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Day 14: Ok, so I've been in Whistler 10 days now but it feels amazingly like I've been here for weeks.I've made loads of friends and no day in town goes by without bumping into various acquaintances so I'd really like to stay.I'm now in a phat pad in Brio - 10 mins from Whistler village.
Neil and Julien aka Kiwi helped me move in on Sat.I've got the pad through Filly's godmother's, uncle's, brother's cousin's next door neighbour.Its just till the end of November and has proper rooms, bed, kitchen and hanger rails!!How I've missed hanger rails.
The hunt continues but there have been so many near opportunities that it's left me exhausted.Three are worth mentioning...
The first and worst of the three was on Friday when Filly excitedly rang me to say their hostel manager felt sorry for the 3 girls and their plight and offered them a house for four - including me!!- at $750 (believe it or not in Whistler this is a good deal) a month.
The relief started to be released while Fill was telling me and then she paused and said she'd ring me back because the guy had returned.I put the phone down and chuckled to myself at my good fortune and tried to not make a jubilant scene in front of my other hostelliers.Not more than 2-3 minutes later Filly rang back sounding strange, she informed me that he had decided that he only wanted 3 girls in the house now and I was surplus to requirements.Gutted.I had gone from moving in with my three friends to being stranded in this bloody ridiculous housing game on my own in the space of 5 minutes.
It was a sucker punch and I was absolutely gutted, pretty upset in fact, and poor Filly who had helped me so much was stuck between taking the place with the other girls or sticking with me.
For some crazy reason she pulled out and said she'd keep looking with me.It later turned out that the evil personified hostel manager pushed up the rent for each girl to $840 and then in a final act of sheer cruelty to $950 forcing them to pull out too.In this strange cat and mouse game of finances and emotions some people like Filly were showing what good spirited human nature meant and others what greed and callousness meant.
The second was a too-good-to-be-true email received by Filly in reply to an advert from a woman who claimed to be an African missionary whosaid "quote".To begin with I was so excited at the property description I ignored the slightly weird frequent references to God and the terrible spelling and grammar and simply attributed it to her African background.
Hmmm, African background...something in the back of my head was screaming Stephen you big buffoon - NIGERIAN EMAIL SCAMS, HELLO!! - but I ignored it.The lady requested we send $800 a seemingly small amount for a first month deposit to secure the place. She asked us to send it by Western Union.Again alarm bells were ringing.I said to Filli I was getting a bit worried about all this and I could smell a rat.
We went to Western Union and asked about the security of transferring that sort of money.They said once you sent it, that was it.We were getting worried.Next we went to where the property was located - a bloody long uphill walk - to find it was a hotel owned block of flats and spoke to the receptionist who informed us no one by the name of the African missionary owner lived there as far as they knew.We'd been duped and even worse we'd wasted a whole afternoon following these stupid leads.
When I got back to the hostel and shared the day's events with my roommates, everyone said they'd received similar emails or heard of the scam.I felt like a right Muppet but quite relieved.The third and closest opportunity came in the form of Whistler accomodation site. Seemingly attractive accommodation on the website displayed in various slideshows had us drooling at the prospect of hot tubs and a sweet location.
We asked for more info and were told the cheapest flat was 'small' at $825 each a month.We signed up and were asked to promptly provide in the region of over $5000 without even seeing the place - we were told the owners were in Vancouver (a common problem) and couldn't let us in as people were living there.
Again I had slight reservations, this time about getting a place I hadn't seen at some expense, which I felt bad about because Filly was working so hard and getting so many chances for us.We agreed we would try and see the place and then decide.We went to the place and couldn't get in as it was a private block.I buzzed lots of buttons and no response.
Just as we were giving up and walking away we saw someone coming out and they agreed to let us in the block.We made our way to the 'bigger' of the two rooms offered and a French man opened the door which released a pungent aroma of weed smoke, natural man ordours and heat.He agreed to let us stick our heads into his rather untidy living space and to my horror the room resembled little of the internet slideshow.A small room with almost no natural light doubled as a kitchen, bathroom and living space all in one.Six months in this place??!!
It was a prison sentence.In fact a prison cell would have been more comfortable and at least meals would be provided.I just couldn't do it.With a massive weight of guilt on my shoulders after Filly had made such as sacrifice for me I had to tell her I couldn't live there.Since then I had had two job offers.One for a hmmm, housekeeping, ok cleaning job and one as a hotel receptionist (on my own for hours on end including two 'graveyard', yes 'graveyard' shifts).
The cleaning job actually sounded like more fun so I went with that.Which takes us to today.This morning I followed an internet lead about a place and was told I need Canadian rental references so everything is banking on a meeting we've lined up on Thursday...Sorry so much of this blog is currently occupied with this subject but hopefully soon things will change and I can bore you with sightseeing tales etc.
Hope everyone is well where they are.Stephen xxx
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