If I were going to say what my resolution for 2021 is, I think it would be that I will only start claiming my age 21 once I have passed my 21st birthday. LOL. Mainly because I am kinda in denial in reaching 21. 21 means a year closer to 22, and 22 means I would really be a full-fledged adult, what with supposedly had finished school by that time and securing a job whatnots. It would mean hurling myself into the tough labour market, and start being independent of every aspect of my life. I even imagined having 20.1 on my birthday cake instead of 21.
I guess acknowledging that it is denial is good already 😛
But then it also made me realize that I am someone with a lot of worries, a 20 years old with a lot of worries about whether I'll secure a good job, nice spouse, and that dreamy suburban home in the future. Why would I want to be stuck at an age where I have a lot of worries? Wouldn't it be better to age up and become more present in the time than being young but constantly anxious about the future? I don't know. But I guess moving forward and being aware of it is better than being in denial and continue being anxious.
Anyway, I keep forgetting to share my experience of finding an accommodation. So entering Year 2, my roommate and I have been kicked out of the residential colleges 😭😭, which is normal, by the way, as UMS usually prioritises Year 1 students, among other groups of students. My roommate and I also already planned earlier to look around, since we also wanted a more decent and ample space for ourselves. We imagined of treading the daily life of off-campus university students together.
First we visited this new accommodation building owned by Koperasi UMS, named Siswa Hive @ Numbak, which located next to UMS, just not really accessible to the main road. The place was nice, have good room ventilation (which is very important btw as our hostel room lacked ventilation so most of the time it was so hot and dark), equipped with beds and wardrobes but not fridges and washing machines, very new that they don't have any retail shop at the ground floor, have their own water tanks so probably there will be no water shortage (because our hostel always have water shortage), but then COVID-19 happened and the place was closed down???? I heard the management was changed too, for worse, and the residents moved out?
UMS students mostly live in 1Borneo apartments. 1Borneo is the go-to mall for UMS students, and UMS buses also pick up students from there too, and they have two residential apartment towers. Joining the popular choice would be easy, but my roommate and I were reluctant with it because the monthly rental per head would be RM200+, which is way higher than the previous accommodation mentioned, and also to find a monthly rental lower at that place is possible only if we don't mind sharing an apartment with 8-12 other students.
Personally that is something that my friend and I could not tolerate. I notice that as I grow older, privacy is increasingly more appreciated, even for a me-time activity such as scrolling phone and reading books. To further elaborate here in my own blog I still feel guilty because I know there are people out there that would say that saving money is more important than one's own private space. But I find that difficult to tolerate, as I notice that in this small pricate space I have that I can comfortably explore my thoughts and emotions and preserve my individuality.
So I spent my time before sleeping ever night browsing Mudah.com looking for room or apartment for my dear friend and I. My friend has a motorcycle and we agreed to ride together to classes so we thought of looking for somewhere further away from UMS, but cheaper and with a more comfortable amount of space. We browsed various apartments, messaged several landlords and agents, but found nada. Except there was this one room in an area quiet unihibited by university students. We almost closed a deal for that but I refused to for both for us because I think that area lacked security. Because we are young girls, anyway. And we might have night classes and the traffic at the UMS main gate is really awful during peak time and so we may have to take account of instances where we come home late at night. So there's that, another thing to carefully consider.
By this time I was really desperate because the new semester almost started and I may have to come back to campus because I may have classes that require face-to-face learning, while my friend's class can be done fully online so she does not have to coome back to campus. During this time I discussed with her and my sister, I made Excel sheet just to compare (LOL), and finally I joined another friend's rental home at the above-mentioned 1Borneo, which monthly should costs me RM230+ excluding utility bills. Kinda expensive, but the whole house agreed on maintaining only 6 occupants, so that was cool I guess.
However COVID-19 persists and none of my new housemates and I are required to come back to UMS so we continue online learning in our respective homes, while our kind landlord agreed to not collect the rental as long as we don't start living in that house.
The effects of COVID-19 is very scary; a friend lost a family, a friend's father lost his job, me myself a lone wolf started feeling isolated. In my househunting journey I also realized how important a space is. Other than COVID-19 making me explore the functions of a space, the house-hunting journey thought me some things about real estate and what makes a space livable; that location matters, and usually a space's proximity to a landmark affects the price (ie the closer it is to 1Borneo the more expensive the room is), and how a space can be so much more humane with the the right ventilation and window because I have also seen rental rooms that does not have window, literally just a room with no furniture but with washed out walls. Seeing the rental rooms multiple times made me feel anxious and claustophobic, which is the first time I felt such thing. It also reminds me brothels, although I had never been to such places. It made me loathe how some people are so proud announcing they are into property investment that they hacked walls and built small spaces and rent it out at expensive prices, targeting desperate students. I loathe how some people can see such space with such unlivable conditions and have the audacity to put it on market.
Other than that, if anything, I think it is important to remind young university students that living cost should not only costs for accommodation, but also should include transportation, food, learning materials etc if you are budgeting about your uni life. LOL just living is expensive
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