Lately, I have some moderately good news, and some really bad news. Using vector arithmetic, this roughly sums up my situation as moderately bad news, however using mathematics to trivialise one's problems is not always advisable.

The bad news is after a week of flip-flopping, my landlord has decided to press on ahead with selling the house I'm in. After some enquiring with the real estate agent, he seems to think it's very likely that even if the new buyer wants it as an investment property, they're almost certain to hike the rent up (possibly by a factor of 50% simply because rents have apparently gone up in the suburb I live in, since I moved into this house 2 years ago), which makes living in this house completely unfeasible.

In other words, I am almost certain to end up being forced to leave this house in 10 weeks time, and if I'm still not working by then, I am going to be facing an immense struggle to find another rental property, simply because it'll be difficult convincing landlords of my ability to pay the rent. I am dreading that I'm going to have to move even further out from the CBD, which is just going to add to the isolation that I already experience here. I have no idea where my next place of work could be, so I could be looking at a dreadfully long commute for the next 6 months.

I hate how people can mess with one of my basic needs (shelter), just like that. That people put greed and money above the basic welfare of others. I now have to balance my time between job-hunting and house-hunting, which is certainly going to wear me out further and produce less-than-optimal results in both areas. The agent is being a real prick, completely unhelpful, all he cares about is his fucking commission. He hasn't even been giving me sufficient notice on open-for-inspections (last one was only a few hours), so I've threatened to serve him with a breach notice, demanding he gives me 24hrs written notice as per the Tenancy Act.

As a last resort, I'm thinking of looking up the landlord and contacting him directly, explain my situation and ask him if he can consider putting the auction on hold for another month or so, in the interests of avoiding hardship being inflicted on myself. I don't know how I'll be able to pull through all this in the worst case scenario. I need someone to keep talking to, if I'm going to keep my sanity. This stress is really messing up my sleeping and eating patterns.

Some good news - I've landed two more interviews this week, one of them is with a recruiter who wants to provide coaching services to help me perform better in interviews (he sounded very empathetic of my situation, and says he prides his business on actually offering those services instead of just pawning hapless candidates at prospective employers like other recruiters do). I'm also still waiting out for the 3rd-round interview of another job (although I think it's very likely, based on the manner of communication evident from the employer). Lastly the JNM agency that I had to visit recently has booked me in for some motivational workshops, so I'll have to wait and see what those have to offer.

Now if I can land one of those positions mentioned above, I may have a swift escape route out of this fine mess I'm in.

Lately I've been trying to iterate through my community list and comment on each person's journal - I've been really wanting to do this, but it's taking me so long. Especially with ones like Swindle's, Livia's and Siobhan's, for instance, let alone others. I'm really sorry, I'm trying my hardest. If you're taking the time to read and comment on my journal, I honestly feel I should pay you the return gesture.

Nerdy music pleasure: Had a lot of fun watching The Presets guest program Rage on Saturday night - especially with many synth-pop artists from the late 70's and early-mid 80's being brought out from the archives (plus the mini-special that followed was pretty sweet too). All those antiquated synthesizers and crude drum machines may sound kitsch compared to live instruments, but there's a certain campiness to it that I like.