Thursday, November 03, 2005

Job? Check. Apartment?

So after all the plane flights and resume-dropping and general stress of job-hunting, I landed a big one. I'm moving to New York to be a "Business Analyst" for Macquarie Holdings, an Australian firm that buys the hell out of companies and stuff. For various reasons, I'm totally stoked: everyone at the company seems really laid-back and fun, I get four weeks of vacation, they're going to send me to Sydney for three weeks for training, and, most importantly, I get to learn how to buy companies. Awesome. I start work on November 14th.

I've been apartment-hunting in Manhattan since Monday, and it's been quite the memorable experience. The low point came yesterday afternoon at a building off Convent Ave in Harlem. In one building the super says (in his Jaime the Science Friend drawl), "Come here, check this out, this one isn't for rent yet, but you gotta see this. Only in the movies, man." And what do I see inside the first bedroom?

All the windows are covered with black paper, there are dim red lights everywhere, and there's some huge S&M rack complete with ropes and rods and scaffolding and shit. The super said when the last tenant moved out, she just left it in there. He has it on eBay (though I couldn't find it in a couple minutes of searching), and says he has offers for more than $3500 already. "You never know who lives next door, man," says the super. Thanks, buddy! Now how the hell do I get out of this building?

I did, however, find a nice apartment at 123rd St & Broadway, just north of Columbia, that I'm going to make an offer on this morning. It's kind of sort of in Harlem, which sounds scary to a white honky from Florida, but I explored the neighborhood last night at around 10PM and never once felt like I was going to get a shiv in the kidneys. There's a bar/restaurant that looks suspiciously like the Miracle of Science, a couple Chinese take-out restaurants, a yuppy-looking Thai restaurant named "Blue Angel", and a convenience store on the corner that sells fancy beers. I did, however, have to spend quite a while reassuring my poor mother that I wouldn't be killed or mugged were I to live there. I think I shouldn't have mentioned the housing projects up the street.

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