Trip to Jönköping 🚗

21:57 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

We finally visited HTH in Jönköping. Our initial thought that there was no point in going to Jönköping when there was a HTH store in Karlskrona was proved wrong. The huge exhibition and showroom of HTH in Jönköpng cannot be compared to the little store in Karlskrona. And we are glad that we decided to go to Jönköping. 
According to our great plan, we had left the kids at school very early and started our journey immediately. 





It was a beautiful view and I enjoyed driving in the snow.


It's f*king cold... Brrr.

It was around 6:30 am when we left Karlskrona for Jönköping. It was dark, cold (-13 degrees) and the road to Jönköping was full of snow. Also me and Ana had not been on a long drive in a very long time. So we were enjoying each-others company without the kids in tow. It felt amazing.



Us


Our plan worked out very well, we made a very fruitful trip to Jönköping. Everything was done in time up to the last second. We had planned it so well that I was surprised to see that we managed to discuss all the details of the kitchen and conclude the final kitchen design in less than 2 hours. All those 'to and fro' email discussions we did before going to Jönköping paid off. I am sure Ulrica at HTH might be tired of my emails, but all that helped us finalize things in less time than we had expected.
HTH showroom in Jönköping
We even had enough time to have a nice lunch at the nearby IKEA store restaurant. 
I must admit that Ana had such a great control over her temptation of buying stuff at IKEA. I mean, one does not just go to IKEA and leave that place without buying anything. So full marks to Ana for her super temptation control.
During the whole trip the only expenses we had were for the food we ate at IKEA and the fuel that was used for the journey.

The IKEA store where we had lunch
But still few small things remain. Some things just can't be decided immediately. The options to select from are so many that one second you think 'this would be better', but then you see something else and start having second thoughts. 
We couldn't decide whether to go for a granite stone worktop, a composite stone worktop or the laminate wood worktop. Each one had their own pros and cons. And as we were tight on schedule we decided that we would confirm that part later.
We still managed to do some nice changes and Ulrica at HTH presented us some amazing ideas for the kitchen cabinets which we liked very much and promptly agreed upon.
Of course the cost for the kitchen went north bound, but it was worth the investment. Also we had planned and prepared for it in advance so it was no surprise. 

For the past couple of days we have been thinking about what kind of worktop we would like to have. And all our calculations are pointing us to use the "laminate wood" option. The simple reason behind it is the fact that it is around 20 to 25 thousand Swedish kronor cheaper. And it is durable and strong. So why spend so much money on the other options that gives you the same final outcome.
It seems that we have made the decision and will finalize the kitchen by end of this week. Now next step is to book a meeting with Magnus from Myresjöhus.

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Planning kitchen isn't a child's play

00:29 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

It has been quite some time since my last post. My days have been very busy. Especially the kitchen plan and design has taken a lot of time. Never in my life had I thought that I will spend so much amount of time planning and designing the kitchen. But kitchen is an important part of the house, so when you are building a new house, everything including the kitchen needs to be perfect... or near perfect at least.
Like I mentioned in my previous post we have finally decided to visit HTH showroom in Jönköping. But it is going to be a rush. We don't have much time to discuss all the details as the meeting would be just couple of hours and we have to get back to Karlskrona to pick up the kids before school closes. So we are trying our best to plan as much detail as we can manage for the kitchen. So we have asked our contact at HTH in Jönköping to make 3D plans of the kitchen with the basic setup so that we can get an idea how the kitchen would look like and then do the modifications that we want.
Since the day we have received the drawings for the house, I think I must have changed the details at least 4-5 times till now and have asked our contact in Jönköping to update the 3D drawings with every change that we made. I think our contact at HTH in Jönköping must have realized that I am not a easy person to deal with when it comes to designing kitchen. But hey, we are the ones paying, so they will have to bear with us.
Me an my wife have so many discussions 5-6 times a day about each and every tiny detail in the kitchen plan and design. What color would suit the best, would dark shade look better than the brighter one, what kind of holders should we have, where should the sink be, would the color of the shelves and drawers go with the kitchen floor color, would LED stripes be better option than the LED spot lights.... and many other never ending questions keep running through our heads.
The idea is to at least have an agreement between me and my wife on majority of the things that we would like to have in the kitchen so that our visit to Jönköping is more useful in finalizing the kitchen with in the couple of hours we would have there. So we also paid a visit to the smaller HTH shop here in Karlskrona to get a feel of some materials. It was supposed to help us, but after looking at so many options we got more anxious as to what we should choose. 😵

In the mean while we have also been looking at some apartments to move in temporarily to save costs. And the last apartment we saw looks promising and if we are lucky, we would be able to rent this apartment. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best. After all we have only until the end of January.

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Achievement unlocked... Apartment found!! 😁

00:36 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Finally... Our luck has shined. Remember the example I gave about finding an apartment... When you have to attend the nature's call and there is no toilet nearby, 😰 so you focus all your energy in finding the toilet asap. 😣 😟 
Well, let's just say that we found the toilet and it actually came with rest of the apartment as well. 😉 
We finally found an apartment which we could rent for a while as our temporary residence until our house is built and ready. The queue for the apartment was very long this time too, but I somehow managed to convince the lady at the renting company to rent it to us.
But not everyone is happy. My wife is upset because the apartment we got is nothing close to be called "good" compared to the current one. Like I said before, our current apartment is amazing and located in a very nice area. But the other apartment is located in not such a nice area. To put it straight, the other apartment is located in an area which people in Karlskrona consider as the worst locality. 


So I understand my wife's feeling. But hey, there is currently scarcity of apartments in Karlskrona remember?
And anyway this is a temporary residence just for a few months and then we shall have our own house 🏡. Also I am sure that she will forget about it when she sees how much savings we will make due to this little change.
Now that the apartment issue is sorted out and I can relax knowing that we won't have to spend the winter in a tent ⛺,  I can now focus on planning the kitchen.
We are travelling to Jönköping on Monday and we are counting on our perfect plan to get everything done in time.

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Shock and relief !!

19:42 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Well, this wasn't expected. But today I got a big shock from Myresjöhus. I received a letter saying that the first payment that I had to do for getting things rolling had NOT been received. The letter said that I was behind the agreed deadline for the first payment which had to be done before 30th of October. But... But... But... I already did the payment and that too on 26th of October, well before the deadline. So what in the world went wrong? Why didn't Myresjöhus receive the payment?



First thing that came to my mind was, 'Shit... did I make the payment to a wrong account? Has someone received my money for no reason and is enjoying it while I sit down and worry about it'. I rushed to my computer and quickly logged into my bank account to get the things verified. To my relief, I had done everything correct. I had paid the money to the right account with the right details and correct reference numbers. This gave me a little relaxed feeling, knowing that I will not have to go through the pain of listening to my wife's lecture about not being attentive while doing the bank transactions. But the question still remains, where did the money go if Myresjöhus has not received it?
I quickly rang up Magnus from Myresjöhus who is our contact in Karlskrona. I explained to him what had happened and also sent him the copy of the letter (which said I haven't done the payment) I received from Myreshöhus along with the copy of the payment receipt for the payment that I had done. Magnus said he shall check with the economy department about what went wrong and get back to me.
But I was restless, the discrepancy about the payment that I actually made on time was making me nervous. So I decided to call Myresjöhus' economy department myself. The number was given on the letter I just received. I called the economy department, but today wasn't my luckiest day. At first try the lady at the economy department was busy and did not answer. Then I tried again and this time she answered, "Hej, välkommen till Myresjöhus. Hur kan jag hjälpa dig?"... I said, "Hi, my name is Kiran. I don't speak good Swedish, so can we talk in English?"... She answered "Sorry, my English is not good, so it would be better to talk in Swedish"... I thought to my self, let's give it a try. It's about time to polish my Swedish skills. So I replied "OK. Ja, jag kan försöka.".
I had over-estimated my Swedish skills... OR may be it was the Swedish accent from a different state that I could not understand. I am used to the Blekinge accent, and I was calling a person in Vetlanda. But either way, the conversation after this point just went downhill.
Fearing that there would be miscommunication and this matter was serious, I asked her whether there was anyone that could speak English. She then realized that it was the best way forward and gave me the number of Michael who was very good at English.
I called Michael and explained him what had happened and also forwarded him the mail with attached details that I sent to Magnus earlier. Michael got hold of the situation and said he will check and get back about the issue as soon as possible.
Michael was quick to reply, within fifteen minutes I received a call from Michael who said it was all a system fault. Their system was having some issue and even though they received the payment, it was not acknowledged by their system and after the deadline passed the system triggered a automatic response which I received today.



I breathed a quiet sigh of relief knowing that it was not a fault on my part and Myresjöhus had actually received the payment. I thanked Michael for sorting our this issue and ended the call.
Now I had a nice story to narrate to my wife and show her that sometimes automated systems also mess up things.

In other news, our hunt for a cheaper apartment has started showing some results. We will be seeing an apartment tomorrow evening to see if we would like to rent it or not. Well, we don't have much of a choice to say "no" to this apartment as there is a huge queue for this apartment as well. So if we don't take it, someone else will and we will still be without an apartment. So lets see how it goes tomorrow.
We also finally decided to visit Jönköping to finalize the kitchen and laundry room details, even though it was very far. We have come up with a great plan for taking care of the kids. We will leave kids at school very early and then we would be on our way to Jönköping. But for this we need to keep track of each and every minute. If we are even 5-10 minutes late it can be a problem. But hey, there is always plan B... which at the moment I am not sure of what it would be. We need to take this calculated risk this time.

Anyway, it's late in the night now and this post has become too long... so now it is time to catch some Zzz's. 😴



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Initial plan for the house is ready

01:11 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Today was an unusually busy Monday. Lot of things happened today. To begin with, there was lot to do at work today. Then came an e-mail from Myresjöhus (Magnus) informing us that we now had our own web portal from Myresjöhus where all the important documents for the house will be made available (all documents in one place... Swedes are so organized 😎). So I logged in to the web portal and there were 4-5 documents available for me to have a look at. I clicked on the first one and it was a document with the list of other documents that will be made available. Then I clicked on the next one, it was the situation plan for the house showing how on the map of Karlskrona our house would look from a top view along with the exact measurements.
The third document was the interesting one. It was the actual plan of the house including the optional veranda and balcony that we had opted for. Now I could see how the actual house would look like. 
But this is not the final plan. There are many things that were not changed as we would like to have it. This plan was just the first of many drafts that would be produced until we get all the things in order as we would like them. 
I also received another e-mail from HTH, the company that will build our kitchen and laundry room. They sent a check list of things that are included in the price of the house and also a brochure of other good to have "shiny" things (my wife is drooling looking at the "bling" things). We will soon schedule a meeting with HTH to finalize the details of the kitchen and the laundry room (still hoping not to exceed our initial cost estimates due to the "shiny" stuff). Now it feels like things have really started moving.






 In other news, we still haven't managed to find our temporary cheaper residence yet. The search for another apartment goes on. The pressure is building up, just like when you are no where near a bathroom and suddenly feel the pressure in your stomach building up and then you focus all your energy in finding a nearest bathroom as soon as possible, my situation with finding a cheaper apartment is some what similar. We only have until end of January 2016 to find another apartment and I really don't want to wait until that long... Come on, someone rent me an apartment already!!

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Bygglov "Building permission" documents submitted

00:28 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

We have now signed the documents for the house building permission (bygglov in Swedish) and I personally submitted the documents and the house diagrams at the Karlskrona Kommun's office.

Now we wait... wait... and wait with our fingers crossed so that our extended house plan with additional veranda and balcony is approved by the planning office.

In the meanwhile I am having a continued discussion with HTH about the kitchen and laundry room plans. HTH wants us to visit their enormous showroom and exhibition so that we can get the look and feel of the kitchen we would like to have.

We like the special attention we are getting from HTH. It is all nice and good but, there is a little problem...
We are in Karlskrona and HTH showroom is in... JÖNKÖPING. That place is f*#%ing 231km away. 

Just travelling to and from there would take 6-7 hours and we also need a few hours in between to discuss the details for the kitchen and laundry room. That means we would have to spend the whole day for this activity. So what about the kids... If it was a weekend the kids could have tagged along.  But as usual all good things and places in Sweden take rest on weekends so we need to plan this activity during the weekdays. And as the kids have school during the week we don't have anyone to take care of them after school, in case we decided to take the adventure trip to Jön-f*#%ing-köping.
Need to come up with some plan to do this little trip.

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