Settling in OZ

Friday, November 7, 2008

It’s been a while but I make no excuses as we have been trying simply to get settled in. Our wild adventures have come to a halt and the reality of life dawns on us again. Well, I guess to some extent the adventure is still on but not the ‘wild’ part. Life is an adventure, we love to live it everyday. So what has been happening since we last wrote?

We bought our home and it was a fairly painless process which took just over two weeks for it to get transferred into our name. Amazing stuff. We tried to get in earlier but because of capital gains the sellers didn’t want to give us occupation before the transfer. It just meant we had to continue being trailer trash for a little while longer. We have now become veterans at hanging out in camping grounds.

Before we paid the final on the deposit we had to do a few inspections such as building and pest. It’s a common and standard thing it seems in OZ or at least in your best interest. We called a few places and eventually got someone to come out. Two guys arrived, one for the building and the other for pest inspection and they proceeded to do their thing. We walked around and tried to keep an eye on these guys and see what they were doing. If you can basically imagine a used car salesman from a shitty part of town walking around kicking the tyres and telling you that this car looks perfect then you can imagine the same for these two comics. Tap a wall here, push on a wall there, run your finger along a join and presto, inspection done. I immediately thought there would be a raging future here for me as an inspector. I can carry a little machine around which is supposed to X-Ray thru the walls and tell you if our friends the termites live inside and kick a few panels and charge the clients a fortune. Rod, you could become the master senior state inspection authority body and you would be over qualified. I guess there is some merit in these inspections but it just seemed like a bit of crock to me. They did tell us that we had a drainage problem in our tiny backyard but Lynda already told me that. We find out that 70% of all houses have a drainage problem on the Gold Coast because of the flat land so no big deal there.

We moved in and had two days before our furniture arrived so we took the time to give the house a big spring clean although almost pointless because the place was so spic and span you could almost eat off the floor. It seemed to us like the place was renovated and cleaned before it was put on the market because everything inside was looking pretty new. I’m sure they had the place newly painted as well. All the better for us. Our furniture then arrived with 3 guys to unpack the whole truck. Not like the 8 guys back in SA who packed the truck on that side. These guys whipped around like they had somewhere to go in a hurry and before we knew it the entire truck was unpacked in less than 1.5 hours. These boys cursed at the top of their voices the whole time as they buckled under the heavy wood furniture but it all makes it into the house without too much drama. In the end we see that there are no couches. Something got screwed up back at the warehouse and our couches were left behind. Crap! That is the one thing that both Lynda and I were looking forward to forever. We had mentioned it several times over the last 8 months that all we wished for was to just laze back in our couches and these freaking dudes left them back at the warehouse. It was a Friday so we had to spend the weekend without them.

We spent the weekend unpacking, frantically trying to get our home together. It feels good to have all our stuff back and the familiarity of things we know. As simple as it sounds we could have a nice big glass (real glass) filled with ice and coke and just chill out knowing that this was now our place, no more moving. Every once in a while we go out to the shops to buy a few more things to get the house in order. An odd thing here which we have had to get used to, the bedroom cupboards don’t have any shelves. It’s just one shelve at head height with a hanging rail under it and that is the whole cupboard. Even our walk in cupboard in the master room is exactly the same. It just seems like this is the way they build here. You can then choose to customise your cupboards the way you want. The people that lived here before obviously kept it simple. We ended up finding these cool little boxes that you put together and they are serving their purpose now for folded clothes up on the shelve. The rest of the clothes we simple hung. We hung everything right down to T-shirts.

I was anxious to get the TV up and going to catch up on the world crises but when I did the automatic channel discovery it got the channels with no sound. I was disappointed but after fiddling further and changing a bunch of settings I got it right and the TV works fine. Only trouble now is that we can’t find our remote control for the TV. We are going to have to buy one of those universal remotes. Mostly everything arrived intact except the dressing table which had one of its legs slightly kicked out but we bought some wood glue and used some clamps and fixed it up like new. We seem to be missing one or two things. I’m missing a few bottles of good whiskey which I’ve had for many years and I had a very special bottle of genuine Portugal port dating back almost 16 years and it’s gone too. Really sad and they would have gone in SA because the right amount of boxes got delivered this side. It must have been during the packing in SA. We basically left the house while the boys that side packed everything into boxes. A few things might have slipped out the door. It really cranks me but I would have been utterly surprised if it had been different. I really wanted to crack that bottle of port in celebration of a new life.

In the meanwhile Lynda has been to a few interviews with the local childcare company in OZ called ABC. Some guy called Eddie (born in Durban SA) started a Pre Primary back in the late 80’s with his wife in Brisbane and before long they had 40 odd schools and listed on the OZ Stock Exchange. Today the company owns over 3000 schools in OZ and have expanded into the UK and it’s become a major corporate. Eddie became the riches dude in OZ a couple of years back but last month he was booted out with a mere $800k pay out. Some shady dealings were going on and yada yada. Anyhow Lynda is interested in getting into this company because of the child care focus. But because its year end I don’t think there is much in the way of positions available. Also the global crisis that is going on right now is sure to have people grabbing onto their jobs. Things will more likely become a bit better in the New Year. In the meanwhile Lynda has signed up for relief work at ABC which will give her a good insight into the company and how things operate in OZ with regards to childcare. Bigger things will come along I know.

I on the other hand, have been researching into starting something on my own. I’m not sure it will all work out but you never know until you try. I’m doing tons of research and trying to get my ducks in a row. It will still be in the IT field because it’s what I know. Wish me luck.

That’s it from us. You might not hear from us too often now and we settle into the regular life but we will still keep posting some stories. We have posted a few pics but nothing to write home about.

Love and Peace
Eddy & Lynda