"you just need to bring out your inner bitch"

Well, thanks to Patty, I was finally able to meet up with Sarah and Al Zimmerman (Al is a coworker of Patty's husband Jerry - follow?). Sarah is tall, blond and 6 months pregnant and a Texan! She is awesome. Had such a good day. While Patty and Jerry are out of the country, we got to enjoy the services of Patty's driver Samuel - very cool dude. We met Al for lunch downstairs from his office. We started talking about my apartment hunting adventures from the day before and he was trying to explain the negotation process a la the chinese way - in short Al says, "You need to bring out your inner bitch!" Sarah and I started laughing hysterically, but sounds like it is honest and true advice. I know you all know I can bring it out, but doing it in a foreign country is a little out of my element. So pray, say a mantra, wish me luck on the inner bitch thing... :) I head out tomorrow to see a couple more places..... Sarah also took me back to meet her friend Amy - also very nice. She lives at one of the apartments that I looked at on Tuesday, was nice, but wasn't overly impressed - well her apartment was great. Sarah said ot ask our real estate person to show us other options in the same complex and that if you don't like the furniture or you want them to put an oven in, you put it in the contract and it is done. I guess that is what they expect you to do - they jack up the price because they think since you are white you have money. We'll see how it works - Al says keep them hanging on the negotiations and make sure you negotiate on more than one place at a time - the more competition they know about, the more flexible they will be.