Looking for an Apartment in Puerto Rico

11:28 PM

Today was a very nice day in Puerto Rico. This is my first day here, after having arrived here last night. I was supposed to fly here back on March 1st, which was the original scheduled plan, but we were late to baggage check-in by 5 minutes (we were still 40 minutes early for the flight), and because our bags couldn't be checked in we decided not to get on the flight. What sucked as well is that we couldn't get a refund for the tickets, because I asked for a refund too late, so that's $500 gone like that. Also the covid tests were around $250 each, so that's another $500 gone.

Anyway, it's all good though. I'll write about those events in more detail in the journal entries for those days when I get to them. Today is about March 5th.

My dad and I are staying at the Hyatt Hotel in Bayamon, a city in Puerto Rico, for a few days while we search for a place for me to permanently live. There are actually some condos for sale that are in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, and those are very affordable to me and the ones I'm most interested in. My dad decided though that it might be better for me to get an apartment first, and then buy a place later, so that's what we mainly searched for today.

Before we get to that though, in the morning we woke up and my dad watched some TV, I worked on some Puerto Rico related forms and paperwork in the morning for the new company I'm starting in Puerto Rico called Stealth Launch. That's the planned name anyway, and currently there is no other company in the world called Stealth Launch, and there's also not many if any search results for it on Google. The previous name was supposed to be Aspectari, which is a Latin word that means to see hidden things or something, but that name sounded too close to Atari in my opinion, so I changed it to Stealth Launch. The website for it will be StealthLaunch.xyz because the .com was taken.

Anyway transferring all the assets and everything from Megawatt Apps to Stealth Launch will take some work, probably. I don't know. I've never transferred assets from one company to another. And then Megawatt Apps will be dissolved this year once everything is transferred over so I don't complicate myself with a headache of running two companies. I don't even know the process to dissolving a company to begin with though. So if things go according to plan, my current employer will hire the company Stealth Launch and I will leave my employer and do work under Stealth Launch instead. That's the plan.

Megawatt Apps has been a complete failure since inception by the way. The most it earned in one year was probably, well, two years ago it got $70 or around that. The most in one year was probably a bit over $1000, but that was a long time ago. I don't even know or remember. Stealth Launch will hopefully perform better, it will basically be getting close to my current salary upon inception, so that's a pretty good amount. More in one week of its inception than the entirety of Megawatt Apps basically. If all goes well.

I wasn't done with the paperwork yet, but my dad said he was hungry and we should get breakfast downstairs for the free breakfast. We went downstairs and stood in the line for the breakfast, apparently you just go up to the counter and they give you a typical American breakfast which was some pancakes, an omelette, and sausages probably, with some fruit. My dad and I don't eat any animal products, so he asked if they had any vegan meals for the two of us, and the guy said they didn't have any besides the pancakes and fruit, but the pancakes were bundled with an omelette so we couldn't get them separate. Tomorrow though he would prepare something for us, is what he said. So we basically just got three breakfast containers of fruits each, instead of the typical one for other people.

That was a great breakfast, not a bad way to start the day with some energizing fruits. We ate a lot of these fruits and I felt so energetic, wide awake and ready to take on the day. I always tell my dad that if a meal makes you tired, it's not good food. It's usually better to not eat anything, rather than eat something that will just drain your energy and make you feel groggy and lethargic afterwards.

After breakfast we went up to the front counter and asked for directions to any grocery store within walking distance so we could get some groceries and bring them to our room. I asked in Spanish, because most people here only speak Spanish. Also I took 7 years of Spanish in Middle School and High School, so I know an okay amount. I can write and speak it to convey my ideas, ask some questions, but if someone spoke it to me or gave me something to read in Spanish, I get lost. This front desk attendant was no exception, they spoke way too fast for me to understand. They speak like 30 words a second and I can barely discern what they're saying. They repeated it in English and we understood their directions that time.

We went out the front doors and the weather out was warm. The grass looked naturally very short and flat, it was a different breed than the grass I've seen in the US where it's long and tall and has to be mowed every few days, or weeks? I don't even know how frequently the grass has to be mowed in the U.S. because I've only ever lived in condos or apartments and never had to do those chores.

We went down this sidewalk that ended abruptly, and then we had to cross the street at an intersection. We eventually got to the Wal-Mart which was next to a shopping mall, Plaza del Sol. Everything in the Wal-Mart was expensive. Yeah. Expensive. Bananas were like $4 per pound when in the States they were like $1.30 per pound. Almond milk was $4 too when in the States they were $2. It's probably the Wal-Mart, it wasn't a Super Center Walmart but just a regular one, and they only had a limited amount of food items available, barely any.

We ended up buying two loaves of whole grain bread, peanut butter and jelly, a gallon of water, corn bread, an aguacate (avocado, but not the Hess kind, this one was huge, like 2-3x the size of a large Hess avocado). Some juice and almond milk. And the total was around $30, which is quite pricey for buying almost nothing. We would have bought more fruits, probably some leafy greens for a salad too, if those were available. The only two fruits I saw were the aguacate and bananas. Barely any choice since this wasn't a Super Walmart where they have a grocery store section.

We walked back to our hotel room but stopped at a pharmacy on the way to get a pair of scissors. In the hotel room I continued filling out the forms, and submitted them when I finished. I'm still not really finished with them all, but I submitted what I had done. After that we just looked for apartments or condos to rent the entire time, for several hours. I would be texting and calling up a bunch of people, but majority of them only spoke Spanish. I would originally text them in Spanish and they'd send over additional details, maybe some photos, but if I suddenly communicated in English then things didn't go well.

The apartments I found were for $300 to $400 a month, and these were basically just the extra bedrooms + extra bathrooms people had in their homes. It's not like in the States I guess, where you're part of some apartment complex and there's a bunch of other identical buildings like yours. Here, at these prices, it's basically some guy's house, and they have a spare bedroom and bathroom they're not using. Of course it's a separate unit too, so it's entirely separate from their own section of the house, but it's still basically just a part of their house. I've not taken a look at more expensive properties, but if the rent were $800+ a month, it's probably an entire apartment building unit just like in the States.

After several hours of this, several hours of looking at listings and contacting people, we went to take a look at two places. I did not like either place, but the first place was not bad. It was basically a commercial office but changed to a residential apartment. How do I know it was a commercial office place? So this place was on the second floor of this commercial building. On the first floor there's one business, and it has a glass door entrance to go in, and the sides of the entrance door are glass, so you can see inside, and there's also text on the glass door. Well this apartment also had that, the entrance door was glass, and so was the entrance wall, but darkened out. So theoretically if people put their eyes to the glass, they could see me most of the time as I'd be in the "living room" which was visible through the glass, same with the "kitchen" and "bathroom" if I didn't close the bathroom door.

The second place wasn't as good as this first place, it was just too small.

Anyway that was my day today. I'm really sleepy now. I would have written way more because other things did happen, but I am so sleepy. It's 12:44 AM now.