{"id":7432,"date":"2012-05-22T23:39:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T13:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7432"},"modified":"2017-04-11T21:17:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T11:17:01","slug":"house-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7432","title":{"rendered":"House Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is not my future house<\/p><\/div>\n

For the better part of 18 months, Jen and I have been setting aside money towards buying our first home.\u00a0 As two people that love to spend money impulsively, its been an interesting challenge for us.\u00a0 I am a materialistic creature by habit and I am always distracted by something new and shiny to spend money on – whisky, football, fancy restaurants, the latest gadgets…there’s always something.<\/p>\n

Happily, we’ve reached a milestone in our savings where a mortgage broker advised that we’re in a sensible position to buy a house.\u00a0 While we’re happy to hit this stage, we’ve still no idea when the time will come that we find the house we’re after.\u00a0 It could be weeks, months, maybe even years.\u00a0 We’re in no rush and most people recommend holding out.\u00a0 The once mighty housing market in Brisbane appears to finally be softening.<\/p>\n

We spend some nights mulling over the latest listings on realestate.com.au and compare our favourite houses.\u00a0 Jen wants a big kitchen.\u00a0 I want a decent sized rumpus room.\u00a0 We both want enough bedrooms for overseas visitors and a potential Jedo Jr one day.\u00a0 We’re both shit at gardening so the smaller the front yard, the better.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, I’m the more demanding of the two of us.\u00a0 Like most metropolitan areas, Brisbane has a wide range of architecture, including the well-loved ‘Queenslander’, the local term for post-WWII homes that are typically made of wood and tend to favour designs that feature wooden slats and stumps to accomodate our warm climate and allow cool breezes to pass through.\u00a0 I personally don’t care too much for them.<\/p>\n

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Every house in Brunei ever<\/p><\/div>\n

Part of me longs for a ‘Bruneian’ still.\u00a0 The Grekko-Roman pillars out front.\u00a0 That lovely cement finish.\u00a0 Chandaliers and gaudy furniture inside.\u00a0 Chairs that are more like thrones.\u00a0 Token Bali woodcarvings.\u00a0 I miss my old home in Simpang 700 with its pink room, blue room and band room.\u00a0 I miss my home after that in Simpang 800 with its sweet gazeebo and ten million rooms.\u00a0 For their last few years in Brunei, my parents lived in a five bedroom house<\/em>.\u00a0 They say that all parents want their children to live better off than them.\u00a0 For kids growing up in Brunei, I think our parents set the bar stupidly high.\u00a0 That same house in Simpang 800 would cost two million dollars in Brisbane and wouldn’t come with an alma or the pillars.<\/p>\n

It made me pause for thought as to how other former ex-pat kids from Brunei live, particularly those people who’ve got a mortgage.\u00a0 I don’t think any of us are going to get to live in a Bruneian and that makes me sad.\u00a0 It’s an often overlooked and underappreciated part of our upbringing.\u00a0 Those houses were so gaudy and white and gigantic.\u00a0 I miss them sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the better part of 18 months, Jen and I have been setting aside money towards buying our first home.\u00a0 As two people that love to spend money impulsively, its been an interesting challenge for us.\u00a0 I am a materialistic creature by habit and I am always distracted by something new and shiny to spend …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-7432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-brunei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7432"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7441,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7432\/revisions\/7441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}