Adventures in Australia

Happy New Years

I would just like to wish everyone a very happy new years! 2005 has been a very exciting year for me personally. A lot of things have happened this year, including graduating from college with my bachelors, getting promoted at work and actually working in my field, and most importantly, finalizing a lot of the requirements before I leave for Australia. I purchased my plane ticket, received my C.O.E., received my student visa, and decided on a place to live.

As exciting as 2005 was, 2006 is going to be the biggest year I've ever had I believe. Obviously, in 2006 I am going to be moving to Australia, but more importantly, everything I have been working on for the past 2 years is finally becoming reality. Happy News Years 2006!

35 Days till Australia.

Wow... this sucks

Wow, there is nothing exciting going on in my life. I wake up, go to work for roughly 10 hours, come home and watch a movie or some T.V. and then hit the sack. Repeat.

I know that I can be out having fun right now, but the thing is that I need to save all my money. As I've stated many times, I'd rather be bored now and have adequate funds in Brisbane. But when it comes down to it, this sucks! I am going out for New Years Eve, but only to a friend's party, so I'll bring a case of beer or a bottle of something and that will be my only cost, so thats not that bad. Right now though, this is driving me crazy! I want to be in Brisbane now! Ugh..

37 Days till Australia.

Now what?

So, Christmas has come and gone, and now I'm left thinking of what to do now. Everything is pretty much done in my preparation for Australia. The absolute last things to do before I leave are to begin transferring funds to my bank account in Australia, close or cancel any current services I use here in the States, change the return date on my flight, and obviously, pack, of which I'm sure will be pushed off to the absolute last moment.

Even though there are a couple things left that I have to do, they really aren't huge, and aren't to demanding on my time. So, now I'm left with nothing to do. I sit here, bored out of my mind, waiting. Australia is within my grasps, it is so close that it is driving me crazy. I want to be there now and end all this foolish bored and drifting thoughts. Sure, I have work to keep my busy till January 21st, but even work doesn't fill this gap. I simply need to get out of here. It feels like being in prison, with nothing at all to do and only a hope that one day this wait will be over, except without the fear of dropping the soap.

40 Days till Australia.

Merry Christmas

Just a quick posting to wish everyone a very merry christmas. I'm up in Wisconsin visiting both sides of grandparents and the respective aunts and uncles and cousins. They all seem to think that they have to see me today. I don't think they understand that I am going to be back for the Holidays next year as well.
Ahh, family...

41 Days till Australia.

Happy Holidays

I would like to wish everyone a very happy holidays. From my friends here in the freezing cold, to the my new friends in the sunshine, I hope you all have a great holiday!

My family and I opened our presents last night as we are going to be out of town today and tomorrow, and I must say that I was very surprised. I got a very nice watch, something I was not expecting. I also got new cologne, the armani code. Something I'd never buy for myself, but a very nice gift from my sister. I also got a new messenger bag. I wanted something that looked a little more professional, yet still "student". I wanted a graduate student bag. I was planning on buying this for myself in the next two weeks and to my surprise, I got a great one as a gift. Overall, it was a really good christmas.

I hope everyone has a great holiday!

42 Days till Australia.

Really Tired

I am really tired. Working this many hours is not a fun thing to do, especially during the Holidays. As far as this work week is concerned, I've worked 31 hours so far from Sunday to Yesterday, taking Tuesday off. I am not going to work more than 45 hours this week, I'm just not. So, today, I am going into work later than normal, around 3PM, and I'll stay till at least 9PM. That will give me a full 8 hour work day to do on Friday and I'll be at my 45 hours.

Not the best way to spend the holidays, but at least I'm making money.

44 Days Till Australia.

Wire

Well, I am pleased to say that the international wire of funds to Australia has finally been resolved. I was right, there is no IBAN for Australia. However, I did need to full bank name and address, as well as the Swift Code. I sent the wire out today, and am now just waiting on the rental manager to confirm that he received it, and the wire hell will be over!

I think the biggest thing about my blow up in the previous post was quite simply that I have not heard back from Griffith about on-campus housing, when I was supposed to hear from them last week. Even though I would have turned it down if I got it for the off-campus housing, I was just a little worried about not getting on-campus, and now a possible issue about not being able to get the funds out to the off-campus housing that I want. Luckily, wire hell is done :)

45 Days till Australia

Hmph!!

So, typepad was down for a while this weekend, it was having a hiccup, preventing me from blogging. It really didn't matter to me, as I am now a slave to the job, working way too many hours than someone should be required to work. I tried to accomplish one thing this weekend, and that was to wire the money to the rental manager for my housing. So, I went to the bank with the information the manager had sent me. The first thing she asked was where was the Routing Number? I told her that the BSB number was the routing number, to which she said that she had never heard of it before. So, I'm thinking: "hey, she's the manager of the branch, she's gotta know what she's talking about!" Was I wrong about the BSB number being the routing number? Nope, the BSB number is the routing number as the rental manager reassured me.

Finding out the BSB number is the routing number had me a little pissed off, but not furious. She also told me that she needed the IBAN Number. Now, I have no clue what a IBAN number is and very well may need it, so I called up the manager and asked him. He had no clue at all, but was going to ring his bank and find out and if they did have an IBAN number, and if they did, he would forward it to me. Well, I then went and checked out Google and Wikipedia, and from my research, IBAN seems to mostly be a European only system. In fact, it was developed by the frickn' European Union! Now I'm really pissed.

Lets see, last time I checked a map, yep, Australia is no where close to frickn' Europe! In fact, a little thing called China lays in between it. Oh, lets not forget about Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania. 21 countries! 21 frickn' masses of land in between Australia and Europe, and I purposely left out some countries that even spell check thought were wrong, and I was typing it directly from a map! Which brings up an entire new topic of why spell check is not even programmed with countries!

I was now beginning to pull my hair out. So, I tried to rationalize, and I tried to think of how this woman had achieved the manager status at this branch. I mean, you'd think a manager of a bank would know her own field! We're not talking about a part-time bank teller, it's the manager! I know she's the manager, I saw her get off the phone and come out of the largest office, the corner office with the windows facing the pretty Chicago city street, to come and help me. I mean, she had an actual office, not a cubicle like everyone else. I was absolutely baffled. Then I got it, she thought I said Austria! An easy mistake, it was early in the day, maybe she wasn't fully awake yet. No, wait, I remember having to fill out a form for 15 minutes as it was 2 pages long with about 20 parts per page that need to be filled in correctly. I believe on the form that I handed to her it said AUSTRALIA for country of destination! Why don't you actually read the two page form I have to fill out? Cause then, maybe just then, I would have accomplished more than working 22 hours in just 2 days inside a retail store, and if anyone has ever worked retail, you know that one hour of retail feels like 3 hours of hell!

Oh, one last thing, I get to work another 10 hour shift in retail in roughly about 9 hours from now. I'm gonna be just chipper tomorrow when I go back to the bank to try this one more time.

P.S.: I am more than willing to accept the fact that I could end up looking like a complete dumb-ass if in fact there is an IBAN # for Australia. So far though, google has turned up nothing, so here's hoping for no dumb-ass guilt!

47 Days till AUSTRALIA

Oh Crap

So today was a bad day. Yesterday, I found out that for the first time in a long time, the company I work for, missed earnings for the quarter and dropped in stock price. Now, the company is scrambling. What does this mean for me? It means I'm screwed.

Basically, I was working on a "lab" project, something that is an experiment and can be cut at any time. Guess what happened? They cut the project for the next two months, right after they made us salary. However, my boss and the chief finance officer for the territory I work for stood up for us. They honestly believe that the project will come back in March, so they fought to keep us on salary and they did in fact do that!

However, I am going to be leaving for Australia way before that, so what do I do now? Well, basically, I am going to be working once again at my old job within one of the stores, paid at my full salary rate. The catch is that I have to work 45-50 hours a week in order to justify the salary. The hours suck, I admit that, but right now I need the paycheck, and I am now getting a very nice paycheck, so I'm stuck working 45-50 hours a week, starting this saturday.

Could have been worse, I could have been fired.

51 Days till Australia.

Waiting

So I got the official offer to live in the International Student Villas Saturday evening Chicago local time. I quickly called up the landlord to ask just a few questions, and then quickly replied to the email with all my information. I have now been waiting for the landlord to reply with the banking information so I can send the wire with my first week's rent to hold the room for me. I don't want to come off as an annoyance, so I decided just to wait a couple days, maybe the landlord was busy, and just didn't see me email. Well, after three days I decided to send another polite email back to the landlord incase he just happened to miss my first email.

I'm the type of person that likes to get things done fast. I think it comes from my work ethic - I work fast. I think I learned this trait from my years as a golf caddy, and always trying to move the members of the course faster and faster so I could get off the loop, get paid, and back on another.

The biggest thing is I don't want to come off as a pest, but this is the last real major step in getting ready for Australia, and I just want to get it done and locked up. Hopefully I'll get a response today.

UPDATE: December 14: 8:30PM: I got an email from the landlord saying that he has been swamped with work, and that the room is mine, it's sealed. He is going to be emailing everyone who has responded to reserve rooms on Saturday local Brisbane time with all the info. YAY!

52 Days till Australia