Kiite.

Cute by Design

This dog is ridiculously cute. Here he is after waking up (yes he sleeps on his back) and he's rubbing his eyes (as you do in the morning).




And a suitcase seems like a pleasant place for a nap.

posted by Mark @ 11:49 PM Comments: 2

That's what you get

The last few weeks (and they are the 'last' few weeks) have been madness. We've rented the condo, sold the car, sold most of our furniture, arranged a place to live in Hong Kong temporarily, arranged people to come get what they've bought, tried to finish up our work, coordinate what needs to be done in the meantime, opened bank accounts, seen everyone we can possibly see, planned two going away parties and the list just goes on. Now here we are 1 week from flying. I'm writing this on Wednesday night. One week tonight (or 'this day week' as the Irish phrase it) we'll be having a pint in our hotel room at the Royal York (thanks Natalie!!) relaxing the night before we go.

The number of things we've had to do does not even begin to compare with the number of emotions we have had to deal with too. "Overwhelm" does not even begin to cover it. right now what we're both feeling is the packing part. Moving is shit normally, when you're moving from one thing to another, in most cases you're moving up, to a bigger place, or maybe you gain in square footage and lose a bedroom or two (as was the case when we moved into this condo), but this time we're trying to fit our lives into four suitcases. I have the sensation of trying to jam way too much into way too small a place. I think this is what making sausage feels like. So there are piles of stuff, that one goes to his mom's storage locker, that one goes to my parents' basement, the other one goes to Goodwill. This all seems like 'stuff' to deal with, and it is. But you know what it is like to move anywhere, when you have to inventory your LIFE, there's an emotional aspect to it that puts an edge to things.

Eric finished up at work today. He'll take the next week off to pack and get things done. He's a bit emotional, mostly at the number of things he has yet to do, but also over the fact that the knobs he works with didn't even sign a fucking card (never mind a cake in the boardroom at lunch or a pint after work) to say goodbye. His firm is a bit like that, but still, you'd think after 4 years or something in the place they could have worked up a good-bye fruit flan bought by the receptionist from the local Dominion.

He came into the bedroom a few minutes and asked me "What are we doing?!" We both feel that. Not regret, but there's a moment when you've started to do a thing, but before you've gotten to the good part, where you wonder what the fuck you were thinking. I remember feeling that when I bungee jumped a couple of years ago, after I had climbed the tower, but before I had jumped.

I lay on the bed with him then and we kinda smooched a bit, giggling and cuddling at "this is what adventure looks like!" and how daft that sounded. At that point the dog hopped up on the bed to see what was going on. Lucky has a strict rule. When Eric and I are kissing or hugging, he has to get involved. So he jumped on the bed and then proceeded to lick Eric for ages (I get a perfunctory slurp and then he's back to trying to remove Eric's eyeballs with his tongue - you'd be surprised at the strength of a dog's tongue). The plan with Lucky is to leave him with our buddy Lorne, and then send for him in a month or so. You can guess how pre-lonely that makes us feel.

There's been a lot of pre-lonely lately. That's when you are with someone, but you already miss them because you know you won't see them for a long time. My lunch today with IcyJoe was just like that. My dinner with my folks on Sunday was the same. We stood in the kitchen and Dad said "I'm just so used to you being down the road from me."

I'm going, and I am glad I'm going. And I'm not going to change my mind, because I know this is the right thing to do (not to mention that I have no place to live as of next week, unless you count the apartment we rented in HK). But this is the part where I feel sad about what I am leaving behind. I knew there would be aspects of this journey that would be tough, this is one. Unless you all come with us? Really, that could work. Seriously, you should all just move to Hong Kong so that I can have all the people with me that I love.

posted by Mark @ 10:43 AM Comments: 2

when life seem serious

posted by Mark @ 10:15 PM Comments: 1

How Crazy People Try (but fail) To Buy A Condo

So the condo is both for sale and for rent at the moment. We only have 3 weeks to go before we leave and as such we've got to be open to whatever options we have. Yesterday we were informed that we had an offer to rent. The thing about a rental is that unless the guy wants to bargain you down on the price, there are no sign-backs and negotiation. It's a done-deal. We knew then that the condo would be handled by midnight.

But just to be assholes (and to see how serious they were) we sent a message to the crazy real estate agent from before (see the blog post below). The message was simply that we were getting an offer, and we'd accept it, so if your buyers are serious bring in a clean offer before our deadline or else we're done.

And so the saga continued. It's hard to describe exactly how much of a crazy, whiney, annoying shit this agent was. But you don't have love the guy, just his money. By way of background it is important to know a few things about this wack-job. He has never, ever been on time. He has never, ever respected a deadline (which are crucial to negotiations) and he has never, ever been honest.

So inside of that little context we sent our message. Of course he asked to meet our agent at 5pm. He was late, and didn't have an offer ready. Well, at least we knew he was operating consistently. He promised an offer, soon, any minute now. And an hour later it came. It was not 'clean' i.e. devoid of conditions, and it was not the amount we wanted. However, it was close, and the only condition was that he see a particular document that details the financial health of the condo corp. So we said fair enough, we'd go for it, but he had fucked up something that needed to be re-signed and the cheque for the deposit was not certified, and was drawn on a out of province bank. So we sent it back asking that to be fixed, and accepting conditional upon a certified cheque.

They came back late (i.e. AFTER the deadline) and now wanted it conditional upon financing, and wanted the buyer's trashy girlfriend to see it one more time. I won't give you the details of the conversations, but it got so far as our agent was yelling at the agent telling him he was a crook and storming out!

so at 8.45pm he finallly finished making out that offer, and handed it to us, initially asking us if we could have it back by 9pm. What an absolute dimwit and an asshole. We told him we'd let him know by midnight. At that point I think what i said was "Anthony, it's 8.45! we have not had our fucking dinner yet, so no, you can't have it back in 15 minutes, we need to think about it, go away and we'll call you!"

In the end we felt that they had inserted just enough conditions to allow them to back out later, when we'd lost our renter and were now minutes from going to HK, and (they hoped) desperate enough to take whatever shit they offered.

And, rather than play that silly shit, we just sent it back at 10pm and said that either they give us the proper offer with no conditions, or they could fuck off. Midnight came and went with no reply, so we faxed over our rental acceptance, and that was that.

- or was it? -

12.40, the agent emails our agent:

"Thank you,I will be taking my client to get a financial approval tomorrow. Once I have it, I'll give you a clean fresh offer without any conditions so we can wrap it up faster.

Except that our unit was no longer on the FUCKING MARKET because he had (as usual) let the goddam deadline sail right by.

This is by far the most bizarre experience ever. It's not merely a case of a bad agent, or a crooked agent, or a stupid agent. It's all those combined with unethical nasty buyers. Completely weird.

Well now it is over. Instead we have a nice guy renting our place for a year or more.


Now, anyone want our car?

posted by Mark @ 11:06 PM Comments: 4

I can't possibly

I can't possibly, at this point, explain all that has gone on in the last while about the move to Hong Kong, but things are surely moving along. Eric got back from Hong Kong at the beginning of June, finished his 6 week secondment there. During that time he got his job sorted out and came to an agreement as to what he'd be doing there, and then the financial details that needed to be worked out.

They've essentially created a new job for him out in the HK office. He'll be regional sales and quality dude. That means that he'll be responsible for generating new business and keeping the printers in line. It's a good gig, similar to what he does here.

When I went to Hong Kong I wanted to find a job there, or at least make some progress towards that. I had applied to a few things, and called a few people and managed to make a few meetings happen while I was there.

I arrived in Hong Kong on the Wednesday night, and had 3 interviews set up for Friday. Of course as luck would have it, the warmest day of my entire trip was that Friday. Itw was easily 32 degrees and humid (I know this is nothing to the normal summer weather, and nothing to what we'll experience in August, but still it was hot). Of course I was also terribly jet lagged at that point, surviving on a Red Bull at 4pm, to make it to dinner time.

Long story short, I got called back for a second interview at one of the jobs, and at that interview was told I'd be offered a job. By the time I left I had the offer in hand. It was crazy how quickly it all moved. The job the offered was wicked cool. I will be working for a corporate English language training company the specialize in "In-house business English Training".

They wanted me to start right away-ish. We agreed on August as a start date. This caused its own set of problems. I returned to Toronto, and Eric followed a few weeks later and in 2 months we have to get our shit together and get moved out to Hong Kong. I am beginning to admire Hamish's life-philosophy of living as if you are on the run from the FBI - where everything you own could be put into one duffel-bag (assuming you're not using it to hide a body - not that he would, but why else is he on the run?).

So instead we're dragging crap to the Goodwill, selling stuff, primping, posing and selling our condo, buffing, cleaning and detailing our car and on and on .....

In the last few weeks we have reached a point of equilibrium. We have removed half stuff in our condo, so now it looks just empty enough to sell (you have to do this, people, when buying a condo or house, are incapable of all acts of imagination). We've sold stuff off, but nobody is allowed to pick it up until we sell the condo, because it has to look semi-empty, but not actually empty. So until we sell, it stays this way. There is nothing to do but wait. And stress out.

Our brains do what brains do when they have nothing useful, they eat themselves. So we've been fixated on what if we don't sell, or rent, or get rid of the car and a bunch of other options. It's horrible really. But something happened in the last week that kinda shifted.

We got a verbal offer on the condo. A slightly weird real estate agent came to us with an offer, well not really an offer, because of course if it is no signed and with a cheque, then it's not really an offer. But in any case he delivered us a verbal offer for the condo. It was really friggin' low, we would have worked with it, i.e. signed it back etc. if it had been on paper, but the guy then said that was his people's final offer. There's a whole blog entry to be written on what kind of a dick does that, but I'll save that for another time. Instead we told him to go away. He did. A week later we reduced our price on our listing. Still to nowhere within the range of what he offered but a significant reduction. Then he came back with an offer $1000 less than his original verbal offer. This time, as it was official, we dealt with it officially and signed it back, we came down a chunk (as you do to suggest you're wiling to work with a buyer) and sent it back. He came back a day later with an offer $1000 more - exactly what we had told him we would not sell for a week earlier, and clearly a stupid amount of money.

This asshole then had the nerve to be both surprised and a bit insulted when we refused to sign back the offer (that is to say, we let it die, and said we were no longer interested - a real estate 'fuck you'). But in all of this we realised that we didn't care, and we were not desperate, and that holding on to the condo for a month or two would not kill us. So in a way it was rather freeing.

So now we're still trying to sell or rent out the condo, and we may have a tenant this week, or sell it.... it's all up in the air. But in any case I'm a lot less stressed about it now than i was a few days ago.

As for what's next: well in the next few weeks we have to get rid of our furniture, finish up some work, say goodbye and head out. It's crazy, but we're winding up our Toronto lives for a while. The reality hit yesterday when we were putting together our going away party invite, Eric cried like a baby.

So that's the update for now.

posted by Mark @ 10:54 PM Comments: 1