Okay, that seems like a humble brag. Maybe a bit of catch up before I get into us buying a condo. That's a big thing I feel I need to slowly get into. Or maybe another post. I don't know, I'll see after I write more.

So for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I finished it a while back and began playing Final Fantasy XVI. I'm lazy to keep typing the full name, so E33 it is. What an amazing game. I had a tremendous amount of fun playing it, and I ended up picking the Maelle ending. Yeah, yeah, the endings have been argued to death online on Reddit and other places. It really was a tough choice picking between the two, because I completely understood that Verso wanted to stop the cycle of suffering and the real life family not dealing with the trauma, but at the same time the people in the canvas are real, sentient people. They may have been creations in a painting, but nonetheless can think and have their own wills. Also the game had you spending time and getting to know them. But I was a little annoyed to see that in Verso's ending, the fading goodbyes of the canvas characters seemed like a healthy way to send them off, while Maelle's ending showed her immediate breakdown in the canvas world. Like, intentional or not, it made it seem like it was the bad decision. I did some post-game stuff, but I don't do post-game stuff often in most games, so after what I felt was a good amount, I stopped, took some final gorgeous screenshots, and started up FFXVI. Celine from BPS played it previously and was curious to see my progress and what I thought. I've just reached the section where the bridge is repaired, and because of the whole home-buying thing along with our trip to Nova Scotia, and moving out, is where I've left it the last 2 months.

Right, so the house-hunting and Nova Scotia. So about half a year ago the waifu and I planned a trip to Halifax and the surrounding areas to explore more of the maritimes. I'd never been to any of the Atlantic provinces before, so we planned our trip to fall in October, to see the nice autumn colours at the Cabot Trail. Then about 2 months before the trip, Onion noticed that a unit in our condo was for sale. She was curious just to see what kind of place warranted that cost, and we asked my cousin Chloe how we would go about it, since she's a realtor. Now, let me make this clear. It was only to satisfy our curiosity and to get a better idea of what was expected in the housing market. Chloe, however, went on her realtor mode and (with good reason), opted to include several other properties she thought we might like, along with the one we wanted to check. We gathered up some units we wanted to see with her choices and went to see all of them. Mostly in North York. We took the lift up and viewed the unit above us, only to realize it was in the 600k range, and small. I know there's a housing crisis, but it was bad. We viewed all the other units in succession, observing the things we liked, the location, maintenance fees and amenities, and taking into consideration things like schools for the future, general vibe of the neighbours and random things. After viewing everything, we had pho nearby our last stop and went back, exhausted. The week after, we repeated, except mostly focused on Ajax, Pickering and Scarborough. Holding to the idea that getting out of Toronto proper would have cheaper housing. Yeah... no. The costs of pretty much everything in southern Ontario were comparable to Toronto. It literally made no sense to pay the same amounts and be in another town far away from everything else. It was quite disappointing to see places cost the same, but have less amenities and stores surrounding them compared to Toronto. One exception was a gorgeous townhouse which had low maintenance fees, but was above our budget by about a $100,000. Some of the Scarborough units seemed decent, but made us think about how important the subway system was, and the less convenient bus routes.

After 2 weeks, we kept discussing one of the units from the first viewing. We liked the size, neighbourhood and despite the lack of the subway, it was near the Eglinton Crosstown, which as we know, had no end in sight. We asked Chloe to view it again, and even more so after the second viewing. We spent a few days thinking of whether we wanted to buy it. Nerves, especially surrounding dropping so much money on the down payment and closing costs was a huge barrier. But at the same time, we thought, if we don't enter the housing market now, then when? We have no guarantees of if the prices will bounce back from the condo market crash, or if they'd continue to drop to more affordable levels. We calculated our finances carefully, estimating the things we could check, and found that while tight, we would survive and still have decent savings. And with that, we made the move to offer. We got counter offered and were seriously considering losing the place if we were to get into a constant back and forth. But we thought about it for a while, considered how much the difference it would make in our mortgage spread out over 30 years, and decided that while we didn't like it, we could accept it. So we agreed and got them all signed.

That period of searching for homes, researching amenities, costs, location, and later on the constant signing of documents and providing documentation for our finances took a huge toll on us. We were constantly tired, dreading worst case scenarios, wondering if we made a wrong decision buying too early, the huge drain on our savings after the down payment and closing costs were factored in. I stopped playing games and we were really just coasting along with our activities and hobbies. Only now are we actually getting back into the routine of things. Anyway, with how tight everything was, Chloe had to rush them for a quick closing due to our Nova Scotia trip. Now, while a home is a more important investment than a holiday, we didn't want to waste our trip and the non-refundable aspects of our vacation for no reason, but push come to shove, we were willing to if necessary. Luckily, even with all the wait times and documentation, we closed one day before the trip and got the keys that evening itself. Whew! Insane.

The next day, we went to Nova Scotia for our vacation for a week, and had an immensely great time exploring the province. We ate a ton of seafood (with the exception of a few meals, everything was seafood). Also enjoyed the great hospitality there. But I'll get into it on its own post.

After we came back, we were invited to a hotpot dinner with my Uncle Thomas and his family. Ate till we were full as hell, before chit chatting a bit and played some Uno variants with my cousins Colin and Lilian. 

And guess what? You know the drill at this point... my former colleague Khairi Kamaruddin died. The same loud guy who drove me to one of EP-Asia's events last time. No idea what happened, but it came out of nowhere, and we hadn't spoken since I resigned. And not my friend, but an acquaintance of Onion, and the 401 Games group in general, Josh died of cancer. He gave us a free copy of Villainous, with several sets together because he wanted to downsize. We didn't know it at the time, but he was fighting cancer even back then and it seemed like he was on the road to recovery some time after he passed the game to us.