Sunday mornings usually involve all four of us piled onto the bed in the master bedroom, Skippy more or less demanding to watch CBeebies, Flipper just kind of hanging out, or usually insisting on a game of ‘Row Row Row your boat’ during which he sits astride the hubby’s chest and ‘rows’ his boat (manipulating hubby’s arms) until the punchline, right after ‘merrily’ and during ‘life is just a…’ and when the word ‘dream’ should be said, it gets changed to loud repeated shouts of “Bronco! Bronco! Bronco!” and then this is when daddy turns from a rowing boat into a wild bucking bronco and tries to throw Flipper off, and onto the bed.

I swear he deserves an Oscar for his performances, because never before has a kid believed he is so at the mercy of the wild bronco, when in reality the bronco is making the crazy ride as safe as possible, the throwing off of the rider is as spectacular as possible, and the landing of the rider on the bed, is completely gentle. It’s so cute.

Sheesh, where was I (mental note, take medication)? Oh yes. Estonia!

So usually on a Sunday morning the hubby and I are tuned into the travel channel (before one of us grumpily agrees to go and make breakfast…), stay with me, I’m getting to the point… SO we caught this programme on Estonia.

I know where Estonia is, because I’m a geographical smartypants, but for those of you lesser mortals who aren’t, here’s a map!

Estonia, is the country that I gave a little orange tint to. Locals are still trying to get it out of their hair.

Here you can see where it is in relation to the UK, where my in-laws live.

So geographically, it’s close enough to enjoy a relatively short flight to visit them, and far away enough to avoid them entirely if protocol ever demanded it.

As an added barrier bonus the sea is too cold to swim the distance, and really it would take far too long to go around Denmark and then down around Sweden, so I don’t have to worry about any unannounced visits from them.

So here’s why I like Estonia:

When the travel channel paid them a visit, a member of parliament came and had a chat with the intrepid traveller-interviewer, and uttered these words (which forever remain etched in my memory, ready to haul out at a moments notice if I ever come face to face with our philandering, polygamist president), “The job of government is not to be popular, the job of government is to deliver.” Only I would change it to, “The job of president is not to produce more voters, single-handedly, but to deliver services needed by everyone else already in the country.”

Image Courtesy of lyng883 on Flickr under a CC licence

Other perks about Estonia that would suit me include:

• Relative proximity to my family in the Netherlands
• English is widely spoken (and they’re part of the EU so we can legally work there without any paperwork hassles)
• Wireless internet is fast, and free in most public areas (hello! Who’s with me!? Who’s already packing their bags!!?)
• The culture is predominantly Scandinavian, and would be totally so, if not for that whole Russian Occupation debacle thing during the cold war.
• The architecture is beautiful (they have pink buildings!)
• Estonia have won the Finnish ‘wife-carrying’ competition (where the winner wins his wifes’ height in beer) for TEN years in a row. Men who can carry their wives *must* be worth checking out…
• Govt infrastructure (Education/healthcare) is good, taxation is low, and the cost of living compared to other parts of Europe and Scandinavia is low.
• Dudes, Sweden is right next door, so a simply ferry boat ride could take me to the largest IKEA store in the world. (happeh!)

Photo by Jurvetson (Flickr)

Though seriously, it’s the govt infrastructure that interests me the most.

Image Courtesy of jumng944 under a Creative Commons Licence

Photo by Chillihead (flickr) under a Creative Commons Licence

Because, yesterday morning, due to a bureaucratic fook up, the municipality decided to turn off our water supply. Which doesn’t sound that inconvenient, unless you want to do things like wash dishes, take a bath, or say, do the laundry.

As it turns out, we dutifully pay our utilities to the rental agency through which we rent our h0use, and they completely neglected to pay the municipality, who then showed up and without bothering to so much as ring the doorbell (they’re supposed to notify you in person) at which point of course I would have thrown a complete hissy fit and insisted they leave it on while they sort out the arrears with the rental agency, and turned off the supply.

As it turns out, the owner of our house, had been neglecting to turn in the bills to the rental agency. This is just typical of South Africa by the way, people are sodding lazy!!!

So at the end of the day, the people actually PAYING THE MONEY are having their services turned off, because of the stupid lazy assed sons o’beeshes who don’t do their jobs properly.

You would think that one swift telephone call would sort it all out right?

Not so.

It turns out that once the bill has been settled, it takes them 24-48 hours to come over and switch the supply back on.

So, the kids got to swim last night instead of take a bath. They loved it.

Me? Not so much. Thank goodness it was like 32 deg centigrade at 6pm last night.

I just checked now and the mofo’s have still not switched it back on.

Have I mentioned before how much I want to leave this place?

I have been very wordy with our rental agency who ultimately I hold responsible for not having paid the municipality in time. The amount from month to month is very similar so even a ‘slightly under’ payment would have at least prevented them turning it off.

This morning she offered to come and take my laundry to go and do it at home.

I was very tempted to say yes.

Grr.

On the upside it also meant getting take-out for dinner so we didn’t have to do the dishes…

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