Pragmatism, or stupidity?

I never had a reply to the email which I sent yesterday. I even sent a chase email and had no reply to that.

She's prettier than I, but I pulled that face too

About 3pm my time I finally decided that calling Dilyana was the correct thing to do as it had reached the end of their working day without any communication. Without her number it was the work of a couple of seconds to google for her and I found it on my favourite Bulgarian Forum.

So my deadline was firmly set that if I hadn't received the contract (and I really cannot in any way see why this would be a problem) I would be walking away from Veselka at the end of yesterday. To this end I had sent a couple of emails to various people, one to the other architect I have already met and some to the ones recommended to me in the comments of this blog a few days ago.

During the day I received a quote from one of the guys recommended to me which is a very impressive response time I think. They were happy with the task in hand and said that it would possibly take up to six months (this seems a long time but hey). The problem was they were quoting 20 EU per square metre for the work which is a fair chunk of change and twice the highest quote I had when I was originally looking for an architect.

I have not yet heard back from any of the other people who I contacted however various other friends are coming forwards with "ooh I might know someone" so that avenue isn't entirely quiet.

A quiet avenue

It was with this in the back of my mind when I decided to phone Dilyana and she answered as she was heading home from the office. The situation was as follows. She said she had rung Veselka twice to attempt to encourage a contract from her, but with no luck. The visit of her colleague (apparently a water engineer? Not sure why I need one of those as Bekir is a water engineer but more of that later) had happened during the day (and not today as I had been told originally) and so Veselka was determined to wait until after she had heard what the Obshtina said about PUP before giving me my contract as "we had agreed it would be in the same contract". Funny that as both myself and Dilyana remember agreeing to have the PUP as a separate contract. But onwards.

At the time when I spoke to Dilyana this colleague had not got back to Veselka and so I reluctantly agreed that I would wait until this report had been made; apparently this would be towards the end of the day on Wednesday (today as I write this). I have made it clear that I am unhappy in the extreme with nothing happening and need the comfort of having a contract however it feels like Dilyana is quite powerless in the situation; maybe Veselka is quite influential and she doesn't want to upset her?

My current position is:

• I will wait to hear from Dilyana until about 4pm their time and then phone if no communication
• If no contract is forthcoming today I will set up a skype video-conference with myself, Dilyana and Veselka and will ask her to her face the simple questions which are being avoided
• I am continuing to investigate alternative architects and if you have any recommendations please shout

This does involve a slight bending of my firm deadlines however as things are progressing I am frustrated but can rationalise. If things go quiet again then this will change and fast. I cannot stand with being treated like I have been treated and Veselka needs to understand that a large change in my attitude has occurred.

Other small updates; my text to the camper van engineer didn't lead to any response yesterday so I will be phoning him today. And I still haven't managed to track down a fork lift on the cheap for the landlord so pretty soon he's going to be receiving a call telling him to hire one :D oh, and he has sent me a bill for insuring the unit for a whole year where I'm not even really into it yet, and leaving in four months - there may be a short conversation about that also.

PAHAHAHA

It feels like things are being held up by others on all sides at the moment. Why can't people just do what they say they will do?