The Setai is alive!

Well, I thought that after who knows how many years from the original noise, the whole project was dead. In fact, if I remember correctly, some investor(s) had pulled out. Maybe with things so bubbly now they decided to give it another go, or maybe they were dealing with licenses and such all along. Whatever. Welcome back Setai is what I say. All the more so if, like the WSJ says today,

"Between $110 million and $130 million will be spent on the development, with plans to build a luxury compound including a spa, 10 cabana hotel suites and 40 private houses on the La Juanita beach and in the nearby woods. About a mile up the road, the 300-acre Laguna Escondida project is planning a 70-room hotel and 240 housing lots."


On other matters, I have to say that after about 40 days of being in our new house, we feel soooo priviliged to be living where and how we're living. The house gets nicer by the day. The last pieces of furniture and missing curtains have arrived, we now have two couches, a nice LCD TV, DirecTV, a cleaning woman who comes three times a week which is as much as I can handle the interaction (plus pool and garden people), a lawn that is getting nicer every day, and expanding into the non-lawn areas quite fast, a sweet dog that makes a big fuss when we come back home, and friends who come and spend the weekend or a few days of their vacations with us.

Not being on vacation myself, it makes me feel luckier than if I were. I punctuate my work-day with walks on the beach or along country paths (watching cows graze, the dog chase the hares, it's too bucolic) or swimming at the beach or in the pool. And "my office", overlooking forest and sea, from where I stare out the windows and watch the falcons chased by the swallows, the ducks flying, or any other of the myriad National Geographic scenes that unfold on an hourly basis.

I credit ourselves for our conscious choice to make this happen, against blank stares or outright discouragement by many people, but I also credit the success of our business for allowing us to build this house, and last but definitely not least, our architects' genius in making this house the way it is. I know we made a million little choices along the way, but they were all informed by their gentle prodding, or simply us choosing from options produced by them that we had never imagined or contemplated. Also, some things I was just informed of, in a no-nonsense kind of way, as in "The living-room roof is now 1.5 meters lower. Anything higher is out of the question." Now I look at my ceiling and think, "how could we ever have lived with 5m high ceilings if 3.5 feels sooo high?" I remember one very funny exchange with Fabian where he emailed me a list of questions for us to decide on 10 issues, in the form of "multiple-choice quiz." I was really proud when he said I scored 9 out of 10.

I talk about this house as if it were a huge palace, but no, it's just very simple, comfortable and as big as I could afford when we made it (only 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms). Still, as simple as it is, it literally stops traffic. Every day we get people driving straight into our car park and getting out to take pictures. We go from proud to annoyed to proud to annoyed, but in the end it's good news I think.