[Others.048] Matt's house sold! Congratulation!

Have been following Matt's blog for a while and saw this post from his blog today that's his house was sold after only on the market for 6 days! That's really excellent and congratulation to Matt!!

Did a quick search on the net and found the house as below, with details removed to protect his privacy. A very nice house as you can see from the photos...

The best part is the timing, Matt must have a crystal ball or something to be able to time everything so perfectly.

First we all heard that in 2009 house price in Australia posted 12.1 per cent rise overall for the year (e.g. here, here, and here).

Then there's also quite a lot of reports in past weeks (e.g. here, here, and here) all pointing to almost 99.9% certainty that the Reserve Bank is going to raise the official interest rate next Tuesday. Most people are expecting the property boom to start slowing down a bit.

It would be really difficult to sell a house at such a perfect timing -- almost the peak of the property cycle.

As for us, we're definitely not thinking of selling our house at this stage. After all the effort in past 2 years, we would like to enjoy it a lot longer...

Chat with family about if we should consider selling if the property price doubles in X years time? Urh..... I think we would still prefer to hold it, but borrow against the equity or something like that and then look at other opportunities... The cost for selling and then buy/build another one is just too high in Australia...

[Others.047] What the fork??

Around early December last year, while waiting for wife shopping in Kmart Hornsby, I saw this cheap "Gardener's Choice Fork" around $20 and bought it without much thinking... I wasn't a heavy user, just like to loose the soil for the grass to grow better probably once or twice every 6 months.

It worked ok for a while, then one day while I was working near the brick retaining wall, it snapped into two.... What the fork??!!

A closer look shows it's actually not very strongly made....

From this photo you can see the metal surrounding the timber handler is actually quite thin... No wonder it didn't last long....

Have to drive all the way to Hornsby to get a refund, and on way back, saw this "Stanley" Garden Fork fork in Bunning's on special around $30 and comes with 5 years warranty. Should be much better and stronger than the previous one if it's almost 50% more expensive and clearly specified warranty period, right?

Wrong! I used it near the same spot and snapped! It's broken again! What the fork??!!

This is a closer look of the broken part...

After some explanation, I got it refunded, and was strongly recommended to get this "proper" one called Cyclone Garden Fork which was "Made in Australia" and comes with 10 years warranty.

At about $65 it's not cheap, but certainly felt much heavier and stronger by the look of it...

So, did the new fork work at the place where the other 2 failed? Well, yes and no...

Firstly, I definitely don't want to take the risk for this new expensive tool... Secondly, I thought about it for a while, inspected the spot which killed previous 2 forks and then I noticed the problem... Silly me, I was standing quite close and facing the retaining wall. Which means I was actually working against the big blocks, which is why those 2 forks broke... If I turn and face the opposite side, and work the fork the other way, instead of towards the retaining walls, then there won't be any problem at all!

Any way, I learned the lesson the hard way. Luckily, thanks to the Australian law which protects customers against all sort of stupidity like mine, I got both forks refunded. If I had used it correctly, even that under $20 one would still be working fine I guess...