"My landlord loves me because..... I always pay the rent, on time and in full."
Even in these troubled economic times.
I think that must make me a freakish rarity - at least amongst the less well-off strata of expat society here, and quite probably amongst Chinese tenants too.
Just about everyone I know tells stories of regularly facing an unseemly last-minute scramble to get their monthly or quarterly (or, in some cases, half-yearly) rent together, and is often asking their landlord for a few days'/weeks' grace to make the payment. One translator I know changes apartments pretty much every year because her landlords are always getting fed up of her being behind on her rent.
Me, I usually aim to have enough cash in hand to cover the next 6 months' rent - just in case of a disastrous downturn in work (or a reckless urge to go travelling for a while).
And I'm a quiet and peaceable chap. I don't annoy the neighbours. I don't break stuff. I rarely trouble him to try to get repairs done. I only have a party once a year (at most: I missed to have one at all this year, somehow!). I am pretty much the model tenant.
I don't think my landlord appreciates me as much as he should. But he does always wear an ecstatic grin on his face when he leaves here with a great wedge of money.
(I was planning to take a picture of The Grin this time, but it completely slipped my mind. Drat!)
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