No one would have believed in the last few months mortgage was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as Janis and Jerry busied themselves about their various bank accounts, they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency Janis and Jerry went to and fro over this Kyiv about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over housing and finances. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of Tiki as sources of financing, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of a mortgage from him as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other mortgages from Riki or Cort, perhaps inferior to Tiki and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Then across the gulf of the atlantic, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded our deposit with envious eyes, and slowly and surely draw their cheques against us. And early on Friday evening, just lat week came the great notification.

“Your Mortgage is approved”

I didn’t want this blog to descend into “Look at the crazy stuff in Ukraine” but, after yesterdays revolution, and surrounding political spat it’s just too tempting. I blogged before about the crazy houses. Today we went for a walk down the Dneeper and saw just how far this can go:

http://www.trianon-palace.com/ 3 bedrooms, indoor pool, no garage but double marble parking approach. Try a Bablefish translation but the drawings of the proposed interiors is the best bit. The weirdest thing though is the location. I have no idea how much Trianon Palace would cost - several million dollars as a guess and for that money, It’s halfway down a knackered concrete road and only about 200m from the next McMansion.

That said, Bablefish is a really nice part of Ukraine - lots of islands and sandbanks along Dneeper south of Kyiv. I wonder how long it will be before the whole of the dneeper is lined with Trianon Palaces. The real Trianon Palace is now a Westin Hotel. If you stay, you should get a room overlooking Versailles - so the internet says anyway.

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.