It's official - we're moving to Sydney! (11th February 2011)

After several months of Jono going through an extensive recruitment process with Google Sydney, he’s finally been offered a job! It has been a long wait and we couldn’t really plan anything as we weren’t sure where we were going to be this year (it was driving me nuts as the project manager in me was not able to plan activities etc. for us grr…). I’m glad that he’s now made the decision to accept the offer and us to move over to Sydney :) Yay!

We both handed in our resignation letters to our respective managers on Monday (one month’s notice required as per our contracts) – this is it, we’re DEFINITELY moving! Jono must be tired of me asking him like a million times “Are you sure that we are moving?” before I handed in my resignation. Well, I just wanted to be super sure as there was no turning back once I submitted it to my manager – where I work, the moment you hand in your resignation, my manager proceeds to inform the whole team about it including the date of your last day of work. It’s pretty serious business here! It has been over 3 years that I’ve worked in Telecom and it does make me feel sad to leave my team. I’ve had the opportunity to learn new skills and knowledge during my time here, as well as work with an amazingly talented team who is always open to share their knowledge, support one another and still have a great sense of humour working in a stressful environment. My colleague Greg has a new nickname for me, Splitter, which he uses whenever he’s referring to me. “It’s a term of endearment,” he replied coolly when I retorted that I’ll bake more cakes before I go so he would stop calling me a splitter :P Sigh, I will miss you guys dearly and hope there would be another opportunity to work with you again in the future – do keep in touch!

Frankly, I never imagined I would really be moving to Australia. I guess after living in Wellington for 10 years and 3 unsuccessful attempts to move to Australia over time, I had given up on the idea of moving across the ditch. I AM very excited about our move and also a little scared, mainly because I do not have a job to go to in Sydney. But family and friends I’ve spoken with have all been very positive about the job market there, saying I should have no issues finding a job soon so we shall see. I’ve started applying for jobs in Sydney this week – wish me luck!

Oh my god, there’s SO much to do before we go – selling our stuff, packing things up, terminating gym memberships, catching up with friends, organising our farewell party, and the list goes on. But I’m loving it, all the planning and organising keeps me happily busy – Jono calls me his little project manager haha :) Over the last few days, we’ve booked our flights to Sydney (we’ll be leaving on the 8th of March), booked a venue for our joint farewell party and applied for an Australian bank account (we both now have an Australian bank account!). I’ve got a running list of tasks we have to do before we head off and working through them, crossing them out as I complete them. The next 3 weeks would just whizz by without us realising but I’m sure between us, we will be able to get all the tasks completed in time :)

WE ARE MOVING TO SYDNEY!!!!