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