*-Or How I Went Behind Closed Doors and Saw, in Three Sweaty Days, Much of Eastern Hong Kong Island Up Close — and the Perfectly Awful Local Living Conditions Deemed Acceptable, Even Desirable by the Locals.

This is not going well, and not for lack of trying.

We got off the plane at about 7:30 on Thursday morning.

In 12 hours, we saw four apartments. By Saturday night — that is, 60 hours after landing — we had seen 11 apartments, and liked one that may not be available, and found at least one major flaw in the other 10. Those flaws being grime, location, filth, expense, dirt, size, stench, decrepitude, etc.

I start work full-time on Monday.

And the week the International Herald Tribune is putting us up in a hotel expires on Thursday.

So, “where to live” is just about the only issue of any consequence.

And it’s becoming a sticky one.

Among what we have learned:

1. You can understand the intellectual concept of “tiny and tinier” apartments from the distance of Southern California, but you don’t fully grasp it until you look at 300-square-foot flats four or five times. That 300 square feet? Think of a space 15 feet by 20 feet. Now put a bed on there, and maybe a little couch, and make room for a bathroom with shower, a fridge … and, well, you’re about done.

We’ve seen cunningly designed little places, with views. But you can’t quite get past the notion that you could fall down over the threshold … and your head would end up in the bedroom.

2. Hong Kongers live in spaces so small, and (from what we have seen) often so squalid, you wonder how they don’t go mad. Or how they don’t at least tidy up their tiny places. We have seen comparatively “huge” three-room apartments in which families of (at least) four were living in which no one could take a step forward without bumping into something — or someone else. If I were in a space that small, it at least would have zero clutter. None.

3. This clearly has been a sellers’ market for so long that apartments proudly are shown to potential renters in states of disrepair, even filth, that would give pause to even the worst American slumlord. Grimy bedrooms. Stained carpets. Tattered curtains. Unhinged cabinets. Gritty tubs. Jury-rigged appliances. The real-estate downturn can’t reach this town soon enough because landlords need to make these places vaguely attractive if they want to keep on charging $2,000 a month for a place with one soiled sofa and a certain indecipherable stench wafting down the hall of a 40-year-old building.

4. Speaking of sellers, they apparently have no problems with advertising Rate A for an apartment and then, when you get there, telling you it’s actually Rate B — which is always higher.

5. The interiors of the big apartment buildings are just plain scary. Tight elevators, agonizingly slow, leading to narrow warrens running between 8-10 units on a single floor perhaps 30 stories up. I rediscovered that in tight-enough conditions I am, yes, a bit claustrophobic. Like while in an elevator five feet across with five people in it. Anyway, the feeling of cramped corridors, many of them arranged with zero palliative measures (like, say, paint on the hallway walls, or repaired flooring, or windows of any sort) … leaves you with a “this is more like incarceration than inhabitation” sense that quickly morphs into “get me out of here.”

OK, this never was going to be easy. We’re on one of the most crowded patches of land on the planet, the strip of habitable (buildable) land that runs along the north side of Hong Kong Island. It’s one not-so-long long stretch of high-rise offices and apartment buildings. It is the most vertical city on Earth. So we knew we were looking at small, crowded and expensive.

And there are complications. We want only four months. That eliminates a huge chunk of potential places right off, because landlords tend to want one-year leases. Well, sure. But if the place is empty, isn’t a short-term renter better than none at all? …

We’re dealing with a dogged and well-meaning real-estate agent, a tall Chinese woman of about 30. We just sort of found her, ended up with her, because she took an internet query and ran with it. Give her credit for that. And for not giving up. Not yet. Though we may give up on her …

She has shown us eight of the 11 places we have seen, and she’s gradually getting a better idea of what we’re looking for … something that may not exist, actually. A place with at least two rooms (that is, one that is not a bedroom or bathroom), a washing machine, a refrigerator, a television with cable hookup, internet availability, at least a few pieces of furniture … and isn’t too far from the subway and (this is key) isn’t filthy, overtly Third World and/or falling to pieces.

The “answer” would be one of those executive suites kind of places, with 400 square feet, a bedroom that is separate from the living room, already wired for cable and internet, with a fridge running and crockery in the cabinets. But those places also are very pricey. Or, just four months in the hotel, which some of our colleagues have done. But that is even more expensive, and the room is even smaller, so …

So, dawn is breaking here, Sunday, and there is that black thought cloud hovering above us anew: “Where will we live?”

We have learned/decided one or two other things. We would like to stay in North Point, near the office where I will be working. North Point is considered perhaps the dullest, least lively part of Hong Kong Island, but it’s just fine with me. I don’t want to step onto the sidewalk and be swept away by a human wave. Nor do I want to hit the street and be among tourists gawking at the blinking neon of the 1960s-style Hong Kong with girlie bars every few yards.

We do not want to be in an area we’ve seen several times, Wan Chai, which is essentially the red-light district (an IHT staffer said “that’s where you go to find hookers or cocaine” and, it’s now clear, he wasn’t kidding). We can’t afford Mid-Levels or Central. And we don’t want to live across the water, in Kowlooon or the New Territories because of the commute issue and the time lost riding a ferry or a subway.

So, our agent — and did I mention she doesn’t quite speak English? — has another place for us to look at today, and if that falls through, this could get weird — and we will pay far more than we hoped to pay (like, double the mortgage I was paying for a house in East Highlands Ranch three years ago) … or we will go for the memorably dirty two-bedroom place with the stunning, gorgeous views of the channel — and the disgusting bathroom and kitchen, and no TV and disintegrating closets.

And what do my soon-to-be-colleagues at the IHT advise? “Keep looking. It may take 30 apartments before you find something you can stand. It might be 50.”

If that is the case, looking at 11 in three days … we’ve got to pick up the pace. And how.