10:45 PM (of Wednesday, November 17th 2021)
Today is Tuesday, November 16th 2021 and I had another great day today. I have been feeling phenomenal today and yesterday (Monday) and things are just going well. I had my tutoring session with my Spanish tutor for the first time in 2 days today, because I couldn't have it yesterday since I didn't have Internet, and I had some issues logging in on Sunday. We caught up on stuff, and I showed her the preview demos of two songs currently in production, and she was blown away. I seriously love these songs and she said one of the songs was her favorite song. Really? Out of all the songs, one of these was your favorite?!
Anyway that song is amazing, the lyrics were completed today for that song too. I had a ghost writer write the lyrics to the song after listening to the current instrumental and hummed vocal melody. I spent some time revising the lyrics a bit today, and also planned out where they would go in the song. I sent the lyrics back over with my interpretation and time stamps of where I think the lyrics should go and waited. I thought I could get them back again today, but apparently not. Anyway, I completed these lyrics the next day (Wednesday) after receiving back their own time stamps, I chose my own time stamps as better, and this is the final version of the song.
The song is called "You're the best thing I've ever had" and it's planned to hopefully be released this month. It sounds really really nice, like a masterpiece song, seriously. So the lyrics were written in a very unorthodox way, the instrumentals and vocal melody were complete, but they were just hummed! So the lyrics were written to the humming of the song. Also the singer is taking credit for singing the song, she will be credited in the title.
0:17 Oh oh oh
0:36 You’re the best thing I’ve had
0:50 Can’t imagine a life without you babe
1:00 Can you believe that we were once lonely strangers
1:08 You’re the best thing I’ve ever had
1:17 I don’t want anything else except you
1:25 There’s nothing else better
1:31 Than you, I’m going mad
1:39 My love
1:42 You’re absolutely the greatest
1:44 I’m really the luckiest girl now
1:52 Oh I’m really grateful for you
2:01 You taught me how to love again
2:05 You’ve really made me a better person too
2:09 Oh I believe you are my perfect everything
2:14 You are my perfect love
2:20 Oh oh oh
2:27 You’re the best thing I’ve ever had
2:31 Can’t imagine a life without you baby
2:36 You’ve got me going so mad
2:40 I’m really the luckiest girl now
I didn't write these lyrics but since I hired a ghost writer, I take full credit for them. Also I did make modifications and things so I am a co-author at best I guess, but yeah. I am supposed to take full credit, but it honestly feels weird doing that for something you didn't fully create. Whatever, that's how it works. If someone hires a ghost writer, the ghost writer takes no credit, the buyer takes full credit. And it's all in the agreements too, like the writer of this song knew they would not receive any credit or any rights or ownership to this work, so yeah. I'm just writing my thoughts on this, many songs and books are done by ghost writers, but we will never know for sure. I am admitting it here at least.
If I ever make a hit song or book through hiring ghost writers, I own the song and book and have full rights and take full credit for their creation because everyone I hired is a ghost writer and already agreed to give me full credit prior to starting their role in the project. Although I do feel a little bit guilty and it sort of feels like cheating, I mean that's how this process works. It does not feel good. I hired people to make a masterpiece for me, and they do, and then I just go like "I made this" even though I didn't do it all. But arguably, without me and my payment and my ideas and working with many individuals to make the song come together (producer, vocalist, lyricist, artist, etc), the song wouldn't have existed. Whatever, it's a complicated thing.
I didn't do much else throughout the day today. I did some work I think, and then I probably played some games. But then I also for some reason, started this really long journal entry for Monday's entry. At first I thought it might be "too much information" and kept it in a private entry, but whatever. I decided to just publish it.
I rewrote Monday's entry entirely. Why? Because on this original entry for Monday, I went on this huge tangent about how lucky I was to get my current home where I am right now. Because I think I live in the perfect place right now and it's kind of amazing how much luck I had to get it. I seriously don't think there's any better property than this because of its location. I also randomly praised my Macbook laptops a lot, and I do love them, but it was just random. Anyway, this was my original Monday entry:
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3:33 PM (of Tuesday, November 16th 2021)
Today is Monday, November 15th and I had no electricity this morning. I had no electricity since around 9 PM last night. You know what saved me? The battery life of my laptops. Holy moly the battery life of these machines are insane. I have a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro, the newest models, and they have battery life that can last around 20 hours each fully doing things the whole time. Unbelievable.
8:42 PM (of Tuesday, November 16th 2021)
So I was awake most of last night (Sunday night), up until around 2 AM. I was probably finishing up reinstalling the entire operating system, because I had to do that. There was some problem where I had the same exact username and password logins for my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Some background on this, is you can add all your Apple devices to something called your Apple ID, and there's a page where you can view them all, and you can interact with them like use the "Find My" to locate where they are. Anyway when you buy a new device and you want to add it to your account, say an iPhone, it might ask you to enter the password of your iPad or MacBook Pro or something.
I ran into an issue somehow, where I was trying to verify that this MacBook Pro was mine, and it asked me to enter the password for my MacBook Air. The problem was, I had the same exact password on my MacBook Pro, and when I entered it, it kept saying "enter your password for your MacBook Air, not this device", so yesterday (Sunday), I reset the operating systems for both, and created new accounts with different passwords this time. I stayed up all night just playing around with the computers until around 2 AM. What was unbelievable, is that even though my MacBook Pro was on the entire time, it only went down to around 96% or so battery life. That is insane. I couldn't charge it again because I had no electricity. Also I had no Internet and was doing all my computer stuff in the dark.
I did put the computer in the lowest brightness and enabled "Low Power" mode, but I didn't expect the battery life to be this good. Anyway, I even used it a bit in the morning, and since I didn't have electricity and Internet, I went over to a local fruit smoothie place, this is where they sell the Acai bowls and Dragon Fruit bowls that I got as pictured. They're each about $12 each or so, so quite expensive! But I asked them if I could charge my stuff here, they said sure, so I bought those two things as thanks for letting me do that. I didn't even charge my laptop, just my phone which was low on battery.
I had fun using these laptops in this public location like that. I felt like I looked so hipster and cool. This is my first time ever doing this. I have never brought my computer out in public and just worked there, in my entire life. I have never done this at a Starbucks or anywhere else. Well, I have done it in a library a few times, but that's different, right? I don't know if there are even any libraries here in Puerto Rico. I have asked people, and no one knew if there were any.
Of course I was the only one there. No one else. There were people that came and went, but no one stayed and used their laptops like me. This wasn't like a Starbucks where there's lots of people on computers just sitting and hanging around. Most people that came here ordered their bowls to go, and then they left. I am very fortunate where I live, because this is only about 3 minutes away from me. I am literally right next to all the cool places here, the beach is about 10 minutes away, and I have stores like Wal-Mart and Ikea and Home Depot and Office Depot and a movie theater and every other store just 3 minutes away.
I'm also next to a few fast food places and I think those places are horrific. Since this island is very populated, there's always people lined up at these places, and I just imagine all the horrors and nightmares the animals went through as they got slaughtered so their flesh can be put into these "happy meals", it's so messed up. I guess the same could be said about any restaurants in general, but it's more horrific to see people actually lining up their cars for this. I really hope one day we all wake up to the idea we don't need to eat any animals at all, it's a really simple concept that for some reason people are unable to comprehend.
Anyway personal trauma aside, I think it was extremely fortunate I got this home in this location. I was about to buy a place in Bayamon, a nearby city, for $65,000, I paid a $3500 deposit and was ready to go. But I was looking for a 30 year home mortgage loan, and the process took months and months, like 4 months and I got rejected in the end because I had no 2 year history of income in Puerto Rico. That place was a 10th floor condo in a building built in I think 1971. So I wanted that place because it was one of the cheapest places I could find, but it really wasn't a great place, the location wasn't next to anything (had to drive like 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store). I did a lot of research on the building and property, read reviews of people living there, watched video home tours, and they weren't the best or positive but I still wanted to buy it because it was cheap.
So after being rejected the home loan mortgage, I decided to just buy it in cash. I told the property seller that since I am unable to secure any 30 year mortgage loans, I would have to buy it cash. She communicated it with the property owners, an elderly couple that lived in Florida and had some properties here, and they approved. However, another delay happened! They had to fill out a bunch of forms and paperwork that they apparently didn't complete yet during the several months I was trying to get a loan, and this took like another 1-2 months. In that time, the Florida condominium collapse happened where 98 people died in a condo collapse, and I was scared out of buying this condo, because this building was built even earlier than that one I think, and it's around 20 stories high, so I feared for my life for sure.
Before that though, before I even learned of the condominium collapse, or maybe around the same time, but I for some reason started looking at other properties, this time in the city of San Juan, the capital here. Why did I do this? I have no freaking idea. I think I didn't know of the condominium collapse at the time, or maybe I didn't care about it at the time? Because I was still just looking up condominiums, high rise condominiums. I found a place for like $70k I think, it was on the 13th floor or something like that, and I contacted the real estate agent. We scheduled to check it out the day of I think, or maybe it was the following day, but anyway, I check it out, and it was not great, so I declined buying that property. The drive to get there was horrific to be honest, it was so bad, and that is the main thing that made me decline.
This real estate agent though, was amazing. He asked if he could contact me if he found anything similar that might interest me, and I said sure, he gave met his form to fill out, and I filled it out and gave it to him. Literally the next day in the morning he texts me about this new property that just went up for sale the day before or something like that, like very recent. I took a look at the pictures, and said I would check it out. The property wasn't in a high rise condominium, so I wasn't that hyped about it. For some reason I really wanted a high rise view at the time. I had this idea of having the windows open and having a breeze blowing over me as I chilled on a chair just looking at the view. But on average those kinds of places aren't cheap, and the cheapest ones like the ones I looked at are going to be extremely old or not in the best state unfortunately.
Anyway, we scheduled to look at this new property the next day, and I was desperate to buy any property ever since I first came here, to be honest. I just wanted to buy a home that was mine. I have literally said YES to every property I looked at, except for that last place.
Traveling back in time again, so when I first came here in March 4th (easy date to remember!), I booked a hotel for five days. In that time, I looked at a property every day to try and find one to buy. They were all homes under $60k, so, very cheap compared to the average $500k to $700k homes in my old county in Virginia. Anyway I looked at only condominiums here, and I said yes, yes, yes, to every property I looked at, even if it was old or not in the best state or whatever, I just wanted a home. The thing is, I said yes to each one, but I would look at another property the next day and it would be better, so I would say yes to that too, and that would override my previous yes.
I thought I could get a loan like the same exact day I looked at a propriety, but as I mentioned above, that's not the case, and so I was forced to look for a place to rent first. We don't have apartment complexes here to easily rent, believe me I tried looking for a place I can just enter and go to the main office and ask if I can rent a small apartment and no, as far as I'm aware, there's nowhere like that in Puerto Rico. In Virginia, I lived in apartments for over 14 years in the "slum" neighborhoods (although they felt alright to me, and I met most of my friends there), since I grew up broke, my dad was the only one that worked and he made under $40k a year.
Anyway in Virginia, you can literally get a place to rent the same day if you find an apartment complex. Here, no, you have to rent from landlords, and it was the only option. I even did a search online just now for any apartments for rent here, and no, again I only found results of just places to rent owned by landlords. So you had to call these landlords up if you wanted to rent a property from them. That is the only way to get a place to rent here as far as I know. Calling them up is not such an easy feat either, since majority probably only speak Spanish, and yes I only spoke to them in Spanish too. It's weird, in text messages and in calls, I would just speak to them in Spanish, but they knew I wasn't great at it, so they would often reply back in English if they could, but I would just continue in my not great Spanish.
Anyway, I think this is where my luck really showed. I think the best homes to rent are ones where wi-fi is provided. Good luck finding a place like that that isn't an Airbnb. Airbnb can be really expensive here like $100 a day or more for the cheapest ones, so I had to look for an alternative. So at a grocery store here I met another Asian "gringo" and they were paying like $3400 a month or something for their place. Yeah, CRAZY!! Anyway, if you want a quality place like you would find in the states, that's probably how much you can expect to pay in rent. Yeah, all the places I looked at with the cheap prices, let's just say they weren't the best quality, and probably most people reading this would decline living in those places, but I could live in those places just fine.
Okay so one day before my hotel booking was done, I was desperate to find a place to rent. There were probably only 2 places in total that had Wi-Fi included out of thousands of listings on the "Zillow" of Puerto Rico website (ClasificadosOnline) which was entirely in Spanish. The first place I checked out, and no. I opted out of that one. It was $450 a month rent, but the environment was terrible, it was this one room place, part of some guy's house basically, very hot with no cooling, with the tiniest bathroom I had ever seen, basically enough room to take two steps in total, and that is no exaggeration, you could pee and wash your hands standing in the same place, and then take another step to enter the shower, and that was it, no more room to move, literally like a porta potty. Actually I didn't say no right away, but my dad who was with me from arriving until I found a place to rent, said that place wasn't good. It did have free wi-fi though, because again it was just some part of some guy's house.
There was another place for $250 a month that provided free wi-fi. I said yes to that one right away, but I checked out the property. It was literally this abandoned office in some abandoned looking building. You know how some offices have those glass windows and walls from the outside so you can see inside, and also the door is glass? Yeah it was that. I felt like I had no privacy there, so I opted out. It was a good cheap place, there was just no privacy, literally anyone entering this building and walked to where I was, could then just see me. The idea of installing curtains or blinds didn't come to mind at the time. Also my dad said that place had no security, so it was better to find somewhere better.
So I looked at the last listing with wi-fi and it was pricey at around $750 a month rent, but it was better than nothing. I called up the landlord and I told them my hotel was ending the next day (I only booked 5 days of hotel and it was like $250 a day), and I asked if I could rent it the next day if that was possible. I have not even looked at this property in real life yet but since my hotel was ending I was just going to take it. The landlord gave me the address and told me to go there the next day.
So our hotel ended and we packed up our things and took an Uber to the new place. Actually the first Uber we called up was just a regular sedan, and all our bags couldn't fit in a bag, so we had to order a new SUV Uber. My first time visiting there was an experience, I don't really remember it that well. I think we got in through the security gates this first time by just following the person ahead of us in, because I don't recall calling the landlord to let us in.
Anyway the landlord was a cool guy. He was cleaning up the place when we arrived. My first impression of the place was that it was nice and spacious, 3 bedroom 2 bathroom section of a multi-family home and a good place to rent. This multi-family home was massive, it had 4 units to rent, and it didn't look that big from the outside, but the fact that my single unit had 3 bedroom 2 bathroom and all the other units were all similar sizes, it meant this home was huge. Again there are no apartment complexes that I know of here, so this is the most common type of unit to rent, someone's unit in their multi-family home.
The landlord had the contracts ready then and there, I wrote up the deposit check and signed the contract, and voila, the place was rented out to me in just one day and the rent was $825 a month and included Wi-Fi and electricity, but not water. That's pretty good deal and I'm pretty lucky to have gotten this unit, right? Doing searches later, I could not find any better property to have rented. The location wasn't bad either, it's not as good as my current location, but it wasn't bad. Actually, I think it was an ideal location for walking, which I had to do a lot. My current place is not great for walking, because you would have to walk on the sidewalk of some high traffic main roads to get anywhere, and that can be dangerous.
My old place was in a far less central location. What I think was great too, was this nearby bank that was within walking distance. The people there were exceptionally friendly and I was able to get my personal and business account set up easily there. This place was also about 40 minutes away from the nearest grocery store walking, and I had a good time doing that. I had adventures here where I lived for several months without a bed, car, fridge, freezer, no washing machine, no dryer, complete minimalist lifestyle. I bought my car while I was here, I dated someone, I made a lame video series, etc. But they're all just memories now. Time passes by so quickly, there's not much I can really do about that.
Back to buying this new home several months later after being rejected for a 30 year home mortgage loan, I check out that other high rise condo then declined it and I get a text message the next day from the realtor asking if I was interested in this new property that just opened up. They sent over the listing page with pictures and I said I wanted to check it out. So we go there, and it was a cool place. Like my old habit of just saying yes to everything, I also said yes to this. He gave me the price which was $73,000 for this property, just $8,000 more than the place in Bayamon. I was hesitant, I wasn't sure. I noticed I wasn't getting a signal in one of the rooms, so I said no because of that. But then he convinced me otherwise, which was amazing of him, and I said okay fine I'll buy it, and he said the bank owned it so I could just put up a bid offer, I put up an offer slightly higher and he said he would submit it and they would consider it.
I actually didn't expect my bid to be the highest since it was basically $73,000 but just a little bit higher. But I offered to pay upfront in cash, so I think that gave me more advantage in the bid. There are cheap homes here, but not all of them are cheap. If you want a decent place like homes in the States, it would probably cost over $200,000, and I can't afford that in cash, and I can't get a 30 year loan mortgage either, I mean I got rejected for a $65,000 loan no way would I get approval for $200,000. So the fact that I got a nice home and for a price I could afford, that was crazy lucky and unbelievable. Now that I have lived here for a while, this is probably one of the best homes I can imagine having gotten here. This place is amazing. It's really close to everything, and I really enjoy living here.
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6:48 AM (of Thursday, November 18th 2021)
So that was the story of how I got my home. I just wanted to write it down in case I forget? I don't know. These are all just memories. Because I own this home outright, I can make it look however I want. Right now it looks really plain and very simple, but I guess I'm fine with that? I still don't own a bed yet. I actually still sleep on the floor. I do use a yoga mat most of the time, but some nights I literally just sleep right on the ground with just a blanket and a pillow. I need to get a bed.
The rest of today (Tuesday) I worked on the lyrics I think, and that was it.
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