The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

It was part of a video montage I saw at the SONY shop, supposedly demonstrating the high picture quality of the Bravia range – however it wasn’t the stunning visuals that I couldn’t take my eyes off, it was the fact a fat, cute kid had a hat on his head with the word LOVER proudly emblazoned on the front.

In a great ad for brand design, it would appear from the distinctive colours and symbols the hat is connected to the Walls/Streets ice cream company, a subsiduary of the Unilever brand … which is quite interesting given that organisations goes to great lengths to talk about their “moral compass”, which roughly translates to doing right by customers and society as a whole.

Oh who are they kidding, they flog the illusion of getting laid via AXE/Lynx male grooming products and culturally blackmail millions of Asian women into buying their skin whitening cream so I wouldn’t be surprised if lil Johnnie’s hat was part of a new ice cream campaign strategy that basically said, “Lick our ice cream, and soon hot bitches will be licking your long cone.”

Maybe.

I still find it unbelievable that there’s people out there who don’t believe emotion influences decisions, but there are because I met one last week.

To be honest, his attitude shocked me so much, I can’t bring myself to write about it – such was the level of brain violation he subjected me too.

Instead I’m going to write about the power of ‘home’.

So last Sunday we moved into our new apartment in Shanghai.

While I thought I was going to end up in a house – with stairs – we’ve ended up in an apartment, an apartment that is much smaller than many of the others we saw.

Because we move quite a lot – be it a house we buy or a house we rent – we tend to have a bunch of ‘requirements’ for any place we intend to call home, be it some we want …

Clean
Open plan
Cat friendly
Plenty of storage
Wooden floors throughout
In a location that has a more community feel etc etc

… and some we don’t …

Gaudy
Furnished
Expat compound
Too far from work
In a massive skyscraper

… and yet, while the full list is fairly long, there are no outrageous requirements which is why real estate agents never find it hard to find us a bunch of places that, on paper, meet all our criteria.

But here’s the thing, despite a bunch of places all having the tangible elements we seek, we often end up having to see 30-40 places before we find one that ‘feels’ right.

It’s hard to define what ‘feels right’ really means, but it’s something that definitely exists … and contrary to what many real estate agents claim, it doesn’t change when you smell fresh bread and/or coffee when you walk into the place.

Take Shanghai …

Before we moved here, we heard of a place that sounded awesome.

A 3 story, fully refurbished, 3 bathroom, 3 bedroom house that was 10 mins walk to work and yet in a quiet, treelined street … and yet when we got there, despite it having all the facilities we could ever dream of, it just didn’t work for us.

And then there’s the place we now call home.

It’s a 2 bedroom / 1 study, single story apartment that’s a fraction of the size of many of the places we saw and has less storage than a snail could feasibly offer … and whilst it’s also 10 mins from work and set in a garden [which sounds way more poncy than it is], it’s got a very different feel to the treelined street we so loved the idea of.

But despite all that, as soon as we walked in … the moment we stepped through the door … we knew it was the one, which is why even though we won’t have our furniture for at least another 6-7 weeks, we are very happy and feel settled already.