Saturday, January 10, 2015

The NOT so 'royal treatment' at 720 Princess Street..

I know it's been so long since I've indulged your creative side with my posts... Believe me there are 3-4 videos waiting to be done and I have missed you all so much! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and good New Years start to 2015!

So let me catch you all up to speed on my involuntary-hiatus in hopes you will forgive my tardiness..
As some of you know (if you have followed the various frustrated therapeutic rants on my Facebook) after moving from my glorious house on Newcourt Place at the end of school, I have apparently been going from one bad place to the next worst.

Churchill Street was full of more 'roommates' than I could handle.. and by that I mean it was infested with giant house centipedes.. Not that I blame the bugs.. There was construction going on outside our house during the time I was there so the poor things were probably just scared and looking for a place to go BUT that does NOT mean it had to be in my room between midnight and 6am every other day. Or in our kitchen sink... Did I mention they don't die when you spray them with RAID!? It's bad enough I'm horribly arachnophobic but to deal with what looks like two spiders fused together is just too much to handle when your trying to find 1-2 jobs preferably in the occupational field that you just blew your entire life savings on for the past three years.
Speaking of roommates... At Churchill Street we were a band of misfit roomies to say the least.. One was hardly there but when he was made a DISASTER of the place along with letting his whiney tiny lil 'rat' of a dog roam everywhere. The other girl and I barely spoke but she always felt the need to leave a mess of the kitchen, leave rotting food in their fridge (we had two thank the lord) and sabotage the rest of us. Our final late coming foreign roomie was at least 10-20yrs older than us and instead of helping us two girls clean the house, felt the need to always chat us up for hours about our life choices and then complain for the same amount of hours about us being too loud.
By the time I left that house.. we all hated each other, I had gotten sick about 4 times and we all lived reclusively like hermits in our rooms and bluntly avoided one another like the plague. I was the only one to collect and take out the garbage (which became so gross that even the garbage collectors didn't want to take it..) and no one cleaned anymore.
But hey don't get me wrong, the landlord was an absolute peach! I loved her and always hung out with her when she came to visit. It's not her fault she rented the house to the people she did.

Moving on the true monster of the story.. the cause of my frustrated pause in posting.. 720 Princess Street Studios. Now you would think the idea of cheap & affordable single (all-inclusive) bachelor apartments would be a dream come true! Taking an old Super 8 Motel building and renovating the inside into apartments. (And I'm sure that for some of my fellow neighbours here that have.. a lesser tolerance, higher patience and lower hygiene than I then it really is a dream come true) But the fact of the matter is... this place is NOT worth it!
The promised September 1st 2014 Opening was to offer a fully renovated downstairs lounge, equipped with a gym, study area, kitchen, internet cafe, 4 big screen TVs among other things... A mailroom was to be provided along with two Laundry rooms.WELL it is now January 10th 2015 and NONE OF IT is even close to being complete.
But isn't it generous of them to offer to buy us taxi's ever Saturday morning to take us to the nearest laundromat in exchange for the delay...(I would like to personally thank my friends whom let me do laundry at their house, THANK you!) And it was so convenient for them to take the first 3 months of us all living here before they got what is the worst internet service available. We're all students or recent grads here.. computers are our lives either for business, educational or personal reasons... I for one have racked up my phone bills cause I've had to tether my data from my phone to have any glimpse of internet at all!
I had the first 3 months of my mail either missing or stolen.. and JUST received it last week (a lot of good it does now.) And how do you get your mail? Why they slip it under your door! So I hope you don;t order any big packages while living here.. I've been locked out of my room twice because the door locks are so old and faulty.. not to mention it will take you 10-15min to even get INTO your room cause the keycards are fault also. Speaking of faulty locks.. we have already had the ONLY door into our building broken into (as they haven't finished giving us cto the front door!?) and it stayed broken for almost three weeks.. Did I mention we have NO security or anyone monitoring our 'front desk' area? I feel real safe..
I haven't even mentioned when I moved in, in the first place... There were 3 mattresses, two broken lamps.. thus broken glass EVERYWHERE, two tables, two mirrors, two dressers, a chair and a desk ALL in my room when we came to move in. Which I was promised would all be cleared out before we got there the night before. The carpet was disgusting (and after having them "professionally" clean it.. and cleaning it myself 5 times.. it is STILL horrible) the drainage was never cleaned OH and again.. living with centipedes...
So what do you do if you want to complain about any or all of these problems!? Well you EMAIL them! Because that's the only form of communication you have because noone is ever around (no wonder the renovations aren't finished) and a reply will take between 3-7 days.But hey! At least I have no roommates to share my space or my stuff or my food with.. no one sabotages my laundry and throws theirs in with mine instead of taking mine out (even if they threw it on the floor instead of in the dryer for crying out loud..) I have no ones mess to deal with but my own.

THIS is a prime example of Project Management at its WORST! I now understand what our teacher was trying to teach us in IMC@SLC.. although he could've tried teaching it to us in a less dry manner. But I get it now! 720 Princess Street Studios was a great idea on paper.. Just HORRIBLY executed! They shouldn't have let us move in without getting their eggs all in one basket... actually they should've waited for their chickens to finish laying all the eggs first!

But despite all the hardships & heartache I DO still have my creativity! As I;ve said I have a few videos that are just dying to be finished and a few I will be redoing with better imagery. In between STILL looking for a job befitting my college education (or at least my dignity) and a better place to live. I'm telling you the next place I live better be back in Orlando, FL at Disney.. or in Macau, China with my sisters or I'm going to lose it!