Just Checking In

Hello and merry Christmas to everyone who is checking in on us.

The good news is that we're still alive and all is going well. The bad news is that we're no longer in our own house with our own computer equipment and our own freedom to do whatever we want, so we'll keep this short as it's a whole new ball game now.

Anyway here's the skinny on the move so far:

We overpacked. We overpacked to the point that not only were we exceeding Aer Lingus's weight limit for flights from Cork-Amsterdam (per person), we were even exceeding our own 4 baggage items' capacity to fit stuff in!! At the last minute, some very lucky friends of ours got given some very nice bottles of alcohol and the charity shop definitely got a bunch of nice clothes!! On d-day, we were still way over the weight limit but decided to bite the bullet and pay the €8/kg extra that we'd surely incur at the airport. As luck would have it, being xmas eve and all, Mr. Baggage-Checker-Inner was feeling happy and jolly himself (even at 5:10 a.m.) and let us off with only a warning! Ace in the hole!!! Now we can unload some of our winter unnecessaries, leave them here in NL, and save a bunch of weight for the trip from Amsterdam-London-Joburg on the 3rd. whew!

Our last 2 nights were spent in the posh, swanky ´Presidential Suite' type-room at Cork's finest: The Ambassador Hotel. My office party was oFridayay night there, meaning we got a special group rate on rooms for those who wanted to stay over, so we just stayed the extra night as well... it was a much-deserved reward for the last 3 weeks of packing, chaos, and madness back at our own humble abode. It worked out great, too, because we could take advantage of the bed, sheets, pillows (such an improvement on the last week of air-mattress-living) as well as an official wake-up call at 4:30 am, and the night porter ordering us a taxi to the airport, etc etc. Great move.

The (more than a) week of goodbye after goodbye was hard. There were even occurrences of tears at times, lots of emotional heart-to-hearts, and so on (not my favorite part of moving) many presents, many email addresses changing hands. Probably the most difficult part was the fact that much alcohol was consumed at my office 'do, and that means the hearts were opened and the floodgates were bursting like crazy!! (and I'm NOT talking about myself, here!!) I just don't know what else to say in these situations other than "um, please stop crying? see I'm kind of looking forward to this whole thing and you're freaking me out, here...." Sounds harsh but seems to work. Nonetheless, a great time was had by all. Our last night we went out with the cream of the crop (6 friends) to one of our favorite Cork haunts (groovy chinese restaurant) one last time, and said our last goodbyes, in an extremely decent fashion. It wasn't too melodramatic, it wasn't too hard, and most of all it was just nice.

Christmas time here in NL is different.
The Mr. and I exchanged our presents alone at the kitchen table today and I was happy that we're going through all this together. I got my favorite tv series (LittlBritainan) seasons 1,2, and 3 on DVD (WAHOO!!!) and he got an Irish rugby jersey and some guitar picks. Why the guitar picks, you ask? Because that's part 2 of his present... when we get settled in at the new place. He wants to learn, and I think it's a fabulous idea. We'll see how many chords I can remember when it comes time to do the teachin' !

So there are my thoughts for the moment. We both wish you all a happy new year and can't wait to see you ''down south'' in the coming year(s).

J2

Packing and moving (J1)

I am sitting on some travel bags, while two guys from the moving company are wrapping everything to be moved. Their truck is arriving in 1 hour, which means we will not see our stuff until about 10 weeks from now. I suppose the pictures show what we have been busy with for the last few days (till 1 in the morning yesterday)















It is quite surprising how much stuff you gather in a few years. We had 7.5 cubic meters when we moved from Australia, it is 14 cubic meters now, and we are leaving stuff such as washing machine and dishwasher behind!!!

J1

Decisions (J1)

Just a quick update, as we are really getting into the last things now. We have signed an agreement with a rental and management company for renting out our house. We could not wait any longer for potential buyers. We will see how this works out, and will decide next year how to proceed, when all other things have settled. It is probably the best thing after all.

I just received an email from Johannesburg confirming the puppies arrived safe and are on their way to the kennels now. This is certainly a big relief. We also received some good news about a potential rental house in Gaborone, it is looking very exciting and promising.

Loads of packing to do now.

J1

House in Cork.....Anyone?

Just as we thought everything was organized, we were confronted yet again with the culture of lying and messing in Ireland. After a few weeks of all sorts of excuses we pushed our buyer to sign contracts for our house before Monday evening. He claimed he was not ready, so we have decided to cancel the deal, we can not wait any longer for something that might never happen. After the initial disappointment, we are seeing the positives. So far we had not come up with anything decent as investment, and the best investment is to probably just keep the house for a while longer. So maybe rent it out for a year or so. Property prices are still rising, especially in Blackpool. Then, as we had decided all this the estate agent threw in some confusion, he received an offer from someone who had lost out earlier, and had already come to see it before. It is a little lower then we sold it for with buyer number 2, and at this stage it is really hard to get excited. I have told him she needs to match the previous price, otherwise we will rent it out. We should see more developments during the day today. Anyone still wondering why we want to leave Ireland????

Luckily all this house trouble was not a sign of our fortunes, as our puppies have made the first leg of their trip successfully. We have dropped them in our little rental car to the shipping company in Dublin. They arrived in Frankfurt Germany before we even made it back to Cork. Here is some pictures of our last moments with them, before they were the first to escape the miserable weather for loads of sunshine.








They are now marked as 3pce / 60kg. They can be tracked on the Lufthansa website

J1

December Already (J2)

The focus of my attentions on everything Botswana has officially shifted from work (who can think about work in December anyway? Seriously!) to personal life. I have enough to deal with at work in Cork that it's getting less and less fun to think about things in the Gabz office, and more and more fun to think about:
- houses
- houses with swimming pools
- dogs laying in the dirt with their bellies in the sun
- seeing the P's in Pretoria
- hanging out with Jéan in Joburg
- having another summer
- kayaking on Gabs Dam
- Braais, Castles, and Biltong
- learning Setswana
- meeting new people

...and generally just opening up a new chapter of our life. This one is getting a bit old and tiresome, not to mention the incredible monsoon conditions we've been experiencing for nearly a month now, which make everything down there appear even more enticing.

So far, the wind-down program in Cork looks a bit like this:
8th: Farewell party with friends @ Pádraig & Tadhg's house
9th: Farewell dinner out with Scott & Linda
13th: Drop puppies in Dublin, dinner at Saba restaurant after
14th: Last appointment with physio for knee checkup
15th: Goodbye/xmas lunch out with favorite subcontractor
17th: Goodbye dim sum brunch with Paul R.
19th: Environmental Section farewell/xmas dinner
21st: My last day at work
22nd: Office christmas bash
23rd: Sleep off Office christmas bash
24th: Departure for Amsterdam.

In the meantime, 'tis the season to be shopping, fa la la la la, la la la la. And I have no idea how I'm going to handle that one, particularly with no wheels! But c'est la vie, there's always the internet.

Still no plan of attack for the 2 days between the house being loaded up into the moving van, and the christmas party night (we're staying over in the hotel where the party is, for our last 2 nights). But there's always someone's couch to crash on if need be.

The Husbanator is being his typically amazing self, letting me have our 1 remaining car during these last dwindling days of being a 1-car family, and taking the train/bumming rides to and from work himself. I'm extremely lucky to have married the most generous guy in the world. But it is a bit sad to drive the old trusty Golf, knowing our days together are numbered. It's been good to me for 2 years now and quite possibly ranks as my favorite car ever. Definitely my favourite car stereo/CD player to date.



BLOG SUB-ENTRY: "HOUSING ISSUES"
It's interesting how much things change if the right catalyst comes along. Til recently we've been bound and determined to find a house in Gabz-City that is right in the thick of it all, close to all amenities and set well within the hustle and bustle of the urban centre. This probably stems from a mixture of things, mainly our refusal to go down to "old age" without a fight, combined with the fact that it's just what we've been used to ever since we met. Back in Pretoria, Melbourne, even here in Ireland as well as all our various college towns prior to meeting, and so on, we've always been where the action is.

So we've got our girl Pauline on the case for us, (our dear real estate agent on the ground in Gabs) and she's doing a great job of bringing us back down to earth (with a thud) when it comes to what we can get INSIDE the city, for what we want to spend. This lady wants to put us in some sort of Graceland out in the 'burbs or something, when what we really just want is a nice stable shack with a FABULOUS garden. How can that be so hard to understand? But evidently the lesson she's trying to drive into our [thick] heads is that you can have 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 garages, servant's quarters, a pool, and a small garden... outside the ring road in a suburb of clone houses 15 minutes' drive in gridlocked traffic, next to _whatever_ school of your choice, for 5,500 per month. What you can not have, is a small 3 bedroom (or less?), functional house with security in a good area, A/C in at least one room, and a massive fenced in garden for 3 dogs, INSIDE the city, for 5,500 per month. Go figure.

But good old Pauline, always there to throw a spanner in the works, brings out the biggest harebrained idea ever, the other day... an outrageous concept that we'd surely never in a million years agree to, but still: 'would you not just look at this one house over there???' ("There" being a small semi-bush village-gone-swanky on the other side of the Dam which is technically outside the city, but at least on the right side of the bypass and less than 15 minutes' drive from town, at the foot of the hills, and on the banks of the river...?) After I shook my head in disgust at such a nutjob suggestion, I clicked on it anyway-- I mean, obviously if we wanted to live out in the bush we'd stay in Gabane with T&L and the baboons, duh!!

But as is usually the case when I get my one-track mind wrapped around a certain inflexible plan, Murphy's Law kicks in, and of COURSE the place is unbelievable. It's the nice, humble, basic house we're looking for, devoid of cement walls and electric fences, a GINORMOUS plot of land complete with pool and thatched outdoor bar area, even a traditional stone+ thatch rondavel (apparently used as servants quarters) on the property, fruit trees everywhere, with views to Kgale Hill, the Mokolodi game reserve, and adjacent to the lion park. But the kicker is that it is in a little commune/neighbourhood/village, so it's not necessarily completely removed from society. And did I mention less than 15 minutes from the nearest mall? Oh the confusion!

I won't even post the link to the house up here because that could jinx it, but needless to say we're sending T&L out to look at it for us and we'll see what they come back with, before we get our hopes up too much.

On top of it all, in Pauline's war against our future as city dwellers, she finally gets the first property she's had in 3 months that happens to be IN our favorite inner-city area (Maru-a-Pula) that we can afford. However, we get the news with a note attached that amounted basically to: MaruaPula house "decent". No trees. Cement yard.

So it looks like things are changing by the day. Even our outlook on potential residences. Amazingly enough we find ourselves waiting on pins and needles to hear what T&L come back to us with, after they go to see the place! Watch this space....

J2

Chaos (J1)

I realize it has been way too long since the last update. Things have been pretty crazy as you can imagine, it is really getting close, less then 3 weeks in Ireland left! I will try to write an update as complete as I can, because part of why it took so long is that loads of things were happening to keep us busy.

We have started the packing a week ago, after our last visitor (Martin) the guestroom has been taken apart, so we have some room for packing. So far the attic has been cleared out completely, and many things out of the rooms and from the walls have been packed. It is very handy to have loads of packing materials at my company. Jill discovered another amazing thing, plastic bags to pack clothes etc into, after they are packed you vacuum all air out with a normal vacuum cleaner, which reduces the bag to half it's size, see the pictures below:

before:

after:

The other major news is that we will have to say goodbye to our second car real soon. We sold it in the weekend. It took a little more effort with advertising then the Toyota, but again the first people that actually came out to take it for a test drive bought it straight away, and for a pretty satisfying price too. We get to keep it until next week Monday, after that we do not own any cars anymore. I will have to rent or borrow at least 1 vehicle, because we both might need it for work, and more important, our dear puppies will need to be transported to Dublin next week.

We also received some big news 'on the ground' in Gaborone. After nearly 2 years of hard working our employee has decided to leave our company in the end of February, after things have been handed over properly to me and Jill. He is going back to university for a while in Pretoria, and will be moving back there. We both have a mixed feeling about this, on the one hand it is good news as his wage is a huge financial responsibility, which puts our company under huge pressure to get in loads of jobs. A graduate could do a lot of work for us under Jills supervision, for a lot less money. On the other hand he's a very very good landscape architect, and we are loosing very valuable skills. It is not easy to find landscape architects. Our company is environmental consultancy and landscape architects, and we definitely do not want to loose this last aspect of the business. There is only one other landscape architect in the whole country....I think there might be some opportunities for myself to get involved now as well.

The house contracts still have not been signed, this is the only real worry which we are left with, but it is quite a big one. Our solicitor told us this week though that she has not seen any contracts signed in the last 2 weeks. The reason for this is that the government presented their yearly budget today, and there were speculations that the stamp duty (tax a buyer has to pay when buying property) might be lowered. Therefore most buyers were waiting, and now that the budget is presented (no changes for the stamp duty) things should hopefully move on. I did speak to the buyer earlier this week as well, and he promised me we will have contracts for signing before the end of this week.

Last major problem we had to deal with is this health certificate issue, as Jill explained in her last post. Basically our 'friendly' government vet in Dublin contacted the vet in Cork who had agreed to sign the 'good' contract, and our Cork vet was now reluctant. Eventually, we agreed on a slight different wording for one sentence, and finally we have them all stamped and signed. A huge relief, I can not wait until we hear from the South Africans next week Friday when they have arrived. They are leaving Wednesday next week.

J1