Sofia in Australia

I  kept on reading other blogs about Australia and this one deserved it's own post.

Sofia's experience in Australia is so awesome. The pics taken in her adventures on beaches, in Sydney and around Australia are just too good to describe. The surfing part of her life just adds more value to all that. At some point it becomes obvious that she's living a dream. Chilling, surfing, exploring, enjoying, living like there's no tomorrow... she and Paul understand it and not only that, they just do it. It's the way life should be :)

I'll definetly want to meet them when I get there.

Supercoolhappylove,
treaz

Just another exchange

I was in the cafeteria today, bored up to a point, but aware of my surroundings... then I heard New Zeeland, Japan, Australia... wtf? One of my colleagues was just saying that they're close. Ok. I know how Australia landed in the context, I can also understand that he likes Japan, so that was obvious too... but, but, but... New Zeeland? What's up with that?

It turns up that there's this guy at work that is planing to go there. I was astonished and suddenly really interested in his story. You see, I can't forget that NZ is a more user-friendly country (as in no real threats to human existence). I felt the urge of talking to him, maybe just for a few minutes.

I was once again amazed by his simple plan: use the AIESEC exchange program. Cogs started moving and my first question popped up: Are you a student? NO. He subscribed last fall in order to have a chance to apply for this opportunity. BAM! I was struck by confusion (why was I so stupid???). This sounds like a great idea, but it never occurred to me (what on earth have I been thinking about all this time?).

I will try to get him to talk more about his future plans. (so... I will enjoy writing another post on this subject).

Cheers,
Horia

P.S.: I have friend that told m that talking about my master plan was a bad idea (because people might perceive me as unwilling, because it won't matter anyway, since I'm leaving, to get emotionally attached;). Telling them I'm planning to leave would lower the expectations... yada yada yada... come to think of it, I truly believed it. But it turns out it doesn't work that way... just spread the word and let the people decide for themselves if they enjoy your presence and get the free gift of find connections and getting valuable feedback.
So, case closed, I won't brag about my plans to go in the land of Oz, but I won't hide them either.

Walkabouts

In becomes more and more obvious to me that going to Australia and not having a reliable mean of transportation is close to the biggest mistake one can make.

My recent trip to Greece made me realize that public transport has the major drawback of the unpredictable arrival times. Being limited by the first/last bus/subway is frustrating and waiting an night in remote bus stations could get you into trouble (so I've heard).

It's generally accepted that Logistics are really important, no matter what you do.

So, maybe a car will be too expensive to buy/rent once I get to Oz?
A bicycle is way up on my things-to-buy-there list. (as it's slower than a car and it would give me a chance to see the views, get properly aquintanted with the neighborhood)
Yeah, and I'd buy a GPS before the car (maybe use it on the bike a little)

As a general conclusion, owning a vehicle (car, bicycle, moped, bike, horse, whatever you like and can afford) that would make getting from point A to point B hassle-free is a must for anyone that wants to have an easy life getting around.

Edit: Under the new light shed by Rod on this matter I'll just buy a cheap bicycle and will probably already have a phone with incorporated GPS. This is the best cheap alternative and will probably keep me satisfied after my arrival.

Cheers,
treaz

Reading blogs

as one might expect there is abundant information about the process of moving to Oz. It will take someone a lot of time to sort it through, this is my attempt.

I just finished reading the blog of A venezuelan couple living their Australian dreams and all in all it contains good information. Has very few off topic posts and I liked it. I recommend.
As this is the first blog I read, I'm sorry, but I didn't mark the very important posts.

Reading this blog took me a day (but it's 40 posts at most). It's about a family of 5 that immigrated to Sydney and their 8 month of living there. It's a good read and I found these posts most interesting:
1) How to ease your integration in the social life
2) Spider in a newspaper
3) Getting ready to move to OZ
4) Property buying tutorial

A really small blog was Swivel's Blog. It's in Spanish and English and contains little useful info (but then again... it takes 2 hours max to read it). I found a couple of interesting things on it though:
1) A big list of useful links
2) Some shorts about OZ
3) A site on which you can search a migration agent by location

A blog with only 4 entries that's full of useful job finding advice is http://firstjobaustralia.blogspot.com/ This guy really tells it how it is and gives some practical specific tips that would help anyone new to OZ.

Another blog about life of a British in Australia is One Whinging Pom. I found myself amused reading quite a few of the posts there. So it's all worth reading, but the practical advise is in these posts:

1. Tips about banks
2. A short description of animals that could live in your yard
3. Buying second hand car
4. Australia after a year
5. Healthcare system? Yeah... it's hard
6. Cost of living seen through a brit's eyes
7. Driving madness

Soon to come... 

The city of Melbourne

so, I'm terribly enthusiastic that I found this site:
The City of Melbourne

Cheers

Linking up - Conneting - Surfing

It turns out that starting this blog was more than a really good idea. Besides allowing to organize ideas it helps connecting with likely minded people. Recently I've had some comments that were really valuable and have shed some light on visa obtaining process.

And a new idea came to me: connect to all the blogs that are related (it seems I'm not special, others have though of this WAY before me).

This took me 2 steps:

1. following everyone that had a relevant blog on blogspot and looking at what they followed (and followed relevant blogs they followed) and so on.
2. using a google search. Yeah, nothing miraculous here. The special thing was including a google search keyword: site:blogspot.com. This means that google will search only the site blogspot.com. And the result? All the blogs hosted on blogspot that contain references to Australia+moving+Melbourne+whatnot. Of course you could search any blog hosting platform. :)

So, for the moment I have so much information that it scares me. Check them out in Different Perspectives section.

Cheers

30 mins seminar 'bout Skilled Migration

Just found a 3 part presentation about the process of obtaining the visa and I wanted to share it with you.

Without further ado:
Part1, Part2 and Part3.

In case you're wondering: There are 606 days until Thursday, 1 December 2011.