Mortage and Playing Games

4-12-13 6:33am Fri. (1)

      I prefer the cloudy rainy skies of Taichung to the smoggy skies we typically have; at least the air is cleaner. Fewer motor bikes, too. But I don’t like that I can’t ride my bicycle up the Han River. It has been raining or threatening to rain from the day we left Taichung for Kyoto eight days ago. I won’t be able to ride the bike except to American Eagle with my rain suit close at hand. It is cooler, too; 62 going up to 76. But as the weather deteriorated here, it got colder in Kyoto; 35 degrees right now! We were lucky to hit a warm patch while we were there. By last Sunday, the beautiful pink leaves on the sakura trees we saw the first two days were blown away. Already, it is getting warmer in the Northeast US, as warm as it is here.

      Shih-Dong wanted a Harley-Davidson vest from America even before he secured a $30,000us (1,000,000NT) home equity loan for us to help make up the difference between what Cathay Bank will mortgage and what we are required to pay the owner of the condo; 30% down. His loan won’t be ready for another week or two but our payment can’t wait so Leona is also getting a $15,000us (500,000NT) loan from her father until that loan is ready. This whole mess was caused by the man who is acting as our go-between fulfilling the role of a lawyer, such as Arnold Lande was for us at 1210 Ave Y. But this man we have doesn’t know as much as Arnold. He’s the one who said we couldn’t get a loan from a local bank because we had no local income; only my US pension. He suggested we go to HSBC. He was so wrong. HSBC screwed us at the last minute after Leona had gone through the trouble of flying back to the states to wire $80,000us which we were told was more than enough. Now we have to pay 38% down to make up the shortfall in the Cathay mortgage in addition to our monthly $780us rent and utilities at the Beverly. It would have been better to just pay for the $195,000us condo in cash from our home equity loan in TD Bank if we had known. At least our mortgage interest will be a bit lower here; 1.99% to 2.7%. On Wednesday, Leona put her chops on the documents for Cathay.

      Now Shih-Dong is talking about getting him a Harley-Davidson helmet from America, too! It doesn’t matter that he’ll pay for that himself; it will take up too much space. How come he gets to waste money on motorcycles and accessories he doesn’t need but I can’t get myself a fucking AC/DC pinball machine?