room. As the second largest room in the apartment, after the living room, it has enough space for my drums and miscellaneous instruments, all of our stereo equipment and everyone's record/CD collection.

The apartment is in a pretty good neighborhood. That is a hard thing to gauge when looking for apartments in an unfamiliar city. We got lucky. The apartment is less than a 30 minute walk to the Israeli restaurant, several bakeries, a nice looking breakfast restaurant, more than a few Chinese, Thai and Japanese restaurants, Love River and its riverside park, several small parks, Jinshi Lake, what looks like a brand new library, both a jumbo Carrefour and a mini Carrefour, Jasons Market, Costco, a famous night market, the nearest produce market, and Lily's school. If we want to walk for more than 30 minutes, we can get to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Science and Technology Museum, Lianchi Pond, which is three times bigger than Jinshi Lake, despite its name, another famous night market and more produce markets.

The nearest MRT station is 20 minutes away. The Kaohsiung MRT is not nearly as comprehensive as Hong Kong's MTR, but it is better than nothing, and gets Kevin to his job easily. There are only two lines in the entire city. I have to take both to get to my job. It is not especially convenient, but I assume I will find a better alternative sooner or later.