A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

Since or arrival (on September 9, 2009) we have manage to enjoy the days with the easy and graze of any Sydneysider; he he, not really.

The day we got to the airport and after the inspections to our bags, we went to exchange some US Dollars into Australian currency (that was our very first time having in our hands these plastic funny bills). With some Australian dollars in our pockets we asked some directions of how to use the phone which work backward to those in America, where you put some money in, dial and talk; here instead you dial the phone number and after someone picks it up you put the coin in the machine. This cost me two dollars to find out until a gentle man told me how to really use it.

After calling, all we needed to do was waiting for a little bit till our mates came by and picked us up, to take us to Hornsby (where we were supposed to spend the next days without flat unit) then take us to meet our closest mall, The Westfield shopping centre and the Water Clock in the Westfield middle park. I must say, I was dreaming all the way to the mall and back, with mare remembrance of opening the account at the commonwealth bank of Australia we went back to meet David (building manager where we were renting) and he told us what we needed to do to get our flat, thankfully to my mate Moira, I was able to rent at once in the building, paying as few as possible.

What was next...? Oh right, the next couple of days we went to Bing Lee to shop for our washer and fridge plus some other stuff. The tip here is, talk to the vendor. He (as you) likes a good chat, and what is better than looking for a berrigans? We talk to ‘Eddie’ trying to get the price as low as possible and we got the fridge, washer, vacuum cleaner and iron for under a$2,200.00 saving odd a$250.00 or more as we got free shipping to our home. Then we went to buy the matrix for our bedroom and bumped into a comfortable matrix tagged as a$ 5,000.00, but due to low stock and the one we wanted was on display, we got it for a$2,000.00 or a$1,999.00 (as the sales lady told us, you are having a cool matrix for under two thousand dollars, that’s good deal). When I had to pay, she told me that I needed to by 40% of the bed set, but I didn’t had on my wallet a$800.00 so I tell her if there was any problem on paying just a$300.00 which told me ‘no worries then... head over those $300 and pay the rest when bed is delivered’.

Back to our flat, my mate and her husband got us two sofas and a dinner table with someone had it for us, our apartment was nearly complete with its basic furniture and we were ready to know something else from our new city. So our first stop was the beach (as spring break open just two days after our arrival) then Sydney CBD to be standing in front of the Sydney Opera House. Is it me or is more beautiful than in pictures, don’t know, the thing is, I am truly in love of my new home.

Back to Hornsby, the next couple of days we were staring sunsets (as shows in our balcony), with one rare hail fall and today, unprecedented strong dust winds or sandstorm. Oz really wants to show us what nature beholds.

This sums it up till present days; I will leave you some pictures of today’s sand storm.

Cheers and till next time.

These posts are a compilation of every aspect of moving, packing and farewell every migrant will suffer when its time is right. With this I would like to express the stress and exhaustion of the last month getting ready for what awaits.

The last days are split into these separate posts, read it as you wish or follow the order:

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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As you probably already know, my visa was granted on March, 19th and since then, all despair, excitement, sadness, joy, wrath and stress have been taking a new meaning. Picture it as your entire world is wipeout and you just have to put it all together again. That should be the exact feeling.

So, what to do? What to do? Obviously finishing work, find more information of our new place, enjoy family (this one got to me several times… “You got to enjoy your family to the fullest, because you are going to miss them”).

All of the sudden, everything reminds you what you just have in front of you. The land that watched you grow, become from baby to kid, from kid to teenager and from teen to man, giving to some nostalgia for what you haven’t lost yet. All of the sudden the problems and issues are dimmed by those good moments that defines you (then some biker yells at you, someone press the horn or start fighting and that moment is gone) and you can’t stop asking yourself, what if… everything change? What if everything would it be different… would I make the same choices? The truth is, I am totally in love of Australia at the moment and everything here (Venezuela) seems to be so full of chaos that the only way to secure a more stable and peaceful future is moving somewhere else.

As the days goes by, you start moving again, thinking in the future and start planning everything for this moment we (my wife and I) have been dreaming for more than 3 years now.

The next big step is resigning the job, gathering everything to move and enjoy the last days.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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Once your visa is granted (well, in my case was way before getting the granted) you must tell your boss you are planning to move overseas. In my case, wasn’t a surprise for them and had it expected, preparing everything to avoid delays and help me going. It might sound that my job wanted me out, isn’t? but wasn’t like that, in fact the company was moved to Hermosillo, Mexico and I was offered a position there and I rejected because as for me, was pointless to move to Mexico waiting the Australian visa.

Once I clear out the final days on work (which at first, was last of May, then it was moved to last of June with the purpose of gathering more money) the only thing to do was preparing my way out with the best references I could get, training other coworkers in “my thing” so they could continue working without the gap behind my departure.

In my case, the definition of the “last day of work” was sort of a nightmare, many of my coworkers were prepared for the job, but the manager was lacking of the necessary skills to lead the team (and from my point of view, didn’t mind it to learn it neither) so I got to write a huge report that took me some of the days (odd 10 days) later my leave (which wasn’t cool at all). The hard thing of these days was saying goodbye to your mates and wishing the very best for them (as so do they).

My advice at this point, get everything done so you can resign up to 45 to 60 days before traveling. 30 days seems to be much time, but really isn’t.

Once I was out of duties I could manage my mind and focus to get pending things to its final state, but to accomplish it, I had to create a to-do list.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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Who doesn’t know what a to-do list work for? I didn’t fully understand it till these days when you get so crowded with stuff in your mind that things when to on priority to “what was I going to do?” in no time.

In any case, my wife got me a piece of paper and told me to list everything I was planning to do in the upcoming days. As I had it mentally listed for so long, building up the list was easy… following it was the hard part :P Got to buy shipping bubble plastic, got to buy the travel bags, got to… do so many things, Oh lord!

I went from home to the streets and back all day long gathering those final details (but important) that many don’t give it importance till you are wasting so much time in things you could had done way before the visa approval.

My advice in this part, build a to-do list with every possible aspect needed for the departure… if you have near 50 items in that list, I bet you there are 20 more you haven’t thought.

With the to-do list ready and priorities assigned the following days are execute those tasks shipping those not possible for now. Our top priority was trespass our vaccine history to the yellow card (International certificate of vaccination).

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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You might be thinking “god rod not again the story of your 5 shots in the arm…” and I am not going to recapitulate how painful it was.

The important thing is how to get the yellow card so you can travel without any but nor complain. We called the sanity department requesting directions to where, when and how to go. With clear directions and regular vaccine history in our hands we marched to the sanity department general office in “Centro Simon Bolivar”, Caracas, Venezuela and asked the board, we were sent to the 4th floor general and public epidemiology department.

There, we were requested to show our airplane bookings (to check the traveling dates) because they were only attending to those within 30 days prior to travel (bring your bookings, just in case you are requested to show it). Thanks goodness the receptionist was willing to generate the card and accept our 35 days prior traveling as 30. In that moment, you are called for examination and in case you don’t have the influenza vaccine or the yellow fever vaccine you are going to be dismissed in order to get it. Important note: the sanity department doesn’t provide any vaccine to general public; you must go there “with your vaccine already in your regular history”, also double check your history (and the yellow fever vaccine), otherwise you will be requested to go somewhere else to get it first. In the examination you are told to get the influenza vaccine as well in order to avoid any further problem with the H1N1 spreading all over the country.

It is also important to remark, check your vaccines histories, Kathy had an issue with her card as her history does not mention the vaccine batch applied to her, so she had to go and get a brand new shot in her arm. The yellow fever shot could be applied at least every 10 years but it really doesn’t matter if you get it twice in a year, avoid 40 days vaccines prior travelling, for us this would be a problem (because we would be short of days) but the doctor told us not to worry because she had a shot before.

This section advice, bring the information needed to prove you are traveling outside the country limits and the destination request the yellow card in immigration; in some countries such as Venezuela, this card is something very unusual, thus some doctors or receptionist will look for excuses to not give it to you.

Next, packing.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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After a day or two a gathering all your stuff, documents and other important things you will start thinking about “what is that important thing to do next? What to leave behind and what shouldn’t I?”

In our case, Kathy and I had lots of home things such as pots, pans, kitchen aids, our tableware, cutlery, and so on plus our bed clothes, bathroom accessories, etc; our dilemma was keep it or leave it.

After an intense internet search (related to prices in Australia) we decided to leave behind every electric device not complaining Australian standards, some useless books and really old clothes, the rest will travel with us (or shipped down under).

But why did we choose to take almost everything else with us?

Taking a look to cutlery (for instance), we find nice stuff over the Internet which might be our first things down under, but talking to our Sydney friends, they express the quality vs. price as the following: “obviously there are cheap things, but aren’t good neither durable; in the other hand, good and durable things are really expensive, it’s your call”. Then doing some calculations, we were going to “throw away” all our stuff (almost for free) to get new things down under (at full tag), those new things require lots more money than we could possible get from our stuff here… So, why to bother? Is kind of better to ship our stuff there, clean it up, package it and wait for it to get there.

Is there any tip or advice? Not really, these decisions are kind of personal and it really doesn’t matter if you want to leave to your family your cutlery even though down under are pretty much expensive and the price you are going to pay on shipping plus its value will be less than getting a new one.

This topic is divided into these two posts:

Next to picking and packing was shipping.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

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Again, the searching for convenience is a most choosing what to leave and what to take with us in our moving... As you may know, several months ago we moved to a new apartment in Caracas, getting ready for the upcoming changes, at that moment we disposed several damaged, unused or worthless pieces of clothes (with disposal I mean gave away to someone, if clothes were in good shape to charity otherwise to my mom so she could use it as cleaning rag) taking ahead on this duty.

But what is the important thing in this post, how to pack our clothes. And you may say, “what? How to pack our clothes? Man, everyone knows how to do their bags!” and you might be right, but I think it was worth it to be remarked the advice someone in Australia told me once.

Try to do your luggage taking note of everything. Don’t just throw everything in the bags because you might need to know where the bloody hell you left your tie, shirt, pants, underwear, etc. And so we did, at first we start compressing our clothes (you should read the saving space post first in case you didn’t, here) trying to keep some ‘order’ into the huge mess, storing some underwear, shirts and pants here and there... What does that means?

We didn’t set all our pants in just one bag, neither the shirt underwear and so on. Why? Just in case any of our bags were sent by mistake to Uganda; seriously I don’t want to imagine the face of the aussies with me walking with shorts and no shirt on Sydney’s CBD. The same tactic applies to fur coat (for winter) or swimming suits (for summer). Most of our clothes fit into six bags and one big box which was sent by post office in Caracas.

This labour was made in parallel with packing our stuff (other than clothes). And if you want to know what kind of bags did I used, read this post.

Once done all the packaging, came the shipping.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

As I already said here, we had lots of kitchen aids, tableware, bathroom accessories, bedroom clothes and accessories and we decided to take everything with us that might be expensive in Down Under excluding electrical devices. Most of those things were planned to be sent by post office and few within our luggage.

So, what’s the standard procedure to pack fragile things such as plates or drinking glasses?

Easy, you will need bubble plastic, polypropylene pellets, paper duck tape, tick cardboard and cardboard boxes of different sizes. The purpose of boxes of different sizes is, small boxes will contain the fragile articles and bigger boxes will isolate (with the pellets) the small boxes from unexpected bangs.

So, let’s imagine we are going to pack our tableware. The first thing to do is protect dishes, cups and other stuff with cardboard so it does not hit each other within the “small” box. Then cover the ‘small’ box with bubble plastic leaving the bubble facing in and the smooth surface facing out; this way the bubble will protect the box from impacts and the smooth face will help you with duck tape stickiness.

Then, cover every face of the bigger box with plastic duck tape without leaving spots. This technique is great because helps to cardboard to be impermeable and stronger. Cut open the up side face to the next step.

Next, put some pellets inside the bigger box (making a soft bed for the small box) and put the tableware box on that bed, leaving an inch from side to side. Then you can fill in the spaces with small (but resistant) stuffs such as books, spoons or kitchen aids to finally add more pellets; shake every now and then the box so the pellets fall in inaccessible places, creating a better protection.

Finally, close the up side of the box with duck tape and cover the box (if required) with bond paper. In Venezuela the bond paper is a most, because the box’s cardboard face doesn’t allow the post stamp’s glue to work properly, plus you got to remember every box’s face was covered with plastic duck tape.

This way you can forget how uncaring the handler could be.

Next thing to do, ship boxes down under.

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

Shipping stuff over is one of the obvious tasks to do moving anywhere, and correct information is a must before taking boxes out with us (especially when we don’t have any car) so we called the post office and talked to a kind man named Jesus. He give us some directions of how to pack everything so he can check it prior handle it.

With things classified and ready to be sent from overseas to Australia we took a taxi (in fact, were two taxi’s) to the main post office in Caracas (address here), and after some minutes waiting a kind man came from his cubicle saying “are you rod? Hi! I am Jesus, remember?” proceeding to take care of our boxes and helping us to get the weight of every single box.

This procedure is really simple to complete, just go ahead to the post office, with the boxes upside open and without any pellets (discussed in the previous post) so these guys can check the content inside the boxes. Then add all the protective material you want and leave it to them.

In our case, the boxes took odd 15 days to arrive tops, and as the days goes by, it gets quicker.

If you haven’t read how we shop our bags, then click here. Otherwise continue reading “closing unnecessary things”