Saturday 3 September 2005

Pic of the day: It's not just that I haven't moved in 15 years. NOTHING has moved in 15 years. OK, that was a humorous exaggeration. But this picture is not arranged. Just... selected.

Gotta move

Well, well. Isn't the world full of surprises. Today the landlord wanted a talk with me. Turns out they are selling the house, as they've vaguely hinted at for a while. Luckily this won't start until March 1, but at that time I gotta be out of here and the apartment be empty and clean.

This should not be impossible. It will take some money, no doubt, but money is easy to get these days. The hard part is finding another place to live. Kristiansand is swelling by about 1000 new people each year, so it is pretty full. Also the practice of having apartments for rent in ordinary houses is fading. Most people don't trust strangers that much anymore. But I will look for something like that first. It has worked well enough so far.

What I will try to avoid is buying a flat. This is a horrible time to buy. Thanks to cheap credit, prices are artificially inflated. They will come down, and interest rates will come up. It shouldn't be far away by now, even here in Norway. A year at most, I'd say. Interest rates are rising steadily in the USA, which sets the tune for most of the civilized world. Certainly for its faithful lapdog Norway.

Incidentally, this would also be a good time to look for another job somewhere else, since I'll be moving anyway. But I'm not overly motivated. I like it here on the south coast, and the area around Kristiansand has exceptionally well developed bus routes. The commuter bus is a great thing for me. I don't need to have a car, and I can spend the time reading or napping, so it doesn't really count as work time. I'm doing things I'd want to do anyway. If anything, I'd happily have a longer commute than today. Perhaps I should look for an apartment in Mandal, the next town to the west of here. There is less pressure there, people move mostly to Kristiansand. Besides, the high crime rate puts a downward pressure on the prices. Mandal is full of crazy junkies. Or perhaps it is just the local newspaper, headquartered in Kristiansand, that likes to portray it that way...

Anyway! It may be just as well that my credit card is almost blank (there are of course the monthly expense for my online games). I may not be able to buy much stuff from Amazon for my friends this season. And I will have to throw away a lot more stuff than I have done already. Every little thing is full of memories. I will be a much reduced person when this is finished, in a manner of speaking. Purified, perhaps? But it is OK. If this is the end of the world as I know it, I feel fine.

Although after 15 years, this place sure feels a lot like home.