4 sleeps

Since last blog

Saturday:

• Cleaned house

Sunday:

• Moved out,
• sold car,
• living at mum and dad's.
• very tired from cleaning and moving and running up and down stairs with junk that we've accumulated over the years.

Monday:

• Work,
• cancel electricity and phone,
• found out we have tennants! a vetenary surgeon and a PHD student.
• stayed up late backing up computer and e-mailing stuff etc.

Tuesday:

• Work, cook dinner for mum and dad, finish backing up computer.
• debbie got sent home early from work :-)
• stayed up late sorting out computer files and e-mailing things etc.... can't remember specifically what I did but there was no procrastination involved.

Wednesday:

• debbie had wednesday off as usual and went back to do some final cleaning of our house and fixing the smoke alarms that have been compulsory since july 1.
• Got tax done, found out that we earned too much and have to pay the medicare levy :(
• Took Debbie's boss and his wife out to a resturant in the valley called Garuva's - it's my new favorite resturant. (www.garuva.com.au) I highly recommend it for the atmosphere, tried a new drink: "B52": baileys, kalhua and contreau in a shot glass.... creamy, yet tangy
• got home late, very tired. no matter, will sleep on weekend.

Thursday:

• Work - starting to get a bit frantic handing over last minute things, cleaned out desk kind of de-motivated a bit.
• Lunch at Jaz with the gang from work! now pushed down to third favorite resturant since last night. 2.5 glasses of apathy juice (2005 vintage) later I was motivated for work again, cleaned out desk.
• Went to Klinton and Kirsty's place for dinner - mmmm pumkin soup..... stayed late chatting.... started becomming incoherant at about 11pm so they took us home

Friday:

• Debbie was up seemingly most of the night coughing....sofa bed bounces violently when she coughs..... woke up late, dragged self out of bed, couldn't bear the thought of calling in sick on my last day... how lame would that be.
• outlook immediately brightened apon quaffing a double-grande latte with two sugars.
• more frantic handing over and development and saying goodby etc.
• Debbie had day off as usual and pottered arround doing miscelaneous administrative stuff to finalise everything
• Crew from work got me a huge card! over the years I've written on heaps but this is the first time I got one, very cool :-)
• looks like I'm staying up late again writing a blog post.....very tired.... no matter, will sleep in tomorrow.

comming up soon:

Saturday:

• Farewell party for family and friends
• haircut! finally!

Sunday:

• Packing bags
• Andrew & Debbie time....got some gold class movie tickets for my birthday from mum and dad... going to go out and chill for a bit.

Monday:

• buy camcorder
• get some cash yen and pounds
• panic a few times thinking we've forgotten to get something important

Tuesday:

• Fly to Japan!!!
• sleep?

Wednesday:

• Explore Tokyo, avoid becoming irradiated
• sleep?

Thursday:

• Fly to London

Friday:

• take touristy shots of buckingham palace etc, get mobile phones, activate bank account
• update blog?
• Sleep!!!!

Ding!

So the reason I havn't updated for so long is because I was studying, packing, applying for jobs, and studying some more. but it's paid off! as of today, I'm a "Oracle PL/SQL developer Certified Associate". yay!

just a quick summary (hungry and have some cleaning to do) last weekend we moved out most of our stuff, the couches, the extra bed and miscelaneous junk in the spare room and our main bed frame. we've been sleeping on the mattress on the floor all this time. it's actually quite snug and we don't annoy eachother as much when we move arround. makes it hard to get up in the morning though.

the English couple that expressed intrest in our house pulled out so we've dropped the price a bit and hopefully we'll get someone before we leave. Sold our car, people comming to pick it up on sunday. sold both drum kits - got a good price for the electronic one.

we're all set to go to london pretty much. this comming week I'm going to transfer another 5-7k over to the london bank account so we can hit the ground running a bit more.

on Sunday we're moving to my parents place and staying there until we leave in 10 sleeps time.

things to do:

• Buy new work shoes,
• buy new work pants
• transfer money to London bank account
• notify body corp
• book an airport transfer to the London hotel
• register with umbrella company
• Figure out how to get to tokyo city from Narita airport (remember the names of the stations etc)
• clean house
• back up computer hard drive onto cd
• buy video camera (maybe)
• get some yen and pounds cash.

Quick update

News flash! this just in: family and friends can come crash at our place for a period up to 6 months (Click that link for the border and immigration agency website.) and the "do I need a UK visa" website here: (click) says that you do not need a visa to visit.

We have found tennants! Ironically, they're charted accountants comming to Australia from England. (it's not ironic that they're charted accountants, but.....anyway.)

recruitment agent called last night - was good - got a meeting with them at 10am on Monday the 30th.

recruitment? so what do they call your first job? "hi, I've recently been cruited to work here".

Jobs, certification and places to stay

So last night a recruitment agent called from London. It was quite exciting. It's only been 4 days since I put my new resume up on jobsite.co.uk. The job that he was offering to put me forward for was a permanent business/systems analyst role at £41,000 per year. I had to think about it, but I turned it down because I'm more after a development role, even though it would be interesting, I don't want to waste their time by getting the permanent job and then 3 months down the track leaving for a higher paid developer role.

The phone call only lasted about 3 or 4 minutes, but I spent the next 30 going over it and wondering if I made the right decision. I'm pretty sure I did, there'll be other opportunities. I'll start getting desparate in 1 months time when I'm over there, but for the moment I think I can hold out for something better.

It was interesting though, throuought the entire phonecall I was accutely aware of how non-british I sounded compared to the agent. It was kind of disconcerting, I'll have to cultivate an oxford accent as fast as possible.... Not that I have a very aussie bloke type accent, but I still felt like I was speaking sloppily..... I think I'm thinking about it too much.

We've booked the Hotel in London for the first two nights. We're staying in the Thistle Victoria. (Thistle is a chain of hotels) about 500m away from buckingham palace, so I guess the first photos you see of us over there will be standard touristy looking ones out the front near the statue. here's the link to the google map to show how close it is (click), the hotel is pretty much directly on top of victoria station.

So 13 work days to go! Yay!

so today I finally went and took the first of two exams necessary for my Oracle certification and I passed! wooo! one more to go and I can add "Oracle PL/SQL developer Certified Accociate" to my resume. it wasn't that hard really, but that's the way it's designed, you're not supposed to be able to do the tests unless you've had a year or so industry experience. seeing as I've had 9 years, it shouldn't have been difficult. next exam is on the 12th.

I've nearly signed up with one umbrella company, they seem really good, they've passed my resume onto a recruitment agency who will be calling me tonight to get a bit more of an Idea about what I want for a job.

Debbie's well, Posting on this blog is WAY, WAY WAY, down on her list of priorities, I'll make her write something before we go though. She's finished her certificate III in office admin although she's waiting for one module to come back. She's now working on fixing up her resume as much as possible and fretting about cleaning up the house.

thought I'd keep a little graph of my emotional state for posterity. normally I don't get stressed about anything for long periods, don't get excited about anything but today both my stress levels and excitement levels are above normal..... I guess because it's less than a month to go until we make the biggest change in our lives since getting married.

Andrew's emotional state:
Stress:
1.......*...........10
Excitement:
1..........*........10
Tiredness:
1...............*...10
Outlook: Optimistic.