I bought a flat. For those playing overseas, this is Australian for an apartment. You have apartment buildings, we have blocks of flats. I like your term better.

I have technically been looking for a house/duplex/unit/flat/apartment for eight years.

No, I’m not that picky. I intended on buying one in 2001, and had already been purchasing furniture and kitchen utensils, and kettles and toaster in preparation. Except I didn’t really feel happy in my job – no fault of the job, btw – so I refrained from looking while I tried to get a different job. There wasn’t really much out there that I could apply for; I wanted to specialise in a field in libraries and there didn’t seem to be much movement in the specialist library job market.

So I looked at my options and talked to a few people. The general consensus was that I would have to upgrade my qualifications to Librarian. So I applied for university, got in, spent two years upgrading my qualifications and ended up working semi-permanently at either UWA or in law libraries of some variety.

Now that I’m in a permanent job that I am disgustingly happy in, I thought I’d start looking for places again.

Well. I’d completely missed the housing boom. If I’d bought the flat that I was looking at in 2001 at $90,000, I could have sold it sometime early this year for about $250,000-$300,000. But I got a bachelors degree and a much happier career, so I won with part of it.

Anyway: yesterday, when the Australian sharemarket took the largest one day fall since 1987, my offer on an apartment was accepted.

Now I have to wait through settlement. God help me.