This is a draft speech script for a Toastmasters club.

Introduction

Do you like moving to a new apartment or a house? I hate it. Although I didn’t like my previous apartment much, I didn’t have a plan to move to a different apartment either.

But almost at the end of June, I suddenly got an email from my landlord that he wouldn’t renew our lease this year. This was a surprise to me. He said that the apartment would be in a big maintenance cycle, once in 20 years. It sounded like I had no choice, but why hadn’t he notified me of this much earlier!?

My wife and daughter had gone to Japan for vacation. So, I needed to search for a new apartment alone, but also needed to listen to their opinions.

Apartment hunt

First, I asked a real estate agent friend of mine for advice. She told me that I was almost late for search if I needed to move in in the early September. She said that I should check Zillow and other apartment search sites every night and be the 1st to send an inquiry. So, my apartment hunt started.

At the 3rd or 4th visit, I found a good apartment. I really liked it. I was almost convinced that it would be our next apartment. But my wife wasn’t impressed. She pointed out that it was too far from a T station for my daughter to commute to school.

Instead, she was impressed by the next apartment. It was located at a 5 minute walk from a T station and the views from the windows were nice. I can see two big trees that are taller than the apartment building.

Of course, family opinions matter, and we decided that it would be our next apartment. We signed the lease, and I joined my family in Japan for remote work and vacation.

Moving

Moving day is always the hardest. We encounter a lot of troubles. We get exhausted. Moving to our new apartment was one of the kind.

I chose the same mover as before, but It hadn’t given me a good impression other than that it was cheap. When we used them the last time, they didn’t tell me that they damaged the wall. The apartment management sent to me an invoice of $300 for the damage. But even with the penalty, they were the cheapest.

This time, I requested quotes from several movers, and the mover was by far the cheapest. I thought that it would be the cheapest even if something bad happened and I owed a few hundred dollars in addition to their fees.

As it turned out, they were slow. Really slow. They went somewhere and disappeared from time to time. It took almost 4 hours to move out.

The worst part was that all 3 of them tried to put my daughter’s bed together for an hour and a half. And it was after 7pm! When I offered the instruction sheet from IKEA, they said they were fine and didn’t even look at it.

When they were all done, it was past 9pm. We were exhausted. I’m not sure if they were. And they charged us the twice their quote! Well, moving is tough.

The new apartment

My wife and daughter started complaining about our new apartment. That it is dark during the day as it’s facing north. That there is a slope to the T station. That Green Line is slow. They said they liked the previous apartment better. But the biggest complaint was that the apartment is unbelievably tilted.

Our previous apartment was tilted, too. I had thought it couldn’t be helped because the building was more than 110 years old, and is designated as a historical building. But this building is less than 60 years old. And it is far steeper than the previous apartment.

It’s too bad that my wife and daughter only had seen photos and videos of the apartment, and I wasn’t sensitive enough. But we have already signed the lease and moved in.

We started finding more bad things about the apartment. The fridge door can open only 80 degrees because of the narrow space. Can you believe that it is actually hard to remove something from the fridge? Also, they had painted walls so roughly that many outlets are covered with thick paint and thus useless.

We started hating the new apartment. It was probably one of the worst periods for our family.

These days

A few months have passed. We somehow have gotten used to the tilted floor. We have started finding some good things about the apartment. A squirrel family lives in the hollow of one of the big front trees. The children are still small and very cute. My wife and I agree that our apartment probably is the best in the apartment complex thanks to the views and sunshine in the morning.

Also the best thing is that we don’t hate our apartment anymore.

Appendix - Rough neighbor (skipped)

The next day, I heard loud bangs on the front door. Apparently, he or she was mad at us. When I opened the door, she shouted, “Don’t make so much noise at night!” She was a downstairs neighbor. “I’m sorry, but we moved in yesterday. Was it the sound of moving? Or our footsteps? Or moving the furniture?”

“No, we heard loud noises around 3-4am! We literally called the police! When the police arrived, the noise had stopped.” I had no idea what she was talking about. I said, “That was not us. We were all fast asleep at 3-4am.”

My next-door neighbor opened her door to see what happened. Now, the downstairs woman started complaining toward her. “Was it you!? The noise around 3-4am!?”

To avoid further troubles, I shut the door.