For this week's TL;DR we're talking about moving in Korea.
-Do you know why? Because we moved!
-This is our new apartment! -Yay!
So for those of you that don't know, yes, we moved into a new apartment
we're still in Seoul. We're actually closer to our studio and to our coffee shop now
which is awesomesauce~
The reason why we moved is because basically, if you signed your contract
with your landlord for a year or two years you're okay in that time period,
but then after that, they can do whatever they want so--
The landlord can double the rent or triple the rent,
In our case, the landlord decided to double the rent AND double the key money
-Oh yay! -Which is crazy--
because if you guys know what key money is,
it's a deposit you put down that you get back at the end of the year
-And it's usually very large -Like $50,000
-Yeah, it's could be like $20,000, $30,000--
How do you just double that on somebody?
So we decided we're not paying double rent and double key money, we're moving out.
-And we found a place-- -That's actually cheaper!
-I know! -Take that landlord! Watchu got?!!
I'll tell you what he's got: He's got lots of money now.
-ohh...
Anyhow, what we want to tell you today is about what the moving experience is like in Korea
because it's very different than what we're used to in Canada.
I moved a few times when I was in Canada from my home to my university campus,
from outside university campus to another place beside Martina's home
because I wanted to live as close to her as possible because I loved her,
to back home, to winter, and now to Korea
so I've had lots of experience moving.
Nothing in Canada is like what I experience here in Korea, it's amazing.
I moved once when we got married.
The most impressive thing about moving in Korea is the moving services.
So what I remember in Canada is that when I had to move somewhere,
I had to rent a moving truck, I had to get--
-or like U-Hauls, -Yeah, you rent a U-Haul
I remember mine costing something like $400-$500
-and you drive it yourself and gas it yourself -You have to drive it yourself
You pack up all the boxes, you have to go to supermarkets for the week in advance,
just store as many cardboard boxes as possible.
You have to try to lure your friends with promises of pizza and beer,
Please help me!
Get a whole bunch of newspapers and wrap your dishes in newspapers and put them in the boxes
It's so much work in Canada. In Korea, we barely do anything.
For us, we didn't have to pack anything ourselves.
They came and did it all for us for $700
-That's incredible -700!
That's like a little bit more than the cost of renting a van.
Yeah. And the thing is that because now that we have actual furniture,
Like this year we bought an actual couch, we had to buy an actual fridge
For my birthday, instead of getting a present, I got a fridge!
Yay!!
The point is we had bigger stuff to move.
So even if we didn't want to hire a moving service,
we would still have to get someone to help us move this stuff.
-Right, way too heavy -And rent a truck. Right.
What's really cool is that they lay down plastic on the hallway all the way into your room.
They put down all these mats on the ground so that when they're moving boxes across,
they don't actually scrape any on the floor.
And you have to rent the elevator. That's really important.
So that's a big pain in the ass as well
it's not just the cost of hiring the moving people, you have to go to your apartment's office
and you have to rent the elevator for the day
and usually renting an elevator costs $100
And then you rent them both places, that's what sucks.
So you rent from the place you're moving out of and rent from the place you're moving into.
Here's a really cool thing about Korea:
if you cannot fit your stuff in an elevator, what do you do?
There are these really crazy cranes and I remember when we first moved here,
we were like, "What the hell is that??"
Okay picture a dinosaur--Picture like a brontosaurus?--Is that right?
-With the really long necks? -Yeah brontosauruses have long necks.
-Okay, so-- -But they're vegetarians, aren't they?
-That's okay, this is gonna be a vegetarian story -Okay
So it's basically like a crane.
Picture a brontosaurus' neck looking into your apartment being like,
"Hello!"
And then they have this machine that goes Vrrrrr-- up the neck of the brontosaurus
and then in your apartment, they pull out the windows and they load stuff onto it
-And it goes Vrrr---- like that -Bring it down
It's crazy
Fortunately for us, we didn't have to use that machine, everything fit into the elevator nicely.
-Except for our couch which took-- -Ugghh
Our hallway was a little bit narrow, so trying to get the couch and it went *squeaky sounds*
Another great thing about the moving services here is that they don't just
box everything and move for you,
they also wind up uninstalling and reinstalling things for you as well.
For example if you have blinds, they'll unscrew it, put them into the new place for you as well.
If you have a wall mounted TV, they will take your wall mounted TV,
un-mount it, and bring it to the new place and mount it for you too.
Now although they can pack up everything for you,
we do recommend that if anything is really important, you pack it yourself.
So for example, we have a lot of special alcohol that we brought back from Canada
-Special alcohol~ -It's amazing! It's maple syrup flavored rye whiskey!
You can only get it in Vancouver.
We bubble wrapped that very carefully and--and my rues
Your underwears
They can-- they can pack it themselves, but I don't really want people touching all my rues.
-You're a sweet girl -It's embarrassing
Don't touch my smudgy underwear~
The skid marks everywhere~ all this smells like farts~
-So many farts! -I made chili this week, it was a terrible idea!
Something that's an unspoken rule is that you're supposed to buy food for your delivery people.
Now it's not in a contract or anything, but it's a socially nice thing to do,
and we're talking about a $5-8 meal.
You can either give them cash, or you could all go together and eat food together.
In our case, we let them eat on their own
and then we actually had some things to do with the new office here
and then we ordered the traditional food of what you should eat when you first move--
-Which is jajangmyeon -Yeah~
It is tradition whenever you move into a new place you have to eat jajangmyeon.
It's 5:30PM right now and this, ladies and gentlemen
is actually our first meal of the day. We did not eat at all
-and I'm about to start crying -Spudgy: I've had breakfast!
Spudgy eats better than we do
It's basically Chinese black bean noodles that I've never really seen
in any Chinese restaurant ever before, but they're really popular in Korea,
especially on moving day.
It's also really nice if you can buy some coffee for your movers as well.
Once again, unspoken thing but it's pretty polite just to ask them you know
if they want some coffee.
They are, after all, working for a very long time.
Our movers were pretty much here from 8AM to 8PM.
It was a 12 hour move,
and to think about it, $700 for a crew of 6 people to work for 12 hours is not that bad.
And it's really cool because the crew isn't just a bunch of professional people who don't talk to you,
it really felt like we rented a Korean family for the day
Everyone was really chatty and jokey.
and even though you're paying these people to pack and unpack everything,
it's actually quite helpful if you're around for the process
because when you move into your new kitchen, they're gonna unpack all your kitchen stuff
and it's really helpful to be there to say,
"Okay let's unpack this together so that this goes here, this goes there,"
Otherwise they're just gonna literally unpack everything and fill your cupboards.
So the very first time we moved into Seoul, we didn't know that
and so they packed our cupboards and then you have to unpack all the cupboards all over again.
So it's kinda a pain in the butt so instead the lady and I that were in the kitchen,
the ahjumma and I unpacked everything together
while Simon was helping direct where they wanted things to go up on the walls.
So you don't want to just walk away.
Plus once they finish packing everything and untaping the tape,
they actually wash your floors.
They wash them, they vacuum them, they'll wipe things down, and then they're like,
"Is everything good?" and then they disappear
An interesting tradition about moving in Korea is that the old apartment
you're not supposed to clean when you leave.
It's supposed to be good luck for you to leave some dust behind
so when you move into your new place, you might find that it's not fully clean
It's disgusting is what you wanted to say
You're trying to say the polite way
It's not really in the best condition
Aw, geez--
I'm not doing it, they're doing it.
So, you should clean it when you get there.
Before we moved into this place, there was a bachelor living here on his own
-and it wasn't in the best condition -Definitely a bachelor
But now it smells like bleach!
Yay!
Bleach! Bleach! Bleach! Bleach! Bleach!
We're gonna talk a bit more about this in our blog post
including the strange paperwork we had to fill out and working with realtors
so make sure you click on the link here so we can tell you more about our moving day story
Also if you want to get a look at our new apartment,
you can click over here because we're putting up the video at the same time as this video!
Ooh~
Which means if you're watching this video, we didn't sleep the entire day
because we filmed two videos and edited
We're wearing the same clothes~ in the other video~
Do you know what theme song you're singing right now?
I--Is that the-- It's some old game show isn't it?
No, it's a TV show, you're really close.
-Old TV show.... -It involves angels
-Angels and buttcracks -No, it involves a dude named Charlie
-Charlie~ -Charlie~
-Come to the mountain Charlie! -We have to go to Candy Mountain