Hunting!

We have started house hunting or at least looking around for something to buy.
It's not that we are not happy were we are living now, but we feel that we rather pay towards a bond/mortgage ("lån" in Swedish ;-) than paying rent.
We are really not in a hurry since we signed our rental lease on the flat in Pinelands, a suburb to Cape Town, in February. So in which areas in Cape Town should one look for houses? Well, most of the nice areas that tourists goes to, like Camps Bay are just ridiculously expensive, so we wont look there... We honestly would love to buy in Pinelands, where we are renting now, but the house prices are a bit too high for us, so we have looked for other areas and have found one which we like: Edgemead; the second garden city in Cape Town. (Pinelands counts as the first.) The main concern with Edgemead is the distance to the city center where I am working. I think it is about 12km BUT it can take up to 1 hour to drive!!!
And what happens if we find a house we like when we are "just looking"?
Can we break our rental contract?
I looked at the contract and the answer was "no" :-(
But I phoned the landlord and asked "what if" we would move out early? "No problem" he said, but there are some conditions (I will spare you the details :-) However it is possible to break out from the contract!
We did see a house that we liked and thought "this is it", but we asked Joggie and Barbara to come and have a look too; Joggie found some problems with it... do I need to say that we are not going for that house.
However, we have now seen another house we like and it has passed the "Joggie and Barbara Test"! It is above our budget so we have to sit down and check our finances again!

It is another public holiday here on Friday and we don't have to work!
Super it is!
We are going to go to the farm (Bergvliet) in Worcester with Clinton and Chandre (the newly married) and Fraser and Nicole! Rene and I are really looking forward to it!
There has been quite a debate here on the radio (567 Cape Talk) about the number of public holidays in this country. I personally think is justified since people in general have a lot less holiday than you do in both UK and Sweden. So thumbs up for long weekends! However, I would prefer to have no public holidays and be able to choose when to have time off my self.

I caught a shark!

We went to the Beach House in Onrus, outside Hermanus this weekend.
We had a nice time and Barbara, Rene, Julie and Lil went to the Arabella spa for treatments. This was Barbara's birthday gift from last year. They all liked it and say that they can recommend it. I would personally like to try the beautiful golf course again!

I went crayfishing with Joggie and his friends on Saturday morning when the girls went to the spa. The weather was beautiful and calm but I still got a bit "sea sick"... Well I didn't get sick but I didn't feel that great. Perhaps the red wine and Cognac from dinner the night before was part of the problem?! However, I did feel better after a while and "pulled" some nets and i happened to catch a Pyjama shark! It was quite small (45-50cm) stripy and still alive and we did put it back in to the water. That was much more fun than catching the crayfish, if you ask me!

We also did some house hunting on the way home to Cape Town, but more about that later!

Car crash!

René had an accident with the car! The most important thing is that René is fine... It wasn't very serious at all; just a small crash between our car and a cement pillar next to where the car is parked!
It will cost a couple of thousand rands but "that is why you have insurance" as someone pointed out.
In all fairness this type of thing could happen to anyone. Or? It is statistically proven that women are better drivers then men and that is why their insurance premiums are lower. However I did find this this article (in Swedish) claiming the opposite! The reason should be that men "drives" their car and women just use it as a means of transportation. I.e. men might take (stupid/calculated) risks but women are more likely to think about other things but driving the car! Perhaps it is dangerous to generalize in this way since the opposite behavior exist on both sides.
It is surprising how "few" accidents happens in the Cape Town traffic, if you think about how people drive; tailgating, speeding, overtaking on the inside, tailgating and speeding and overtaking on the inside all at the same time. And it is NOT only the taxis that does this... I think I need to investigate the train option more for getting to and from work.

Cape Town is Freezing!

I have noticed that it has become colder in Cape Town recently and specially this last week.
It was obvious when I saw people wrapped up warmly in hats and scarfs, jerseys and jackets walking to and from work.
I decided to have look at BBC weather to see what the outlook was like; and it was going to be between a min of 10C and max of 20C and sunshine! A minimum of 10 degrees Celsius in Sweden or the UK would normally make you consider wearing shorts! I guess I have become used to the climate and weather here.

Happy Birthday Johnty!

Happy birthday Johnathan!
Jonathan is Rene's godson and it is his 6th birthday today (11 April)!

START -> The first post!

I have finally got around to creating and setting up this space and will try to use it instead of sending loooong emails to everyone on an irregular basis...

I might try to move the blog to our website http://www.nilsson.co.za but I will let you know if that happens!