Tag: Flat

Zooks Concludes Agreement to Spend Comfortable(?) Life in Estonia.

ZooksLeave a comment

Tere!

As previously mentioned in the an article about moving to the third flat in Estonia, I have two flatmates now: one Hong Kong guy and one Lithuanian girl. In my opinion we’ve been good.

So far I don’t have any complaints (except for the fact that the Hong Kong flatmate revealed what would happen to one of the main characters in “Supernatural”). Anyways, he made a welcome dinner and we talked about ourselves and the flat on my first weekend here.



How are they like?

Humanity and personalities are very crucial since lacks of these may cause issues but I rather wanted to know more about the flat rather than the people to be honest. After introducing ourselves, we talked about the rules in the flat but








Jesus here’s real Sheldon.







Do you know “The Big Bang Theory”?

It’s an American comedy show which lasts until the 11th season (though each episode takes only 20 minutes or so). One of the protagonists of this show is named Sheldon, who is a genius physicist and shares a flat with another protagonist Leonard who is also a physicist. Leonard has concluded a roommate agreement that consists of tens of pages made by Sheldon.

Alright, let’s get back to the topic: my Hong Kong flatmate. After the talk about ourselves, he opened the Word file with his laptop and showed “Flatmate Agreement” like the “Roommate Agreement” that Sheldon made for Leonard.

The differences between ours and Sheldon’s are the volume of the agreement and unnecessity of signature.

We agreed orally and he shared the file of the flatmate agreement with us.

For those who are currently fighting with your flatmates or who are planning to share a flat with someone unknown, you may use or refer to our flatmate agreement to spend a peaceful life. I uploaded it in PDF so please find and download the file at the end of this article.

So, in terms of the flatmate agreement, what exactly did we talk about and agree to? Basically these are rules/tips to keep our flat clean and socialisation among us.


1) Secrets to keep the flat clean

Bathroom

・Avoid SLAMMING the door/toilet cover after use
→ I guess this is because this Hong Kong flatmate’s room is just in front of the bathroom. lol The Lithuanian flatmate and I don’t mind that much but it doesn’t mean we were resistant to do this, so we don’t slam but just close the door.

It’s written “Be careful, the inside is hot!” or something like that in Russian (according to the Hong Kong flatmate).

・Use it (the bathroom) for maximum 30 mins
→ This one was made considering the “congestion” of the shower use but both the Hong Kong flatmate and Lithuanian flatmate take showers in the morning and I do before going to bed so it wasn’t problematic. (Besides the Hong Kong flatmate wakes up at 5.30 every morning and the Lithuanian flatmate does at 9 am. After that they seem to take showers so it’s also not problematic even for them.)

It’s also a rule to open the washing machine for at least one hour after the use because of the humidity inside.

・Clean the toilet bowl THOROUGHLY after use every time
→ Actually this doesn’t happen that often. I just flush normally as long as there is no significant dirt. However, it is true that we can always keep the clean toilet if we deal with our own dirts right after the use.

How to flush: pull the silver thing on the toilet.

・Take away personal items after use EVERY TIME (except towels) 
→ There are shelves in the bathroom so I keep mine such as a toothbrush there. Also there are towel hooks on the wall. That’s why this item says “except for towels” but I personally have one face wash headband that I bought in Disney Sea last October. My previous one was Elmo from USJ where my mam bought for me. I’d used it for a quite long time.

・Clean all the hairs of the tub after showering
→ This a common sense and yet there are the certain number of people who do not have the ability to do this. (Yeah, I experienced already. It happened in the first flat in Estonia, and everytime after the German or Italian girls used the showers their hair was literally everywhere. It was disgusting and shocking even though I’m a girl too.)

It’s exceptional if there are spaces to place the stuff. In other words, don’t put personal belongings anywhere which are not racks or shelves. 




Kitchen

・Clean all areas (stove, sink, table) IMMEDIATELY after use except emergencies (flatmates must be alerted)
→ There is also no wonder but what I personally do is to put my stuff aside not to bother the flatmates’ cooking. 

There are stoves on the left of this area and the kitchen is quite spacious. It’s really pleasant for me like a person who likes cooking.

・Never switch the stove to the maximum heat for a long time
→ This rule was made because they experienced to have a pot with too boiled stuff but I believe that it’s because the one who cooked was just not good at the kitchen management/cooking rather than the heating system was too strong… I agreed though, because still I can cook with lower heat.

・Store leftover properly with a cover 
→










Wait, if we store foods without any cover in the fridge, they would get super dry.









Corridor

・Both inner and outer doors must always be closed
→ Our house entrance has two doors and if we keep the inside door open, there’s no space for the Hong Kong flatmate when he leaves his room. So this is also irrelevant for my and the Lithuanian flatmate’s lives but keeping it close would not cause any annoys among us.

・Boots must be put on the upper side of the shoe rack
→








First of all, boots cannot be fitted in the lower case.





・Other shoes (e.g. slippers, sneakers etc.) must be placed on the lower side
→ We concluded this flatmate agreement quite recently, that is, in winter. We also agreed that it’d be better to keep the shoes on the rack depending on the season. Come to think of it, where did I put my other shoes…

・Always empty the corridor
→ My room slippers are not exceptional but it doesn’t mean that I have complaints about it. I just take them off in my room as I leave. That’s it.




Weekly cleaning

・Everyone takes turn per week
→ Someone has to be in charge of cleaning the flat once three weeks (obviously because we are three of us here). It may sound like something big since one tenant has to clean the whole flat but also it’s confusing and troublesome to manage the cleaning schedule if all of us clean the flat dividing into three parts, which may get more troublesome when someone cannot handle it for some reasons (as far as I experienced) so this is actually the best way.

・The person-in-charge has to buy all necessary detergents
→ Well, we have different time tables every day so it’s not always possible for someone in charge of cleaning the flat to buy necessary things. Therefore, actually someone who has time to go shopping buys and later on the rest of us pay back. I think this is the best way so that we can be financially equal.

This sink is really small so I always use water from the shower when washing the face in the morning.




2) Socialising

Active hours

・Be quiet before 7am & after 11pm
→ I don’t think this is our flat-specific rule. In Estonia (or in Europe? in Ireland where it may have been the same), there are active hours. (It might be 7 am to 10 pm in public like a supermarket.)
This is to avoid the neighbour issues. It didn’t surprise me but because of my work I once in a while have to make calls in the early morning to New Zealand which has a 10 or 11-hour time difference with Estonia. (I try to tell my flatmates beforehand but it’s not always possible so I apologise in my mind.)

・Family calls can be made not more than 30 mins agreed by other flatmates
→ Our Lithuanian flatmate often talks with her husband who is in Lithuania but I’ve never been bothered due to this so I really don’t mind. I can sleep anywhere and don’t talk with my family. If I talk with my friends in Japan, it takes at least one hour though.




Internal

・Everyone takes turn to cook for the rest twice a month to ensure sufficient internal communication on a regular basis
→ The aim is to communicate with three of us. (I would have disagreed if the flatmates had been like the tenants in my previous flat.) It may sound too much for some people but the frequency is low and is nearly once a month.
The other day was my turn and I was lazy to think of what to cook so I cooked onigiri (rice balls) and nikujaga (like a stew with meat and potatoes and vegetables). Then I swore to myself: I would never ever buy Rimi’s soy sauce again. It just made the food in black without enough taste of soy sauce. Rimi has Kikkoman’s soy sauce, which is a proper Japanese brand and not cheap but it ensures that we can have the proper taste of soy sauce.



External

・Individual guests must stay at the host’s own room without interrupting shared area
→ Common sense, isn’t it. However I do know that there are some number of people who do not, again, have any ability to do this. Can you guess how many times the Indian tenant’s guest in the previous flat took my food from the fridge and use my stuff even though I kept them separately or marked as mine?


・The presence of individual guests of the opposite sex (of the host) must be informed in this flat prior to his/her arrival 
→ This item was made in case one of us brought their date or partner. lol However we actually let the others know when same-sex friends or someone will come to visit. It’s still better than nothing.

・The presence of groups (>1 person) should only be accepted when there is an unanimous agreement in the flat
→ Yeah it’s gonna be noisy when there are too many people in the small place… In the first flat in Estonia when there was a huge party which around 50 guests came, I was just shutting myself in my room, being annoyed.

…Okay, that’s it. Does it seem too much for you? Some items (or maybe all?) of this flatmate agreement have my comments but so far we have lived peacefully. It may be kind of sad for my flatmates because having my own time is really important to me but they may learn that the world has such a person.

Besides, my room has a balcony, ya hoooo! 

If you want to see or get our flatmate agreement, you can download below. 

flatmate-agreement-2020Download

Aitäh! 🙂

Zooks’s Moving in Estonia (3rd Time)

ZooksLeave a comment

Tere!

Listen, I changed a place.

This is actually the third time to chage the flat since I came here. (I mean, this includes my first flat because I spent one night or two in the hostel when I arrived in Tallinn.)

My friends know my first place. It was a hostel-like flat which had 11 rooms shared by 12 people. I met many types of people/students: self-centred German girls, a Ukranian girl who loves Sailor Moon, some Italians, Czech, French, Iranian and Japanese who played games and drink together. It was a really international flat. (Sometimes there were also some Hungarians, Cyprusian, Spanish, Estonians, Thai, American as well as Georgian.) Usually I had meals with some of them and talked with them instead of frequent nights out since my programme gave me and my coursemates too many readings every time.

However, in Autumn in 2018, I started working at part-time being a student as well so I had to go to both school and the office. It wasn’t easy to change the class timetables and I had a lot of readings as assignments as mentioned so even though my working time was 20 hours per week, it was tough to spend 40 minutes including one connection for one way every time I worked.

For this reason I moved to a flat close to the office.








Oh, this is not what I want to talk about this time but the event after this.






The flat which I moved in was a shared one by two other people, had no living room but a small kitchen, a toilet and a shower room. Although my room’s size was spacious – 15㎡ having a double bed, it was weird for me to have meals by myself.

But that doesn’t mean I wanted to eat with the flatmates.

There was one Ukranian guy and one Indian guy. Both graduated universities in Estonia and were working.

The Ukranian was okay. He wasn’t an interesting or fun guy but he wasn’t a bad guy either and he actually kept everything clean. The problem was this Indian one.

It’s not about dirtiness (as the common topic that is raised when it comes to a flatmate issue). When there was a problem or something, he always put (his own reasons and) the cause aside pretending that he was completely innocent and thought that the causes were all lack of communication. If you don’t want to read the followings and skip this and some paragraph beyond and read the next fourth paragraph. In more detail, he always kept 1.5L plastic bottle in the toilet to wash his butt, his “cleaning the toilet” is only to wipe the floor (that is, he didn’t clean the inside of the toilet), used my stuff even though I marked them told him not to do, said that the chopsticks in the dryer basket next to the sink hurt him (I didn’t understand), etc.

But the ultimate thing was that I couldn’t accpet him as a human right after moving in. Imagine, would you be happy when an unknown guy or stranger suddenly said “oh your hair is beautiful”. Creepy. (If you don’t get it then maybe you have never experienced to be hit on by strangers. This is the same thing.) Also my personal space is as small as what the Estonians have – possibly even smaller than theirs.

For this reason I didn’t want to talk with him and he never leant even though I repeated saying something such as not to use my stuff. Such a waste of time.

In addition, while he was in the flat there was always loud sounds of TV, video games and music (I could hear even when I closed the door and sit the furthest position from his room), and after he used the shower room in the morning I hated his spray smell.

Initially I told our flat managers to kick him out, he was one of the causes that I had to stay in the hospital, I gradually felt that it was troublesome to fight again and that this type of self-centred person eventually would be deserted by the societies and people. Then I started looking for a new place. As of Novemeber 2019, my flat manager didn’t have any vacancy in any flats so I also asked one of the teachers at TLU, who contacted her friends. Of ourse I was searching the new one on my own as well. (I checked the websited every day when I was in the hospital.)

Sorry my premise was too long.

Here are finally the main things: there are 3 websites (?) to look for a place to live and the result of my case.

1) City24.ee

First of all, it is a website called City24.ee. I used this website when I was looking for the flat in Estonia while being in Japan. You can change the language but some places lack the information. In such a case I recommend you to change the language into Estonian and use Google translate by copying and pasting the texts written in the website. Mostly it says “only Estonian speakers” or something like that.

If the description says “only Estonian speakers” it is better than “only the Estonians” because it seems there are. Why I used “it seems” is because I just have heard and not experienced. However, if you contact the manager or broker who have described like that and there are no response, just try to think that they just cannot understand English. Don’t say or think that they are racists or something – English is not their mother tongue. If you really want to live in that place, then it is better to make a phone call. In Estonia, it doen’t matter whether the business is toC or toB, normally they don’t reply. (The sad fact for those who have communication disorder 😦 )

2) KV.ee

The next one is KV.ee. I used this website for the first time this time. They have almost the same information as what City24 has but really occasionally they have what City24 doen’t have so it can be your option to check. There is nothing to compare in my opinion and the advice is the same as the above. (I noticed that this website is number one in terms of searching places to live when I got the link.)

3) Facebook

The third thing is not a website but a social media. These days it sees there are a number of people who look for places to live on SNS. It is true that groups like Expats have brokers and flat managers and they posts something to get new tenants, but I personally don’t recommend.

This is becasue the websites are more secure and have higher possiblities that there are actual physical houses or flats, meaning that they mostly don’t lie. (If not, I think that the website stops that company, broker or manager to implement sales there.)

Besides this is not anything about those who want tenants but those who look for places to live, I often see something like “Hi! I’m looking for a place to live! My budget is XX euro! Thanks!”.

Honestly it just looks miserable.






Why do you have such a mentality that “it is natual that people should help me” though you come in other people’s country with your own will?




If the texts were “I’m looking for a place to live! Please let me know if there are any vacant room!”, it is better though. (But I think this kind of people would contact brokers or managers rather than write a post on facebook.) Also I think there is no problem when the brokers or managers say “we are looking for tenants!”.

For those reasons based on my self-judgement and bias, the use of Facebook to look for a place is just one option but not my recommendation. Just consider what is better for you by yourself.

4) Eventually I’m always blessed with good people.

Lastly concerning my new place, as described in this section header, I am really blessed with people in the end even if I have troubles. My flat managers offered me a place in the same district in Tallinn.







Gods.



Saviours.





The flat is located 15 to 20 minutes by walk or 2 bus stops away from the closest stop to the office and has 9 floors, in the middle of which in terms of the height and width they had a shared house.

The house is shared with three people, although the toilet and the shower are in the one room, the kitchen was more spacious having a couter table with three bar stools, has a storage space with many shelves and has my room with a balcony. At that time a German girl, Hong Kong guy and a Lithuanian girl (who I didn’t see) lived there. Since the German girl was leaving, I’ve got an opportunity to move in there. I also talked with the Hong Kong guy, who didn’t seem annoying but nice. They said they lived peacefully. The kitchen and shower room were both clean as well (possible they cleaned because they might have known that I would visit to see there :P)

The rest half of the room was still messy so only the bedding area.

The building itself is beisde the huge road and my room has a balcony but the house was quite away from the road so it is quiet inside. The rent got 10 euro more expensive and my room is a bit smaller but it was actually hard to find negative points.

My flat manager told me that he was too busy to give me the keys for the new flat on the day that I was moving in so he gave them to me in the previous day, helping me carry the stuff by his car. Nevertheless I repreated going there and coming back to the previous flat FOUR times.







Super exhausting.





Also whenever he said he would come to check or fix the stuff in the previous flat, I tried remembering to ask him to take of “stars” on the celing but I always forgot. (I asked my friend when moving in there but he was for sure working at that time as it was Thursday.) Then I asked one of my colleagues to come and take of the “stars”, but






listen, he changed the history.




Whenever I invited my friends I told them the address (the position of hallway and the floor as well) and the door code. They always successfully opened the door and came to my floor. However, my colleague couldn’t enter the door code and instead rang the bell and called me so I opened the hallway door but still he couldn’t get in so I eventually had to go downstairs – from the third floor to the first floor.

AFTER the FOUR round trips.
(Though it was really appreciating to come and take off my “stars”.)

Then he helped me taking of another decoration as well as the “stars”.







However!





This is not the end of the story.

★How to Change the Address

When you moved out you old place and moved in your new one, of course you need to change your address. As I moved in the second flat, nonetheless I experienced changing the places in Japan, I completely forgot and the got an email from the Estonian population registry.






Then, how to do?





You can access from State Portal but I put the link here so that you can easily access. The website is called e-population register.
There is one thing you should be careful. When it comes to online shopping or asking your family or friends to send something, you may write “StreetName BuildingNumber-(hyphen) FlatNumber, Tallinn, Estonia, Postal Code” (e.g. Jakobsoni 21-4, Tallinn, Estonia, 10120). However, on this registeration, don’t include the flat number (and the postal code). In the case of the example above, type “Jakobsoni 21, Tallinn, Estonia”. (If you start typing, it shows the expectation having the area so no worries about some details. Just start typing the street name.) On the right of the address entry box, you need to type only the flat number. Easy Peasy.

After the entry of all the information, go to the next step, choose the contract type and wait for the approval. (It doesn’t accpet Digi doc files so in case you signed digitally, ask your flat manager their full name and personal ID, enter those, ask them again to approve what you entered and wait for the final approval from the population registry.)

That’s all.

Your Estonian ID card and number are used for the population registry, prescription, family doctor and bank account so once you changed the residential address online and got approved, such information, for instance, the bank account gets the same information so no need to go here and there in the whole town.

I wish Japan would have this system asap.

Surprisingly I haven’t done anything bad so I should be able to get approval. If there’s nothing renewed in this article please consider that I successfully registered my residential address.

Aitäh! 🙂