I dinged a fangzi today. Er, I picked out an apartment today. Deposit and moving in will happen tomorrow. It's about ten minutes on foot from work, in a little gated community, with a kitchen, bathroom (Western toilet), living room and bedroom. The living room and bedroom have big windows that let in a lot of light. It's decorated in a very garish neo-Chinese fashion: lots of fake, light-colored wood, overly-decorated molding and chandelier. I passed up two pretty neat old-school type apartments for this one, where by "old school" I mean the ones where you go up the elevator and still have to walk down a couple hallways to get to the front door, and are very sparsely decorated but homely. The problem with them is that they both looked out on a busy street, and if staying in a hostel downtown has taught me anything it's that noise and light pollution can make for a bad night's sleep.

The real-estate guy virtually went into hysterics when one owner tried to secretly slip my co-worker her phone number on a piece of paper as we walked around the apartment. That apartment had two big balconies, but they both opened to a busy street so I didn't give it much consideration anyways.