Bug-Man’s Blog

It’s been so long since I have been able to write an update given that my server has been more unreliable than ever. I’m sorry about that. I should have written more offline but kept on kidding myself that the server would return to normal more quickly!

I’ll have to do a real quick re-cap of the last few few days, but as yet there isn’t too much to tell. The reason for this is that Lindsay and I have been working towards getting our new home. We will be living in the suburb of Chiswick:

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This is right around the corner from Michelle and only a bus ride away from Justin. And it’s a really nice area! The problems in getting the place have been irritating. Firstly there were two bids in at the same offer so we had to bid higher (an extra £10 per week) in order to actually get the place — but I believe that the price we’re paying is still very worth it, otherwise I wouldn’t have bid the extra! Secondly, being Australian citizens with no jobs on a working holiday visa, we really don’t have much in the way of a credible background in this country. Nor do we have jobs (except for Lindsay’s which he starts shortly.) This means that in order to be able to lease the property, we had to go with one of two options.

A) Get a guarantor for our rent payments.

B) Pay 6 months rent up-front.

Neither of these options are extremely desirable. We considered the guarantor path and talked it over with Justin who agreed, but the more we got into the paperwork the more we realised we can’t put a friend of ours through this — essentially it would mean that he would be leasing the place and be responsible for it and we would have to pay the rent. He would have to hand them over all of his details and they would have to do a credit and background check on him. And we would have to do nothing. It all seemed a little unbalanced. We decided to go with option B. Youch.

6 months rent plus a 6 week damage deposit plus the agent administration fee of £100 comes to £7540. That’s a lot of cash. It’s not all that we came with but it certainly is a large chunk of it. It will give us enough leftover to live on. At least on the flipside it’s not like we’re losing that money entirely; we we were going to spend it anyway. At least this way we won’t have to think about rent for the next 6 months and we’ll be able to save that money back again for traveling around. Luckily I suppose we’re not in a bad position. Many people I’ve spoken to have said they came over with far less money than we did.

But the saga doesn’t end there! In addition to paying the rent for 6 months the agent still wants to do a bank reference on each of us. Lindsay seems to have had reasonable cooperation out of Westpac but I can’t say the same of BankSA, who said at first they wouldn’t do it until I convinced them. They then said last night that they had never received the fax, which I’ll confirm that it was sent today with the agent. Frustratingly because of the completely flipped timezones I have to call the bank at about 11PM local time, when they’re just starting work, and I can’t contact our agent until daytime here, which is night time at home… so for any minor delays like this it can take up to 24 hours to resolve

On a lighter note we went out to Leicester Square on Saturday night which was extremely busy. We were also down there earlier in the day and they had a UK premiere for the Bee movie with Jerry Seinfeld. Guard rails were going up, a giant inflatable bee was being inflated, and people were camping out so they could catch a glimpse of celebrities. This was at least 5 hours before the premiere would have even started!

So later that night we went back to the square and decided to see the movie Sleuth. It was about 3-stars I think. I wasn’t that impressed with it but it was a movie that was a little different than normal. Much like Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder’ this film was set in only one location and had only two characters. The younger boyfriend was played by Jude Law and his girlfriends older rich husband was played by Michael Caine, who actually played the younger boyfriend in the 1972 version of the film. All in all I rate it OK. I’ll make a point to watch the 1972 version as it is a remake after all.

Last point of note! Lindsay has come down with a chest infection which seems to be going around here at the moment! Luckily I have not come down with the ailment and although Lindsay has been pretty out of it in the last 36 hours I hope that he’s going to be much better today.

Thanks for being patient with my server. I’ll write again soon!