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A-ha, thanks to the lovely people at the Blogger discussion forums I’ve actually fixed up the archives. Now my words of wisdom don’t disappear into the ether after seven days. To look back, click the link in the navigation bar to the left and prepare to read a load of old mumbling.

I’ve finally caught up with all of the sleep I lost last weekend. For those of you who aren’t psychic, the reason I lost sleep was that we sailed to Port Stephens and back.

This was the practical component of our AYF Coastal Skipper course. A mere 150 nautical miles in a weekend. Overall a good time was had by all, the only drawback is the four hours on, four hours off watch system. Having experienced this for just a weekend I’d like to say that long distance sailors are all nutters.

With my lie in this morning I got up full of good intentions, to tidy the house, to write some code and to watch a little cricket on the TV. Sadly, I’ve spent the last two and a half hours in front of my laptop. Its time to leave the house, au revoir.

Are you a blogaholic? Apparently not. I score 40 out of a possible 100. According to the site this means;

"You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’d post a little more often, you’d make your readers very happy."

So, who wants more of these random meanderings?

According to this article at the BBC, watching Buffy is a valid academic discipline. I think I’m ready to write my PhD thesis.

The frantic search for a mortgage has wound down now. After checking with a number of finance companies and getting flatly refused by most of them it is time to make a decision.

As usual, we’ve gone for the path of least resistance and decided to give up. We may be able to secure a mortgage but because it would be an unconventional loan we think that the cost would be too much.

Our cunning plan is to just wait until we have some more money in the bank. That way we can thumb our noses at the companies that rudely dismissed us this time, in particular my bank.

Why is it that Bobo and I, with a combined income that exceeds the GDP of some third world countries, can’t get a mortgage?

In the UK I was looking into buying property a few years ago and the banks and building societies were falling all over themselves trying to give me huge piles of filthy lucre. Here in Australia I phoned the bank (who I have been with for over five years now) and they didn’t want to know me.

So I have been ringing around banks, finance companies and mortgage brokers and am getting the same message from all of them – come back when you have ten percent of the purchase price as a deposit. Not to mention the other five percent of the purchase price you will need to pay your conveyancing costs, legal fees and the extortionate amount of stamp duty that the state government requires. The strange thing is that this only applies if the purchase price of the property is over $400,000. That is a little strange to understand, so let us do some sums;

Scenario 1;
House Price: $400,000
Buyer needs Deposit (5%): $20,000 + Fees (5%): $20,000 = $40,000

Scenario 2;
House Price: $405,000
Buyer needs Deposit (10%): $40,000 + Fees (5%): $20,000 = $60,000

This means that for an increase in the property price of $5,000 (or 1.25%) the unsuspecting house buyer needs another $20,000 (or 5%) of the purchase price. The world of finance is a mystery to us all.

Pinch, punch, first day of the month.

But on a comedy note, Dave Barry has been talking about the big blue bear. Very funny, but a scary insight into parent hood. Hmmmmm.

I have been dudded. Done. Tucked up like a kipper. Defrauded.

I am not happy about it either. I broke out of the office to get some lunch. Feeling in need of a boost I decided some quality junk food was in order. I went to Burger King at the Macquare Centre and order a Bacon Deluxe, some regular fries (well, chips) and some tomato ketchup. I dragged the food back to my desk so that I could continue working whilst topping up my grease levels and opened the brown paper bag. Disaster! No tomato ketchup. Well, I thought to myself, I can deal with that disappointment. I removed the burger from the bag and thought “hmm, this looks a bit small for a bacon deluxe” I then actually bit into the burger and found that it was actually a fish burger! I was outraged, and of course couldn’t go back to complain because that is a fifteen minute round trip. So my only response was to post this entry to my diary.

As far Burger King – bah, humbug.

Saturday morning and what am I doing? I’m at work. Bugger.