Blood out of a Stone (Getting a Loan)

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Woody Allen
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you prove that you don’t need it.
Bob Hope

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where shop.

Bo Derek

I typed "HSBC complaint" into Google and it found 2,710,000 pages.

I figure that by the time I've read ALL of them, Mr. HSBC-guy-who-is-looking-after-my-pre-loan-approval might have answered the voice mail that I left about 30 hours ago. I've given up on him answering my email that I sent about 54 hours ago.

Gee, business must be good at the banks. They must be ever so busy.

I contacted Mr. HSBC-guy-who-is-looking-after-my-pre-loan-approval on the advice of my realtor who is a charming young women. She too has been calling Mr. HSBC-guy-who-is-looking-after-my-pre-loan-approval, trying to hurry him up. Imagine how slow he'd be if she wasn't reminding him every day!

I'm sick of typing in "Mr. HSBC-guy-who-is-looking-after-my-pre-loan-approval". I'll just make up a name for him. Evan will do.

But perhaps the realtor is unwittingly making Evan even slower than his normal slow self. It is quite possible that Evan is one of those men who dig their heels in and take a hundred years whenever a WOMAN asks them to do something. I used to think this was a characteristic confined to Australian males, but now I'm bi-cultural I see the same thing in American men. And German men. And English men.

Such men appear to feel that they'll be seen as "under the thumb" if they do what a woman asks. And then if she asks again, they call it nagging.

My theory is that such men see all women as being embodiments of their wives or mothers. "Pick up your toys, Charlie." "No." "Don't forget to take out the garbage, Charles." "I'll do it later."

Childlike and oedipal, such men go through life annoying the hell out of woman. Fear of being "pussy whipped" propels them along life's path, littering the sidewalk with forgotten promises, rubber duckies, security blankies and train-sets.

Why did I go to HSBC? Well apart from the fact that it was recommended, I'd gotten nowhere with Wells Fargo (see The Doggone Loan is Mine).

I COULD have gone to my local bank (Chase), except that I've argued with the people there too many times, and also that the bank manager has Rastafarian hair. He wears a suit and everything but somehow his Rastafarian hairstyle makes me think he's just PRETENDING to be a bank manager and that a real one will suddenly miraculously appear. A REAL bank manager would look like Don Draper of "Mad Men".

There's another problem with my local bank. When I first opened an account there, the bank customer service man made a mistake in transcribing my Social Security number into the computer. So later, when I had to validate myself by telling them my Social Security number, it didn't match what was in the bank's computer. Ergo - I was a fake, a fraud and I wasn't me.

It took me weeks trying to convince them that I was me. Eventually they called the Social Security office and were told that the Social Security number they had for me in their computer system was INVALID! There WAS no such number.

This further convinced them that I wasn't real. It even nearly convinced ME!

So that's the reason I ended up with Evan.

I think he's called Evan because he does everything eventually.

Will he call me?

Eventually.

I can hardly wait. The shock of it may be too much to bear.

Stay tuned.