Disengagements and divestments

It has been just over a month since we were in Hong Kong. In that time I have been to NYC and am planning another trip in just a couple of weeks to Washington DC, and the clocks are now on BST. I am not sure whether I am coming or going or what time it is.
I do know, however, that moving is a lot of work. We are getting our house ready to sell, which seems to have involved me painting about 4 rooms, hiring a man to pain the hall, stairs and landing, and Adrian painting 6 drawers. You do the math on this one.

The actual institutional process of selling ones house in the UK seems a radically more complicated affair than it seemed when we sold our house in the US 11 years ago. First thing is that you have to get something called a HIP survey done. This involves a man (I could only find men who did this) doing a bunch of searches on your property that the solicitor of the buyers will eventually do again. He then comes to the house and measures up and looks at the windows to determine what energy rating is on the house and what it could be if you ripped out all the leaded windows and replaced them with uPVC (plastic) windows. There are all sorts of assumptions about how people will use the house, of course--e.g., that they will leave the heating on all the time, unlike us leave who it off as much as possible. Plus, there is not any consideration of the types of light bulbs used, what the rating of the appliances is etc. etc. This all costs about £200 and is required before anyone can come look at the property. Some estate agents will also do this for you, but the one who came last week to value our house charges £300.

Another element of complexity here is the difficulty one has getting rid of stuff. Actually it is easy to get rid of if you don't want any money for it. I have so far managed to rid the house of an exercise bike, a piece of furniture we no longer wanted, and a bail of straw left over from when we had chickens through freecycle (freecycle is a yahoo group organised by area where you offer things and people email back if they want them--great for circulating goods at no cost. As we live in a fairly affluent area the freecycle stuff tends to be pretty good and so the group is large and as a result it is easy to get rid of things). The exercise bike is now helping a family become fit and the straw is keeping some strawberries warm. I have more hopes for the long term usefulness of the straw. But, if one wanted to sell things like old books, cd's, etc. typically you have to pack all this in your car and go to a designated car boot sale, where you are charged £5 to have people look over your things and argue with you about the price. You don't, as you would in the US, put your stuff in your driveway and advertise as a yard sale. This means that you can only sell what you can bring in your car. As we have a smallish car this means nothing larger than a box, so no furniture. Furniture, it seems, must be sold via posters at the post office or on the community boards at the local grocery store. So what might have been a morning sitting in front of the house selling off everything we don't want to move now involves several car boot sales, the production of posters with photo's of items that are too big to put in the car, and several trips to various places in the hope that someone will be willing to buy. It may be a bit crass, but if you ask me the good old yard sale is a whole lot easier and much more efficient--and you get to keep all that you earn. But this is England, if you can make it more difficult to achieve, then by all means do so, at least you don't embarrass the neighbors. .

On the positive side, the estimate for moving our stuff to Hong Kong is only about £4200 or about £5.60 per cubic foot. When I tried to ask ex-pats in Hong Kong how much they paid for their own moves via a forum, no one wanted to say. I found this very odd. The cost is calculated by the volume, so if you make a guess of approximately how much you want to move, you can work out how much approximately it will cost, no biggie, but apparently it is something one keeps as a secret. I've now probably blown any chance of having friend amongst the ex-pat community in Hong Kong...

It is about 70 degrees (F) in Hong Kong today. It is 43 here with a chance of snow. Despite the effort, I can't wait to go.