As you may have heard, we’re having a revolution.

Except it’s not really a revolution. It’s more like two neighbors who don’t get on with each other turning their stereos up really loud to annoy each other. The stereos are huge stages surrounded by flags. In Maidan, we have the Europe facing factions and about 200 meters down the road, we have the Russian guys. The European’s have rap and rock, the communists have great marching tunes.

If I stand on the toilet (I’m not kidding) and stick Janis’s camera and long lens out of the window I can see the stage - well the big screen by it. As I’m typing, Julia Tymoshenko is inciting us to do something in Russian. Look:

Boris is standing on the balcony disagreeing.

The loan is approved. Or it would be if we could produce three documents that don’t exist:
- Bank statements (we get them online)
- Record of a transfer that hasn’t happened yet
- A contemporary account of the birth and death of Christ.

I was just told, in a rather matter of fact way that there will be a revolution tomorrow and Sunday.

Yushenko is going to dismiss the supreme council, they are adopting a law to make his position unconstitutional or something.

Whatever, all traffic is banned from town tomorrow, seems like our flat is inside the curfew - it means Boris will miss the walk but he might get chance to bite a Bolshevik.

Only Ukraine could have a revolution on April fool’s day.

I’ve been spending the past few evenings on mail, IM and the phone to various mortgage lenders and realtors. Realtor 1 is pretty bad at communication. she needs prodding and poking to give any information out. By comparison to Mortgage Lender 2 though, she is the fount of all knowledge, wisdom and a little bit gushy.

Mortgage lender 1 has dropped out of the race so we’re left with ML2. I’m going to start using his real name (Rick) because it helps with what passes for humor these days. Rick remains confident of the loan and but seems to have ever more crazy requirements for proof of assets, income and so on. The requests are so frequent that he’s put me onto his assistant (Tiki) to procees them. I’m waiting for Tiki’s assistant (Davey) to come out of the woodwork and start asking for even more ridiculous documents (RickiTikiDavey! geddit?)

Whatever, the end is in sight. Rick phoned the long suffering Jason last night and had him sign some mysterious documents. He then told Jason that the loan would be approved today one way or the other. Note that he told Jason, not me. Luckily Jason has his own eMail account and so we can keep up to date on our mortgage through the grapevine.

Here’s a picture of Jason to keep you amused.

[30 March - edited for gibberish]

We’ve come up with a better way of raising money for this damn house.

This afternoon we went out training to be freedom fighters (or as history may dub us “bank robbers”). Janis is seen here modeling the AK-47 which despite what Bulwer-Lytton would have you believe certainly has a more powerful recoil than any pen I’ve ever written with. Wonder if that’s the same Bulwer-Lytton?

We heard on Friday that the mortgage “will probably happen on Monday” there is though “another set of documents” to furnish immediately we head about them. I spent all Friday night sending PDFs of various documents I’ve sent before but have been ignored because they didn’t arrive during the correct phase of the moon or something.

All we got in the mail overnight was a mail from Mortgage Lender #1 (strictly he is actually ML#2 and ML#2 is ML#3 but let’s leave it as it is) saying he will have an answer on Monday. This is progress because previously he’s said “no”.

Nothing from “confident” ML#2 (AKA ML#3) or Realtor #1.

Maureen insists that despite the fact that he won’t speak to us, Mortgage Lender #2 is going to come good. She said she’d call with the good news in ten minutes… 20 minutes ago.

At this stage I can’t share her enthusiasm. Despite a run of good fortune in the last 24 hours* things are just running too late. It seems unlikely that we’ll get the mortgage today - the last day required by the sellers after trying for the last 4 weeks.

* Visa approved in 1/8 of estimated time, bank transfer of deposit to US in a mind numbingly short 6 hours, visit to US embassy for power of attorney over in 30 minutes, UPS Ukraine announce new 1 day service to US just as we need a document there on Monday

As I hinted last night, my visa application was accepted. Here’s some paper to prove it. It was supposed to take 4 months - which was already ‘fast track’ it actually took about a week. I wonder if the sacred green card will be similarly expedited. I must say I feel like we need a little luck at the moment.

Have you noticed how everything printed by the US government looks like it came from the same printer - a printer who went out of business in 1904 as if they have a huge stockpile of stationary they’re working through.

Mortgage lender 1: I have good news
Mortgage lender 2: <silence>
Realtor: I have spoken to Mortgage lender 1, his good news has gone away.
Jerry: Dear Mortgage lender 1, what is happening
Janis: Mortgage lender 1 has gone sour
Mortgage lender 2: <silence>
Mortgage lender 1: You are not residents, you do not have enough assets to compensate for the risk
Jerry: <fume>
Realtor: Mortgage lender 2 will come good
Jerry: Whatever
Realtor: Did I tell you the deposit is probably forfeit if you don’t get the mortgage by tomorrow
Jerry: <fume>
Mortgage lender 2: <silence>
Realtor: Morgtage lender 2 just needs to confirm your employment
Jerry: <types> HR person, please sign this letter and fax it it Mortgage lender 2.
HR Person: OK
Jerry: Thanks
HR Person: Congratulations on the visa by the way!
Jerry: ?
HR Person: Yeah, I just got a mail…
Jerry: My mail is broken, please forward to this other account.
Jerry: Dear mortgage lender 1, does this make a difference?
Mortgage lender 1: cool dude!
Mortgage lender 2: <silence>

All this, and TheCompanyThatDareNotSpeakItsName is launching, and Mishka is on heat.

This feels like the saga of the Vanuatu registration but I’ve not had time to keep you all amused at my idiocy sorry.
We’ve now burnt our way through three mortgage lenders trying to buy this damn house. The first one went all weird on us. He started by asking if we had a friend with US residency who would co-sign the mortgage for us. It ended up with the friend being asked to be sole signer on the mortgage and sign the lease. We trust Jase absolutely but it just felt wrong. There was also the problem that Uncle Sam (or at least Uncle San Francisco County Hall) would want some tax blood when Jase gave us the house back.

We ditched that idiot. Trouble is, we’d only made the offer based on what he’d said he could lend us.

Now we have Cort (gender unclear, we never meet these guys) and Steve/Chris/Mike (we can never remember their names). Both claim they can get us a mortgage but…. but… and there’s the rub. We’re a fistfull of dollars short of the full price. We made the ridiculous offer based on what mortgage guy 1 said and we fell in love with the house. Now we can’t quite afford it and house prices in SF have risen about fifty zillion percent.

so, at the ripe old age of 40 I went and asked my mum for extra pocket money to buy that new toy before next month came around. She said yes. What a star. I feel a bit crap but the house is still on.

side 2, track 3.