For the past couple of weeks we've had lots of electrical retailers acting even more keen than usual to sell us huge widescreen TVs and digital set-top boxes. Now that the Olympics have actually started, it appears that none of it is in widescreen. If I had rushed out and bought a huge new TV in preparation, I imagine I'd be pretty pissed off right now.

I haven't actually watched much of the Olympics. All the interesting bits seem to be on late at night. We were watching some table tennis last night, where the Aussie guy was bouncing the ball on the table prior to serving. It seemed quite bizarre, since he was bouncing from within an inch of the table.

HuSi: Cannot display all 3 hotlists

Why not? It's not like I have a lot in any of them, and it would make things much easier sometimes.

Houses

We've been looking at houses this weekend. It's the first time we've looked seriously. We started by driving past some that we found in Saturday's paper. Unfortunately it was quite uninspiring. Examples include:

• Double brick and tile, 3x2, large bedrooms, renovated kitchen, lacks street appeal, $280,000. It certainly did lack street appeal. I think they had subdivided the block lengthwise. The block was so narrow they had a garage where their front garden should have been.
• 766sqm, corner block, solid house, jarrah boards, 2 car garage, $225k-$235k. Looks like it's in desparate need of some maintenance. And the house was on a funny angle on the block.
• 543sqm block only, $139,500. Looks quite good, except the blocks are really long and thin (only 12m street frontage).

I had a look on the internet for more this afternoon. It was quite promising. Examples of houses I like are this near new 4x2, another 4x2, a 3x1 on an enormous block, and this 4x3 in an excellent location.

We shall have to talk to a mortgage broker soon.

Homebrew update

I bottled my homebrew tonight. I also managed to sneak a taste when no-one was looking. Pleasingly, it smells like beer, and tastes almost like beer. Almost. It looks like waiting the two weeks for it to be ready could be worthwhile.

Citibank

I rang up to cancel one of their products on Friday. There's no point having a $5000 credit facility if I'm not going to use it, especially when I come to apply for a home loan. Citibank tried too hard to be helpful.

• I would like to close my Redicredit account.
• Is there any particular reason why?
• Because I've never used it and I can't forsee myself having a use for it in the future.
• Would you like to transfer the available credit onto your credit card?
• No thankyou.
• Are you aware of our current balance transfer promotion?
• Yes, but I don't have any other balances to transfer.
• In that case, we can send you out a cheque for $500 or more that will be treated like a balance transfer.
• No thankyou.
• Ooh, I see you didn't use a telephone PIN. Would you like me to set one up for you?
• No thankyou.