The Apartment - One Step Closer

So Monday finally rolled around!  For 24+ hours I have been vexing over this damn apartment.  Will the landlord go with the Germans?  Will we get into a bidding war?  Will I have to go back out into the heat and look for more apartments?  Ugh!  That makes for a long Sunday.

Anyway, Monday morning rolled around and I called my agent to tell her that I would be willing to wire money personally while my company processes what it need to process.  I told her that I have no issue wiring a token sum or if needed, the entire security deposit (which is 4 months rent).  Whatever it would take to secure this property.  She called the landlord and came to an agreement that a token sum would be enough, but it would need to be in the form of a check and needed to be delivered to her by 5:00pm.  Hum, a check.

I hesitantly called my Director of Finance and explained the situation.  He smiled at me like I was an idiot for thinking this was an issue and went to cut the check.  This guy rocks!  Ten minutes later, I had the check in my hand and the driver pulling the car around.  We were off.

I arrived at the apartment about 20 minutes later to an army of workers around the very large back-up generator.  This may need a little explaining.  You see, power is a luxury in India and even in the more modern cities such as Delhi, a constant flow of electricity is not guaranteed.  As a matter of fact, the power goes off in the office roughly 3-4 times a day.  How you get around this is having either an interverter or a back-up generator.  In inverter is a battery back-up that will recharge off of the normal power (when it is on).  The upside to an inverter is it requires no maintenance or fuel and is completely silent.  The downside is that it will only run a few emergency lights - not your air conditioning (remember it is 109 degrees here). The generator, on the other hand, will run everything in your apartment for as long as you put gas in it.  The downside is it requires maintenance like any gas powered apparatus and it can be loud.  Typically, if you want a generator, you have to buy it, install it and maintain it yourself.  The good ones are large and expensive.   One of the reasons that I really liked this apartment was that the landlord had installed a ginormous generator for the entire building on the ground floor that she would maintain.  A serious bonus.

So I arrived at the apartment with an army of workers huddled around the generator with tools.  Hum, I thought, they are probably working on the generator ..... and then got in the electricity powered elevator.   I am usually pretty good and putting two and two together and being alert for little signs of trouble, but my myopic focus on getting this apartment got the best of me.  Up I go - floor one, floor two, floor three, floor .... power out!  Mother-puss-buckets!  The added benefit is that with the power goes the air.  It is amazing how quickly that little space heats up.  Luckily, the elevator has an emergency sequence that kicks in after about 10 minutes and it returns silently to the ground floor and with the last ounce of stored power opens the doors.  Very reassuring, because the thing is 2x2 and I was getting a little claustrophobic.

So I trudged up the 5 floors (again, the apartment is on the 4th floor, but the 1st floor is the technically the ground floor) and find the landlord.  To my surprise, she is genuinely happy to see me.  She wanted to rent the apartment to me, but the German's agent had been calling her every 10 minutes since 9am slowly wearing down her resistance.  She actually showed me the call log on the phone - apparently, they were in a bit of a panic over losing the property and having to start the search all over again (I can relate and feel a tab bit sorry for them, but you schlaf, you lose!).  With the deposit, though, she was now, with a degree of comfort, able to send them on their way and stop the madness.

And so it is done.  Well, almost done.  The lease now has to go back to my company and be approved by the lawyers and security has to vet the location.  We has asked for this to be expedited, because if the landlord does not get the lease back in a timely manner, she may change her mind.

And so we wait......