It’s taken three weeks, ten return bus rides between Toronto & Hamilton, twenty seven home visits, over 30 kilometres walked and one custom written web application to map Craigslist entries onto Google Maps but I have finally, FINALLY, found somewhere to live!

Canada unfortunately doesn’t have a great way of finding real estate options. There’s no realestate.com.au or Flate Mate Finder instead you have a whole heap of crappy websites relevant to a company that owns a couple of apartment buildings (sorry, “condos” as they say) or the basic listing style of Craigslist or Kijiji (some retarded Craigslist rip off that eBay recently bought).

From what I found, and what others told me Craigslist was by far the best in terms of number of listings so I went with that, trawling through page after page starting in the lower CAD$500 to begin with. Let’s just say that CAD$500/month isn’t exactly up to what I’d call “livable” conditions. I’m not being a snob here, I’m just saying that if I’m paying you for somewhere to live and you’re giving me a basement the size of a kitty litter box and I’m sharing the house with 6 other people I’d like to know what the other CAD$490 I’m giving you each month is actually for!

Quite obviously my search began to escalate on the fiscal scale and as each week passed and each day turned into another depressing venture I quickly broached my “live-in-Canada-and-not-work-much” limits entering “find-a-real-job-you-bitch”. Now looking at apartments over CAD$750/month I at least guaranteed I’d be living somewhere that had a laundry that didn’t require coins to operate and there’d be no more than 3 people in the house/apartment.

At the end of my tether and only a few days to go before the end of June (they only rent starting on the 1st or if you’re lucky the 15th of each month here) I pushed CAD$800 and looked at what are considered “upper class” condos in downtown Toronto. My last visit entailed trekking between four different options and quickly began liking what I saw, pools, gyms, party rooms on the rooftops of 30 story buildings, and nice new apartments with floors that your feet didn’t stick to as you walked through the kitchen. Unfortunately, the fact that I liked them meant that so did a million other people and I often found myself coming up against others in a war for the available space.

My charisma not being a particularly strong point, especially when I’m exhausted from walking in this freakish Canadian weather all day, was not going to help me. Luckily the 2nd to last place I looked at contained two delightful gents who seemed to be on the same wavelength as myself. One a graphic designer and computer science grad, the other a film grad, into their sport and a PS3 in the lounge. The clincher, once I was in, I offered to buy Metal Gear Solid 4 for all of us to play!

Thanks jebus that’s all over! Now it’s off to New York for a week of fun with Dansie, Jimmy & Aimes.