When I was a lad, I travelled extensively in the US. Jane and I were talking about it tonight. She wanted to know why I didn’t go to Asia - much cheaper, more varied.

The truth is when I was 20 or so and I was a huge americanophi uhhh yankophil… ummm, is there any reason why there’s no word for people who love America?

I’m trying to pull my own Equifax record - the US credit agency can’t because of the ridiculous UK data protection laws. Just getting a login to the site is very difficult. You need several addresses, personal details and financial history. If you mistype your address once they lock your account and require you to call them.

When you have an account and you try to pay, if your credit card address differs in any way from the address you gave them you need to fax them proof of validity (specifically a copy of the credit card and a corresponding statement).

If you log in incorrectly once, they lock your account. When you phone them up to reset the account they send you your passowrd - in the clear, in eMail. It would be slightly more secure to write it on the side of Kylie Minogue just before she plays at Wembly and send you a front row ticket.

In the same way that buying a house is like poker over here, getting a mortgage is like tennis only there are three players, all of them have different versions of the rules and the ball is your future home.

Michael is organizing the mortgage. It’s really rather large and he’s very gung ho about the whole thing. We bat approvals in principle and mortgage amounts back and forth for days on end. Game point! Then Rafael joins the game. Rafael is organising the credit report. That’s the difficult bit. We’ve moved around a lot over the last few years and don’t really appear on credit recrods. Worse, the UK government as so paranoid about secruity that mortgage companies can’t actually see your credit history. Unless you are a terrorist I assume.

On Friday we spent the morning in ad-hoc conference calls with Rafael and various UK financial institutions. “Hello, my name is Rafael and, strange as it may seem, even though I have no real way of knowing who you are if you’ll just say yes a few times to Mr Nolan, I’ll authorize him to get a squillion dollar loan”.

Then you hit the Portman building society. They won’t say “yes” unless you write to them and sign your name in purest swan blood. Which means you’re now playing tennis with a bunch of inbred yokels through the royal mail.

Then you have to get on a plane and go back to Ukraine.

We have plan b (said letter, emailed to Louise and signed in eSwan’s blood), c (Michaels plan to circumvent the UK government’s restrictions on credit agencies) and d (basic fraud) in operation. In four hours we have to get on a plane and leave them to their own devices. Wish them luck.

Advantage Portman!

No, I have no idea why you can’t comment either. I think it’s something to do with the template. Sitting outside Starbucks in Burlingame, I’m far to depressed about the thought of flying back to Kyiv and the change in weather. So, turn on the music and mail me if you want to comment.

Buying a house in america is a lot like playing poker. The major difference is you can’t see your opponent and you can’t do that clever flippy thing with a handful of chips.

It’s all carried out through agents. Ours is called Maureen and it goes like this:

Monday. You see a house in Noe valley. They are “taking offers” on Thursday of the same week. You decide to offer over the asking price but you put a time limit (wednesday) on your offer.

Wednesday: you see another house (which you prefer) in the Inner Mission. You worry but you never blink. The time limit on your Noe offer comes around and nothing happens. You are free to offer on the Mission house. You do so along with seven other people.

Thursday: You hear about your offer. Because Maureen is a better poker player than you, you stay in the round.

The people from Noe valley call back. Your offer was second best and they’d like you to stay sitting at their table. You say no.

The people from the Mission tell you that they liked your offer best except for it’s size. Would you like to offer more? They say the same to two other people. You have under 24 hours (until 5.30pm today) to make a counter offer. You blink. Over dinner you drink too much and decide to make the bigger offer.

One of the other three people still in the game also makes and offer and it is even bigger than your offer. Maureen secretly writes to the vendors explaining what a nice English couple you are and how you have two sweet dogs (she’s never met them and is really very good at poker).

Friday. Nothing. You spend all morning on a conference call between a mortgage agent and various financial institutes in the UK persuading them to tell the mortgage guy that you are a good credit risk despite having moved country every two years since 1980.

At lunch, the people from the Mission call back and tell you what Mr X offered*. They really like you and if you just up your offer a little they say, they’ll sell you the house. You dither. You dither again and then realise that the mortgage is already 50% more than you wanted to have so an extra 1% isn’t going to break the bank any more.

5.30 pm today. The game is about to finish. Nothing is happening. You call Maureen. She assures you it’s all OK. She has some signatures and the house is yours. She’s pretty distracted as though she’s forgotten something. You blink a lot.

The winnings.

* How very un-British.

Is anyone reading this? Please comment if so, so we can tell if it’s all worth it.

We’re going to California. Today we fly to London for the night and then we head off to CA for a week’s house hunting.

This letter was in the hallway yesterday morning. If it’s there when we get back from the US, I’m going to open it. It’s not like it’s the Royal Mail after all is it?

Jeff, remember him from the old blog? He’s had a baby. Well actually, Inna the Ukranian wife did all the having, he’s just doing the talking and providing the citizenship.

Part of the process involves scanning the birth certificate. Like all Ukranian certificates it is very impressive. That need not interest us though. scroll down the image and check out the little tyke’s serial number
.

I can’t quite remember where we got this from but it’s a good indication of the state of international food in Kyiv.

Most restaurants feature a mix of “European International and Japanese” which means “Ukranian and Sushi”. This place really tries to get some authentic food though. I bet all you brits are looking forward to “Beefsteak with Porridge” for Sunday Monday lunch eh? Still, bear a thought for the Greek who’s national dish has been reinterpreted as “Baked Beans” Roll on Tuesday.