Yesterday it (finally) came to my attention that apparently in Castricum there’s a plague of brown rats. Afraid of ending up writing an FML, I visited a meeting that was held last night, during which people were informed about the status of the problem and measures already taken. This meeting also allowed people to ask questions and make suggestions. The representatives were 2 members of the town council, a member of KAD (who get rid of plagues) and Rentokil (who cooperate with KAD).

Now, I was wondering why I should go there since I haven’t seen any rats or signs of rats, but I thought I’d better be safe and check it out. The good news is, it probably won’t concern my area since all the houses there are new and have proper sewers. But most of the people I saw live in the older part of Castricum. Through the sarcasm and anger I heard several (shocking) facts:
- These people have been dealing with this issue for fifteen years. For the longest time, the town council got complaints but haven’t responded. Juicy detail: upon the question of how many complaints there were and how they were dealt with, there was no reply from any of the represented parties. I got the impression they haven’t been very adequate in the past.
- In cases where Rentokil did show up to fix the problem, they did their job poorly and they were apparently unsuccessful.
- The old sewers are made of glazed stoneware pipes (NL gresbuizen), which is a weak material and has disintegrated at certain places. That is where the rats can exit the sewers. Apparently these pipes should have been replaced years ago, but that hasn’t happened. One lady complained the maintenance in her street was now 6 years overdue.
- It took ages before people even had an inkling of where in Castricum this problem is going on. Of course the people who live in it know, but it would have been nice to know how widespread this problem is. There was no map, only a small indication of places that have been investigated. This brings me to the next point.
- Three neighbourhoods have been investigated. Actually only two-and-a-half, since one neighbourhood was only partly investigated. All the places they checked showed clear signs of rats. They would NOT admit, however, that it was an actual plague.
- In 1998, the Dutch government decided that consistently checking for rat plagues was no longer in their best interest. Since then, there has been no consistent data about the existence and/or nuisance of rats in the Netherlands. The reason why they cannot call this a plague is because they have no actual recent data indicating ‘normal’ values to compare against.
- The focus of this meeting was very much primarily put on what people have to do in their own homes in order to prevent rats from entering them. There was no insight into what the town council is going to do about the problem in public places, or if the sewers are finally going to be replaced.

People were very angry, and rightly so. I haven’t seen even one rat or met any of these people and this outrages me too. This is one big pile of negligence and governmental failure. I just hope this problem doesn’t move towards where I live.

I finally moved to Castricum, but this is not quite how I expected my first week to go…

On Saturday my dad, my brother and me moved all the stuff to my new house. The roads were slippery and it was very cold, so that was an extra hazard. All went well though, and after soup and bread for dinner at my parents’ house I took a last car full of smaller things with me. What I hadn’t considered was that these ’small’ things would take me 13 times to move into my house. I was done at 23:00h, and immediately went to bed.

Sunday was my only free day, and I cleaned my kitchen and moved in most of the stuff. Then Monday I went to work… which naturally took ages. I received a ThinkPad so I could work at home, which is what I did. I worked extra hours so I could keep my appointment with the eye doctor yesterday. The good news: apparently they can find nothing wrong at all with my left eye. The bad news: it’s still not okay, not by far. It hates light and it constantly behaves as if I have a migraine.

So I got home, and I felt extremely chilly. I decided to sleep it off, and a few hours later I woke up with a huge fever and everything in my head and all my muscles hurting. So right now it’s early morning, it’s Christmas, and I’m really sick. I wonder if I can make it to my parents, or whether I should… it might not be good for them.

My new house is still awesome, even through all the mess I’m still in. A couple of closets should fix that soon. In the mean while I live with boxes :)

So because I got the key on 20 October, you’d think that by now I should have moved in, right? Everyone I talk to badgers me about it, which is meant well of course but it’s quite tiresome to have to answer “nope, because $reason”. So clearly it’s time for an update.

When I got the key I was very optimistic. I was going to paint right over the existing wallpaper which had already been painted by the previous owners, it was going to be easy. But then my dad started nagging (and rightly so). His idea was to first strip the wallpaper and then paint the walls. I walked into the kitchen, pulled off a bit of wallpaper and ended up with almost the entire strip in my hands. It’d be a breeze, I decided. It wasn’t.

The previous owners had painted over almost all of the existing wallpaper with a vague salmon pink colour. Those walls were indeed doable, mostly. However, in the living room there was one wall painted blue and a block on the longest wall painted red (in the study almost everything was blue). I bought 3 spray bottles and some bottles of liquid specially made for removing wallpaper, and some friends, my brother and me got to work. As we progressed, we noticed the problems with the red and blue paint. The red paint was slightly more tenacious than the pink paint, but after just spraying it lots and lots the wallpaper came off the wall. The blue paint was, well, a bitch. Three friends of mine have chipped bits and pieces of paint-covered wallpaper off that wall. It took two days to finish it. Then, a fourth friend sanded it and finally it looked better. We also stripped the wallpaper upstairs, which (thank heavens) went easier.

All in all, it took a few weeks before I even got to painting. In the mean time, my dad built a wall to make the one room I had upstairs into two: a nice bedroom with a lower ceiling and a bigger spare room, with added storage space above the ceiling of my bedroom. After that, me, my brother and one of my friends painted. Three buckets of paint (2×12,5 litres and 1×10 litres) were applied before it looked alright. The paint was quite expensive and the description on it said it should cover the walls in one layer, but we ended up painting the walls twice anyway.

And now I’m cleaning, which is even more of a bitch, because I found that the little bits of paint that came off the wallpaper have stuck to the floor and they’re only removable with force. I’ve now cleaned half my living room floor, it’s a slow, tedious and tiresome task. After that, I will only need to put the carpet in the bedroom and I’ll be able to live there.

And then comes the actual moving of stuff. Unfortunately I don’t have an endless group of friends with vans or something like that. I’ve been moving stuff as I went there every time, but it’s not going too fast. I still need to find the time, and boxes, to pack my room somehow (I expect that to take no more than a few hours), and all the huge stuff needs to go there too. My dad is going to help me out, but he can’t do that before the 19th, since I work mo-fr and he has a varying schedule and works weekends before then.

I’ve heard tons of arguments for why I should already be there. Fact is though, I work 5 days a week which leaves just 2 days for my house. Moreover, I do not have infinite strength to fix everything on my own in a short time, and I currently have a room I don’t have to pay for. It’s true that my parents and I don’t get along, but won’t take long anymore and I wanted to have a small measure of comfortability in my own home before moving there. So to everyone who exclaims “STILL?!” when I say I haven’t moved yet, please get it in your heads that I am not, nor will I ever be, Superwoman.

Right now this whole thing is making me rather cranky, but I hope that in a few weeks I will finally get to enjoy a few free days in my own home.

Okay, so the apartment was indeed as awesome as I’d hoped!

Since the apartment starts on the first floor and not the ground floor, I was kinda worried about cats and keeping them. Although there are often no problems with having cats inside all day, I’d prefer to see them go outside as well. This apartment has an open flight of stairs going down where cats can easily pass. In the room next to the front door the previous owners had installed a cat door, one of those things where you put a magnet on the cat’s collar and it opens when the cat arrives. They have two of those collar thingies, and they allowed me to take over the entire set. It was precisely what I’d hoped for.

Apart from the (imo) hideous colours on the walls, which will need to be painted over, the house is in a very decent shape. The wooden floor isn’t brilliant anymore (old), but will still function for a good while until I can afford a floor. The top floor has cork floor tiles, which look better than the wooden floor. There’s a tiny toom at the front of the apartment that I can use as an office, it will suffice just fine. The kitchen has a few extra cabinets I can also keep, and it is possible to have a dish washer there. The balcony is spacious and it faces the south so I can get a nice tan during summer. The bedroom… I have no words. My current bedroom fits in it at least twice. I intend to make it two bedrooms or at least separate the two parts using a curtain, since that will give me another space I can use for pretty much anything. The previous owners made a custom-shaped shower curtain which can hang from the roof-side of the bathroom (check the pictures for it; I’m having trouble explaining this but it looks awesome!). I can keep all the curtains they installed, since they have no use for them anymore (that saves me a ton of initial costs). The complex has a very decent-sized storage space per apartment, in which, at the time of viewing, were two bikes and a whole bunch of junk which fit easily.

Check out the pictures on my gallery for a nice look of the place, I’ll post more once I get the keys and start working on it. If everything goes OK, I’ll have the keys on tuesday. So wow, that’s fast!

I’d also like to make some requests. I still need a few things, and it would be great if anyone can help me with them.

• Closets: I absolutely need a bedroom closet, otherwise I’m not that bothered yet.
• A refrigerator
• A couch
• A table and some chairs
• Possibly a dishwasher (I’m spoiled)

Most other things I have, thanks to having moved out before and thanks to my grandmother, who left me a coffee table, a microwave and a washing machine among other things.

Oh, and next weekend I start painting! I pay in beer and food, everyone’s welcome ^_^

I haven’t been this nervous in ages. For a while now I’ve been looking for an apartment, on and off because I wasn’t in a big hurry. Last weekend I checked SVNK again, the organisation that has affordable apartments for rent in the region where I live, Noord-Kennemerland. I was searching in Alkmaar, Heerhugowaard, Langedijk (where I live now), Heiloo and Castricum. Of all these places Castricum would be the best option, since it’s closest to Amsterdam. In 28 minutes I could go from Castricum to Amsterdam CS by train.

There was an apartment in Castricum on the site, it looked just awesome. It’s about a kilometer away from the train station, it’s 64m2 big, covers two floors and it has two bedrooms. I reacted and ended up being no. 1 in the list. So yesterday, when I found out I was officially no. 1, I thought ‘well there will probably be a letter in the mail some day soon’. Instead I got a phone call from someone at the organisation and she referred me to the landlord. We made an appointment and I’m going to check out the apartment on Friday.

This doesn’t mean I’m taking it yet though, because I have a few demands. I want the apartment to be decent and without too many major flaws (I’m taking my dad along, he was a carpenter for years so he knows this stuff), and I want to be able to have cats. I heard that I have the option of taking over some things that were already added to the apartment, like a wooden floor and curtain rails etc. That should be handy, then I’ll be able to move in without much trouble.

I have almost everything I need to move out: I own a washing machine, a microwave, a coffee table, all the kitchen supplies anyone could ever ask for, etc. I figured all I need is: a refrigerator, one or maybe two closets and some chairs (and possibly a table but that can wait since I have a coffee table already). Just for the hell of it I’m considering adding in a dishwasher, I’ll get one from Marktplaats. So if you have one of those items and you want to get rid of it, please contact me.

So I’m quite nervous, since this would be my first attempt at truly living on my own. I think it’ll be awesome, and scary, but still awesome!