A Busy Little Bee

I've been a busy busy little bee.

Last Thursday evening was book club. Always awesome to see those lovely ladies :)

On Friday Telkom came round to install my phone line, well not really. So far I've been very impressed with Telkom's call-center, even if you can barely hear them even after adjusting the volume on my work line (Telkom's call-center is the only place I've called that I've ever had to use the little volume button, what on earth is wrong with them, they are the telephone people?!?). Anyway. I had called the Call-Center ton Thursday to confirm that they were indeed coming on Friday and made sure there was a note there for their technician to call me when he arrived since I live about 3 mins from work, so that I could pop home and let him in. I called again at around midday on Friday when I had yet to hear from them.

At 1pm, when the technician arrived at my house, do you think he called me? No. I had to get another call from my land-lady's business saying that people were there for me (it happened before when the bed got delivered because the delivery guy's phone didn't work - I'm sure she thinks I'm not even specifically requesting that these people call me when they arrive :P Oh well, what can you do really). So after giving the technician a piece of my mind for not following what I know was specifically on file, he proceeded to check my line and it turns out it's not connected to the exchange :P So now I have to wait for the cable guys to connect it or something. Who knows when that'll be? So I'm not really feeling that much closer to getting internet at home yet :(

On Friday evening I was considering going to an Anti-Valentine's Party, but no one else ended up being keen so instead I went for after-work drinks at Capello's ... from 5pm - 9pm! It was a very cool start to the weekend :)

Now I know you're going to be a little surprised here, but I didn't buy one single thing for the house this whole weekend! This weekend was more about me.

I did a Camera Course on Saturday with Jo Fonesca and Doug Place. It was a whole day (a very hot day too) but totally worth it. I learnt all about F-stops and shutter speed and ISO settings and exposure settings. It was exactly what I needed to feel more confident with my SLR camera. Although I do sorta wish I'd known this stuff before I went to Canada, I am still very slow and experimental with the settings so I'm not sure how much it would've really helped. I plan to experiment a lot with it now that I know how to control all these setting tho :)

I was exhausted by the end of the day and had a very quiet evening at home. Mostly tho I was going thru the property paper looking for possible houses ;)

So yes, those of you watching on Twitter will know I spent a large portion of yesterday (4hours!) house-hunting. Well, first there was breakfast at Papachino's with CollegeInstructor for some couch-hunting (at Sevens). Mostly all the couch-hunting did was to reassure me that the couch I've chosen (but not yet bought) is exactly the one I want, I haven't seen anything else around that grabs my eye. Which is how I actually like to shop :) It's the same going to all these furniture places now looking at the few 4-poster bed's they have for sale. It's been so reassuring me that mine is my favourite one and makes me more thrilled with my purchase. Nothing like a little self-patting on the back!

So, the house-hunting. I've sort of decided that I should get into the property market. I'm not looking for a place for me to live (which makes the house-hunting that little bit easier), I'm looking for somewhere I can buy and rent out and that way, although I'm renting and contributing to someone else's income or bond, I won't feel like it's a total drain on myself because someone else will be contributing to my bond and I'll still have an investment at the end of it. So CollegeInstructor, Miss B and I set off at 12pm with a list of 11 properties to look at (I can't tell you how I had to narrow them down after cutting all the ones in my price range out of the newspaper - it does make it easier now that I'm not as constrained by area as I would be if I had to live there). We ended up seeing 9 properties in 4 hours (not too shabby!). So far I have one I'm really interested in, although I didn't actually see it, I saw it's big sister (a 2 bed, 2 bath in the same complex), but am hoping to make an appointment with the agent to see it this week. And then there are 2 studio's I'm quite interested in just because they are so much cheaper and I could pay them off far quicker and therefore start earning an income from their rental (to hopefully contribute to paying off another place). So yeah, not too bad for the first day of hunting!

I will say tho that out of the 9 we did see one truly shocking place. In the right area and earning more rental income that any other studio we saw ... but revolting, truly hideous. And another where the place inside was great bu the complex itself looked dreadfully run down. I personally love the ones that are already empty on show.

And then we headed to Cranks (which neither CollegeInstructor or Miss B had tried, they haven't really been in Joburg that long and Rosebank is a bit out of their local area) for a late lunch. It was delish, as always and lovely to be back, I can't remember the last time I ate there (since Varen wasn't really a fan).

Again, another day I ended exhausted. And now there's a brand new week ahead :)