I’m Very Sorry..

… that I missed the great Jamaican blog meet-up last night! According to Dr D, no excuse is good enough, but I’ll tell you mine anyway.

The apartment I thought I was buying fell through yesterday. For the second time, the seller liked someone else more than me so sold it to her. (Note to self – maybe I should start taking flowers and a bottle of wine for the house sellers to make them like me?)

So I wasn’t in an overly good mood yesterday evening. But then, a ray of sunshine emerged from around the back of the cloud – someone knew someone who had a place in the same complex which they wanted to sell. So last minute plans were made – I went to see it last night. The idea was that once I’d been there, I’d head to the link up.

Well, the lady who is selling it did mention that the place ‘needed some work’ so I wasn’t expecting a super pretty place. However, I also wasn’t expecting to be met at the door by 3 dogs – it’s a one-bed apartment!!! Well, some work would firstly include a heck of a lot of bleach and fresh air – I haven’t been in somewhere so dusty and dirty for a while. It would then involve tearing out and burning the carpet in the bedroom, which currently looks like it is made of dog hair. Then a new bathroom would need to be installed – I don’t think that the current one is supposed to look black… and the same with the kitchen… There’s no a/c or water heater… However, if she makes it cheap enough, then I would buy it… and spend the difference making it nice.

So the end of the story was that by the time I left there, I felt so dirty and smelt of dogs so much that I decided I couldn’t come and be sociable – you’d all be wondering who the miserable smelly person was which isn’t the first impression I wanted to make with the blogging community in real life!!

However, I promise promise promise that next time, I’ll be there… and if I get this apartment, La Kabana would be a great place to meet as I’d be living less than 5 minutes away!

The perils of the internet

I am currently in a limbo – the man I am trying to buy the apartment from is currently off the island. I think everything is OK, but I would love to have things signed so that I know that it is really mine. In the meanwhile, I am trying not to get too excited – don’t want to build my hopes incase everythign falls apart.

But I keep getting carried away and finding myself looking at furniture and household shops online. Being realistic, I am aware that most of the furniture for this apartment will either be tiefed from my parents’ house and begged from anyone, with only a few essentials (fridge, stove, sofa, tv) being bought.

However, I am heading to England next summer for a wedding. And I am already trying to work out how much I can fit into my suitcases on the way back! I am already becoming like my friends who have houses and abandonning ideas of filling my suitcase with pretty new clothes for new dreams of colourful shower curtains, chunky cutlery, soft towels, interesting key hangers and huge pasta bowls. And I am able to research those dreams, do my window shopping over the internet so that when I get there, I know exactly where to head.

This will be the first place that is all mine – not rented and not shared with anyone else. It will be mine to make mistakes with the choice of paint colours, mine to hang my photos and paintings all over, mine to plant the garden as I want, and, of course, mine to get a kitten and train it as I want!

So in the meanwhile, while waiting for the selling man to return, I am trying to distract myself. This evening’s distraction will be ‘The devil wears Prada’ – Tuesday nights is 2 for 1 at the cinema so an evening of girly laughter is ahead of me.

Trying to become a home owner

As I’ve mentioned before, I am currently trying to buy a house. Well, to be accurate, an apartment. A little apartment. But somewhere that is mine. I have taken the decision that unlike many other girls my age, I am not going to sit around waiting on Prince Charming to come along to move me into his gorgeous house. I am going to try and make a start on my own!

I am one of those people who when I make a decision, I tend to go for it. And I’ve been like that about this apartment thingy. After contemplating and saving for ages, I decided about 2 weeks that it was time to act. And since then, I’ve looked at 6 places. I made an offer for one, but so did about 4 other people… and the person selling liked the young couple more than me. So now I have made an offer for another place and the man selling seems to like my offer. I’ll give you more detail of the place should everything go through – I don’t want to tempt fate!!

So now I am learning about the mortgage process in Jamaica. Mortgage rates here are mad – commercial rates are between 14 – 18% per annum, hellish. But you can borrow some money from the National Housing Trust (NHT) , a government agency that loans at much cheaper rates.

So I am going the NHT route and had my first visit to them this morning. I called and spoke to them and found out what initial documents I would need to get an initial letter saying I look like a nice person who, once they’ve checked me out more, they’d lend money to. The guy who I am buying the house from wants this letter so he knows I’m serious. Fine.

This morning, I went to their offices with the documents that they told me they needed. I went to one window, got redirected, went to the other and then ended up in the right place. And I sat and waited patiently. I expected the wait – I had taken a few sudoku puzzles with me to keep me occupied! And it wasn’t too bad – only half an hour until a young man called me up.

The first thing he needed to know was whether I was married – huh? When I informed him I wasn’t he said ‘Oh, yes, that’s good for me.’ Urrgh.

Then he slowly went through my papers and then he sent me away. Apparently the people who answer the phones had forgotten to tell me to bring a letter from my employer – they had told me to bring my employment contract but that wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t impressed – why the people can’t talk sense on the phone? Why they make me waste my time?

So now I have to go to my employer, wait about a week to get a letter from them, and then go back and join the queue again to even start the process. Grrrr

I just keep telling myself that it will be worth it one day when I am finally sat in my place!!!

Growing Up

This weekend has made me feel that I am very much an adult now. Usually, I identify myself as being a young person, someone who still hasn’t got any major ties – no house, no kids, no marriage, no debts. Although I have a job, I could still get up tomorrow and decide to go and work in Africa for a year and there is nothing to stop me.

However, this weekend it hit me – I am growing up. On Friday night, I didn’t go out for drinks or food or to ‘look man.’ Instead, I went to the hospital with my best friend to visit our gorgeous brand spanking new god son. He was born on Friday morning and is adorable so far. So we spent the evening there, admiring him and congratulating his mum, a good friend of ours. He’s my first god-child so I am feeling very proud of him!

Then on Saturday, I spent the afternoon at another friend’s house – helping out at a 9 year old’s birthday party. Organising loot bags, wrapping children in towels as they emerged from the pool, telling them not to try and jump straight from the bouncy castle to the pool (there was a big patch of concrete in the middle!) and serving drinks. I could deal with the fact that my friends’ have babies – but having ‘children’ puts them in a whole new category!

And on Sunday evening, I went to view an apartment. I’m not really planning on buying just yet – am aiming to purchase at the end of next year. But this looked a good deal so went to look at it and spent the time discussing with the current owner things like where a washing machine would go, whether gas is available for cooking, what parking in like and whether animals are allowed! It was tempting, but need to take my dad with me to inspect it before I do anything else.

And in between all of that, I had to watch wimbledon and the world cup. So it’s probably a good thing that the weekend is over – come back to work and get some rest!