House hunt makes me think on my aching feet

"Moving home is the next most stressful task next to getting a divorce and changing jobs," a friend once said.

With Beijing's countless housing options and a personality that takes hours to decide on a pair of shoes, finding the right apartment became more stressful than moving home.

Last month, I visited 21 apartments in 10 days before settling on a bright, airy two-bedroom in an old part of town. It overlooks courtyard homes, hutong eateries, fruit stalls, dry cleaners and tailor shops.

But the road to finding the dream apartment practically became another full-time job. I browsed online ads day and night. I became e-mail, text and phone buddies with numerous landlords and agents. And some days, I spent more time inside strangers' homes than mine.

Some colorful characters disrupted my relatively peaceful existence. An extra-diligent agent called at 8 am - a miserable hour if you were up writing until 2 am - and dragged me to check out apartments, giving me only enough time to brush my teeth and drag on shorts and a T-shirt.

He said good apartments within my 4,000-yuan ($590) budget were disappearing at the snap of a finger, especially since summer is the high season in the rental market. Once, I even had to abandon my much-loved fried egg and tomato breakfast for him.

One memorable day, I put in 13 hours to visit eight apartments scattered in three districts. I weaved through weekend traffic on the agent's motorcycle, rushed from the east to the south by subway to meet another agent and hopped on a tricycle with a third agent to navigate 200 meters during a downpour.

But mostly I walked. By early evening my feet were soaked from the rain and so sore that I didn't care if I sat on the damp floor of a chairless apartment lobby waiting for a landlady to show up.

If developing thicker calluses on my soles wasn't bad enough, the day ended with my feet as black as soot.

I covered my ballet flats with a plastic shoe cover, but the rainwater still transferred the shoe dye onto my feet. The hideous color remained for a good five days. I had to get a pedicurist to remove the worst of it, but not before receiving a few puzzled stares whenever I wore flip-flops.

The apartment hunt was physically and emotionally draining, but one agent said I've actually had it easier than some, since I fit the description of a "model tenant".

This 31-year-old agent, who's been in the business for two years, says many landlords prefer single, female laowai (foreigners) as they generally earn well and take good care of apartments.

My own experience seems to support the agent's theory.

One landlord slashed 600 yuan a month from his asking price after meeting me. Another agreed to reduce the advance rental from half a year to three months. A landlady said she was holding her penthouse studio for me, despite other people being interested.

"Maybe the owners should pay me to live in their apartment," I joked with my agent.

In the end, I found an amiable landlord who reduced the deposit from two months to one and agreed to install another water heater in the kitchen.

My secret weapon in any trying task - apart from offering Philippine dried mangoes - is courtesy, openness and charm, even if I actually feel more like weeping because the day has been endless, I'm weak from hunger and my feet feel and look like they've been dipped in lead.