Well, I've been back for a really long time, in fact I've been living back in New Zealand since I returned from my OE in 1996, but its time to move again. Just before Xmas 2006 my Girlfriend was, completely out of the blue, offered a promotion working in Sydney. After she came down off the ceiling we talked about it and decided it really wasn't an opportunity we could pass up. I mean how many people get offered promotions with international transfers? not very many. This was something that she had been working towards for a very long time. It's a bit convoluted but essentially, she had been working in a different division of the same company for 7 years. That division had on and off promised her the same sort of promotion, but it had been blocked by (male) persons higher up every time it was suggested. She transferred divisions about 2 years ago and this time her boss (female) suggested it, approved it and we are moving.
This sort of opportunity can't be ignored for 2 reasons in my mind. Firstly, if offered once and turned down they won't offer it again. Also, once its offered and accepted they will look at you for other roles where you need to move countries. They know that you are flexible enough to have done it once and can do it again. Secondly its very rare to be offered a transfer internationally. Effectively the company is paying us to emigrate, this is just an awesome offer.
So, the GF will hit the ground running in Sydney with an income already sorted. I need to find work (negotiations underway with an ex-boss now) and sort out some sort of income. I am told by a lot of people that I won't have a lot of issues with finding work in Sydney. However, it's always nice when other people tell you that, they aren't the ones who have to go out there and do it.
We won't be selling the house, we would never ever get back into the NZ housing market if we did that, so we need to find someone to rent our place. We had actually started 2 major house projects thinking we would have plenty of time to finish them. Now of course it turns out we have about 6 weeks to finish them and get the place rented. We are hoping to make at least 400NZ$/week for the place, the rental agents coming round next week will be able to confirm or deny that. Either way we will still need to be topping up the mortgage in NZ. I doubt very much if we can make enough rental to actually cover the mortgage payments.
I'm a bit worried about the old girl actually. I've come to really love my 100 year old cottage. She takes an enormous amount of looking after but she is a great little place. Our experience with renters in the past haunt been good with the last renter being a crack whore.
We have been looking in Sydney on the North Shore. We really like a suburb called Lane Cove and we will try to move in around that area. Of course, we have no idea what the market will actually be like in 3 months when we move but we need to get a good idea of the prices and styles of tenancies.
It will be really weird; I've been an NZ gamer trying to fit in with Aussie time zones for so long it will be odd to actually be in the Aussie time zones. No more staying awake till 2 am just to be able to play with my Guildies. I'm also going to be buying a new bike. I will probably go for the GV650 as I can buy it on a NSW limited bike license. I was planning on buying one in NZ anyway but I need a full license over here. The Aussies have a much better graduated system with options to move to bigger bikes depending on how long you have been riding and the power to weight ratio of the bike in question.
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