House Hunting

Those who have gone through relocation share the experience.  It begins with anxiety and ends in acceptance.  Different, but not much so, from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s classic denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance in the case of grief, though the comparison is obtuse because relocation doesn’t really entail that much grief.  Still it disorients.

We lived in a studio for two months in Dubai; a one-room affair different from a regular hotel room only because it has a kitchen and no chambermaid.  It was the husband’s third lodging, after a hotel in his first weeks followed by a hostel that is the Islamic version of the YMCA.  He didn’t look for a more permanent place in my absence, saying that since I’m the one who’d be at home most of the time, my choice is priority.  That may have been his best way out if my requirements for the house we mean to call a home in the next few years were considered.

Feel the place and listen to your first reaction once you step inside, I told him months ago. Consider the safety of the neighborhood and the accessibility of your office, the grocery store, the nearest Catholic Church, and Catholic school.

Ask about the previous occupants if possible.  Were there tragedies?  Suicides?  How old is the house?  Are there strange stories about it?  Are pets allowed?  The husband solved all these by waiting for me.

Being nearer the ground and not somewhere up floating in a skyscraper is preferable, so we became house hunters eyeing villas for rent (or ‘to let,’ as they say it here in British English).  It seems single detached houses here are called villas, with sizes to match the name.

Too bad real estate in Dubai has become very expensive.  Renting a villa, which often has an average of five bedrooms, five toilets and baths, and an ample garden, is for sheiks, multinational CEOs, national governments, and drug lords.  (Okay, we can afford it, as long as we don’t eat for three years.)

We heard that another emirate has cheaper villas, so there we went.  I gave up even before we reached the place.  Sure, the highway is super wide and unobstructed, but if the trip took that long at that speed, and the husband negotiates that distance daily even at the wee hours of dawn, I didn’t care to live there.  It would be like living in Bontoc and going to Manila everyday.

We lowered the bar and set aside villas.  Flats (again, British for apartments) are more affordable.  That meant other requirements.  It should not be higher than the sixth floor, with at least two toilets and baths, and a balcony for potted plants and the laundry.  But even flats in Dubai are priced steep.  And that’s on top of being already taken by the time one reads the real estate ads.

Then it was up to the husband to finish the search.  At some point, going in and out of very cold cars and buildings with very warm walks in-between downed me with bronchitis.  He found a flat in an adjoining emirate that fitted us, in a spanking new building, which made my questions about previous occupants moot.  Bad news for somnambulists, the remaining available flat was on the 18th floor.  And I can’t run down 18 flights of stairs in an emergency!

When all seemed hopeless, he found this fifth floor place, with three toilets and baths to boot, in a ten-storey building that may have been the star of the neighborhood when it was new.  From its windows I could see 30-storey glass buildings rising nearby, glad that they’re not right beside us.  Forget those villas.  Our affordable place is a 20-minute ride away from the husband’s workplace.

Sure, one may still sleepwalk and fly out a fifth floor balcony, but it’s still much lower than the 18th floor.  Where we are now is just fine.  Any place worth calling a home even for a day should at least make one feel good and safe.  Never mind those other requirements.  Let the Blessed Mother drive those nightmares away, as my second elder brother used to tell me long ago.

(26 Nov 2006)