Apartment Hunting in Berlin

It's completely mental. This woman tried to scam me. At the top of wg-gesucht it says don't ever do a wire transfer! She asked me to do a wire transfer without seeing the apartment. i'd have to be a moron to do that! of course she stripped out the ad number to make it hard to complain about her. She asked for a wire transfer from a family member to me as a guarantee.

All one needs is a good fake ID & a name to put on it & poofy money stolen. She kept e-mailing, too. She said you can trust me. If it *was* actually a woman. Number one red flag someone is lying???: Trust me

 The good news is I have another affordable apartment lined up. I see it tonight. The guy seems really eager. This new one is only for a month but I am going to focus all my energy on a permanent apartment for October on wards.

This is the first month I am really really going after it. Before I was avoiding it a little to the last minute. I have had some great deals but I move too frequently. if i wanted to lay down serious $$ then i could have an apartment tomorrow. but i don't.

Don't get me wrong. I love living in this city a lot. I have some cool new lady friends. My music is coming along. It's wild what one has to go through to stay here. Luckily I'm still paying less than half the rent of my SF apartment after 9 years rent control. Apparently a recent study ranked SF as the 3rd most expensive city in the *world*.

Funny I posted about this on face borg & some person from SF said... I have a friend living in Berlin & she doesn't like it either! wh-what? I <3 it.  Just because life here has challenges doesn't mean it isn't good. Everything in life that is worth it is worth hard work. It's a wonderful city. Everyone wants to live here. So do I. </rant>

Elektron Analog 4

A really cool friend of mine recommended this synthesizer to me. I want to kiss him although I won't. He's sweet & happily married. Which is his charm. 

But back to this synthesizer. I had one in the US but you couldn't do anything like what you can do with this. There's all sorts of free sounds & patches & kits.

If you look in the lower right those black & white buttons actually represent an octave. This isn't supposed to be a full on keyboard type of synth. This is something that's much more for grooves & sequences... It's a great electronic music maker. The best part is it's so compact.

This little guy is a game changer for me. 

What can I say? I love my life :-)

My new wheels

Since man invented the wheel, a pair or set of wheels has represented freedom, fun, and dare i say... a little bit of cool factor?

I happily gave up my vehicle when i left the US. We had lovely memories. I drove across country in her. As a 1998, between the maintenance costs & the occasional $63 street cleaning ticket & insurance... I thought at times I might choke.

A girl needs her wheels though. So I introduce to you my new baby. I didn't realize I was going out to the burbs of Berlin & it would take over 2.5 hours to ride her home, 3 if you include me getting a little lost (thank you apple maps for that road that doesn't exist anymore). She was well worth it.