We’ve been asking around about what others with little people looked for in their house. As I mentioned earier, we may be looking at a change of cities once we have our own little person and while we’d love to have a replica of our Jakarta house in a different country, it may not be that easy — after all a little person has different needs to bigger (and rounder) people like S and me.
I emailed an old friend J who lives in one of the places we’re considering and he brought up issues that really swing in favour of living in a compound — security, knowing your neighbour won’t be burning rubbish in his front yard 24 hours a day, lots of safe areas to run around in without needing to play in the traffic, reasonably quiet and knowing the old lady nextdoor will happily babysit your little person.
Then I chatted to M, another old friend who lives in the same city, but not in a compound. He talked of the importance of having a garden for room to play (and for him to potter around, procrastinate and puff cigarettes), and being close to amenitites (restaurants, pubs, shops, oh and schools). He was dismissive of taking a house, partly because of the cost, but also because you open yourself to construction happening next door, which, in a row of townhouses as he is, is less likely to happen — it’s bad enough being woken at 4am by the baby, but even worse to be woken again at 5am by a half dozen drills and a generator.
Neither were keen on a condo – which are very affordbale to both rent and buy in the place we’re considering. If we take a condo then the baby then has no real grass to feel snaking up between her toes. We’ve lived in both houses and apartments and would prefer a house…
Then there’s where to live? In downtown, on the outskirts, or go the whole hog and go rural. The further out we go, the cheaper it gets, with rental on a townhouse downtown getting us a 5 bedroom house but a few km out of town — but then we’d need a car and driver (S doesn’t do driving), and struggling home after an all-night Risk session with M and J could be a bit of a struggle for me…
Then there’s help — finding the right nannie/maid — we had enough trouble deciding on someone who would wash the floors and feed the fatcat — it certainly won’t be any easier selecting somebody to help us look after (ie., change nappies) the baby.
After Jakarta, I’d really like to have a pool, but all the fencing in Oz to do with pools has instilled a layer of paranoia in me I never knew I had. This will probably be an easy one as pools are not nearly as common where we are looking.
So many decisions and while it seems like they’re all a long way off, they’re not far away at all — I’ve got another two and a half weeks on the islands, a fortnight in Laos and hopefully a fortnight in Vietnam, all before this happens…