Saturday, May 19, 2007

0705192200. We go to Hong Kong in 9 weeks.

Nine weeks until departure.
We have started packing the house. The school called and said that they are having some trouble finding a three bedroom place for us. We looked up the three bedroom units on the South side of Hong Kong Island and they are spectacular.


House for Sale.
We thought that we were smart by not using a real estate agent. We had a buyer sign a contract within one week of advertising. That is the job of the real estate agent – however the deal fell through due to a particularly picky building inspector.
The biggest mistake we made in the house sale was to change our add on domain.com so that it said “under contract”. We would have other buyers lined up – just in case.

The building inspection was harrowing. The inspector was a stocky little builder that was almost clever and had no social skills and a particular annoying trait of not knowing when to stop talking. I don’t know what a building inspection is supposed to do, but I am sure it is not to insult the home owner by picking on every thing that he can find – even if the house was build to standard in 1985 that does not apply today. I am sure that he is not supposed to persuade the buyer in a decision either way. For example – the building inspector correctly stated that the beams for verandah are supposed to be, according to the standard, according to him, 600mm apart. Some are 650mm apart. If he stopped talking after that he would have been fine. Instead he started up a fictional “what if” story about if there is a board with a knot-hole and if someone over 200kg steps on it, then they might break through and fall in up to their knees. Not a comforting image to put into the buyers head.
The electrician said that I have 4 circuit breakers that are made by a company that went out of business four years ago – am I supposed to watch the ASX for the business failure of every company that makes circuit breakers and then replace them?

The contract was cancelled for an unspecified reason – the buyer simply said that one of the four inspections was unsatisfactory. The buyer is an electrical technician that services medical equipment and is scared of earth leaks. He went white when he saw the 240V lights in the workshop simply plugged into the power point.

All the inspectors are fear merchants.

We are now replacing the retaining wall in the garden and fixing the leaking shower.

Speaking Cantonese.
I can ask questions but I can’t understand the answers.

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