Old News - Newsletter June 2007

I got my visa!

YES yes yes yes!

Finally, after 8 months of paperwork and waiting I am the proud holder of a visa grant for a Skilled Independent Migration visa! All on my own merit, no mention of Milord anywhere in my application, all me me me ;-). I'm emphasizing that because some of Milord's mates still think I am sponging off him, using him for a visa and financial gain. Not bloody likely!

Oh gosh I'm so excited! It's like waking up at christmas to a mound of pressies under the tree!

Now I just need to leave the country for somewhere with an Ozzie consulate to stick the visa into my passport, and return back on it. We're thinking of going skiing in NZ in August...

Might skip home early and crack the champagne...

La la llaaa la la woohoooo!

*big grin*

Header Image

So, finally I have customised my page with my own header image. You will not believe how long that took me to create! And that's with Photoshop so I have all the tools at my disposal. Not that I know how to drive the thing yet - it took me half an hour to figure out how to draw a line.

Milord says I should change my blog title to "Wandered Saffa Chick" or "No Longer Wandering..." or something because I am no longer drifting. I told him that five years ago I was very settled in England, and look at me now! The only difference is that he has come with me if/when things change again ;-).

Anyhow, hopefully you can recognise the three icons of my three "home" continents in my header.

Took the words out of my mouth

In my browsings in the blogosphere I came across this lady. She is a couple of years older than me, and has a very different life as a nurse, and as a mother of two teenagers, but she has her head screwed on right!

Living Single in the Buckle of the Bible Belt...: Why I Will Never Be President

Montheversaries

I like to celebrate every month that I am in a relationship. Nothing huge, usually just dinner out and we take turns choosing where and paying. Anniversaries are of course still special, but they’re really just a bigger version of the montheversary – and oddly enough it makes the anniversary easier to remember with 11 months of reminder! I’ve just googled “montheversary” and it seems I’m not the only cheesy one out there ;-).

Milord had a little trouble with the concept at first, but I think he now really enjoys our monthly romantic fuss. He’s not big on the flowers/cards/etc stuff - in fact if I didn’t demand a card on Valentine’s I’d never get any - and he’s given me flowers exactly twice, and that was over a year ago. Before you start I do give him flowers too - I last gave him flowers on our anniversary in January (and a card too, but I’m mushy like that).

I also do Christmas cards, birthday cards, get well cards… I found this really cool site where you can customize your cards, even to the point of writing in them, and they print and post it for you. It is the same quality as a store-bought card, but personalized and so convenient! They have a UK branch too so I can organize cards for folk there within 2 days of an event (I miss Royal Mail).

Our montheversary date is the 7th of the month, and we count them from the 7th Jan 2006 - the day I landed in Sydney to start my new life with my darling man. We also pay respect to the 8th March as the anniversary of the day we met in 2005, but usually roll that up into the 7th March’s montheversary. And my birthday is on the 10th March, so that’s a pretty good week!

As of tomorrow Milord and I have shared 17 montheversaries. It’s my turn to take us out to dinner – I think we’ll try somewhere I haven’t been to in our high street.

Quizzes

I'm rather bored at work again. We don't have much to do except write unit tests, and I'm trying to make 5 tests last me all week when I could bang them out in a couple of hours! Hopefully Milord will be passing this way on his silver steed to rescue me soon.

I came across a personality quiz while reading other folk's blogs today to determine which Star Trek character you are, but I ended up as Beverly Crusher whom I'd never heard of. I stopped watching Star Trek a long time ago!

I am however a Lord of the Rings geek, so I had a go at the LOTR test. The first go said I was a Legolas, which is pretty cool. I tried it a second time and ended up as Sam, which is less cool but you couldn't ask for a better friend, right? Then I had a go at the Sexual style quiz and it rated me as Sweet. I have no idea how I feel about that, but it is definitely time to go home!

Mid May

Hm, another month gone by, that wasn't very exciting...

Not sure what we've been up to, certainly not much worth writing home about! Our finances have finally recovered from the SA holiday, so we're starting to socialise again (lots of birthdays this month) and are dreaming of the next trip. Not sure where, but probably within Oz - skiing or sailing or something - it's such a big place you can actually choose between snow or 30 deg at the same time!

Of course, that's if we don't buy a house in the meantime, which looks unlikely. Househunting in Sydney SUCKS! I HATE it. Anything we like is totally out of our price range, and I'm fed up with spending all Saturday driving around looking at houses. Milord is still resisting looking in the cheap suburbs, so nasty little shoeboxes are all we see, and we STILL can't afford them... There is a place up for auction this weekend that we both mostly like, but I just know it's going to go for $50k more than we can consider spending. I don't even want to watch the bidding this time.

Aaargh.

So the good news is that we're not doing much househunting this month ;-). Last weekend we visited friends of Milord's (Lucy, Peter and their little kids Charlotte and William) who live about 2 hours away south west. They have a huge property in the middle of nowhere, and the guest quarters are in a converted barn. It was glorious and private, and after a very late Friday night chatting with too much wine Milord and I didn't join the family in the main house until midday! Lucy is the best friend of m'Lord's ex-wife so I was on eggshells, but they were fine. I spent most of the time playing with the kiddies and kittens anyway. It was a good break, and lovely to get out of town.

This Saturday Milord is playing golf so we can't househunt, and next weekend he's away on a boy's drinking golf weekend. Fab, not only no househunting, but a girlie weekend ;-). I have decided to definitely break out the pencils and paper and attempt a sketch while he is away, I have no excuses now!

We have a girlfriend of mine, Angela, staying with us at the moment. She broke up with her bloke and needs a place to crash for a while. Looks like they're getting back together, but she'll be with us for the rest of the month probably while she sets the terms of the makeup. Long involved drama... makes me appreciate my nice steady normal fella (and hopefully him me)! She's a good houseguest though, washes up, feeds the cat when we're away, and hasn't complained about my cooking yet.

Work's pretty dull. I'm not sure I'll be renewing my contract at the end of June, I need a new challenge. That, or more money - we'll see what they say when the time comes!

My perm visa application continues. I finally passed the medicals after shelling out a fortune on specialists and tests. I have a benign kidney condition that causes thin membranes and sometimes blood in my urine. Genetic apparently, can't be fixed and has no symptoms or detrimental effects. I now just need my police clearances from the UK and SA and I'm sorted.

Um, what else? I'm gymming like crazy because the weight I lost before SA has insidiously crept back on. Firm fat, yay.

Hey, I don't think I ever told you how Milord's nose and throat apnoea (and snoring) operation turned out! Well, it's a great success. He hardly snores now, only on his back or when we've been boozing, and even then not too loud. When we keep off the grog for a few days he's as quiet as a mouse ;-). We've also recently changed the mattress for one with no bounce and I can't feel him turn over (used to nearly bounce me out of bed sometimes!), so my sleeping is the best it's been in over a year. I am a different person, and so is he - cheerful and full of energy. Fabulous.

That's it. How I write so much about so little I don't know ;-)

Old News - Newsletter May 2007

Hm, another month gone by, that wasn't very exciting...

Not sure what we've been up to, certainly not much worth writing home about! Our finances have finally recovered from the SA holiday, so we're starting to socialise again (lots of birthdays this month) and are dreaming of the next trip. Not sure where, but probably within Oz - skiing or sailing or something - it's such a big place you can actually choose between snow or 30 deg at the same time!

Of course, that's if we don't buy a house in the meantime, which looks unlikely. Househunting in Sydney SUCKS! I HATE it. Anything we like is totally out of our price range, and I'm fed up with spending all Saturday driving around looking at houses. Milord is still resisting looking in the cheap suburbs, so nasty little shoeboxes are all we see, and we STILL can't afford them... There is a place up for auction this weekend that we both mostly like, but I just know it's going to go for $50k more than we can consider spending. I don't even want to watch the bidding this time.

Aaargh.

So the good news is that we're not doing much househunting this month ;-). Last weekend we visited friends of Milord's (RuralChick, P and their little kids C and W) who live about 2 hours away south west. They have a huge property in the middle of nowhere, and the guest quarters are in a converted barn. It was glorious and private, and after a very late Friday night chatting with too much wine Milord and I didn't join the family in the main house until midday! RuralChick is the best friend of Milord's ex so I was on eggshells, but they were fine. I spent most of the time playing with the kiddies and kittens anyway. It was a good break, and lovely to get out of town.

This Saturday Milord is playing golf so we can't househunt, and next weekend he's away on a boy's drinking golf weekend. Fab, not only no househunting, but a girlie weekend ;-). I have decided to definitely break out the pencils and paper and attempt a sketch while he is away, I have no excuses now!

We have a girlfriend of mine, A, staying with us at the moment. She broke up with her bloke and needs a place to crash for a while. Looks like they're getting back together, but she'll be with us for the rest of the month probably while she sets the terms of the makeup. Long involved drama... makes me appreciate my nice steady normal fella (and hopefully him me)! She's a good houseguest though, washes up, feeds the cat when we're away, and hasn't complained about my cooking yet.

Work's pretty dull. I'm not sure I'll be renewing my contract at the end of June, I need a new challenge. That, or more money - we'll see what they say when the time comes!

My perm visa application continues. I finally passed the medicals after shelling out a fortune on specialists and tests. I have a benign kidney condition that causes thin membranes and sometimes blood in my urine. Genetic apparently, can't be fixed and has no symptoms or detrimental effects. I now just need my police clearances from the UK and SA and I'm sorted.

Um, what else? I'm gymming like crazy because the weight I lost before SA has insidiously crept back on. Firm fat, yay.

Hey, I don't think I ever told you how Milord's nose and throat apnoea (and snoring) operation turned out! Well, it's a great success. He hardly snores now, only on his back or when we've been boozing, and even then not too loud. When we keep off the grog for a few days he's as quiet as a mouse ;-). We've also recently changed the mattress for one with no bounce and I can't feel him turn over (used to nearly bounce me out of bed sometimes!), so my sleeping is the best it's been in over a year. I am a different person, and so is he - cheerful and full of energy. Fabulous.

That's it. How I write so much about so little I don't know ;-)

The Bay Challenge

Not far from where I live there is a well maintained pedestrian and bicycle track that runs along the edge of Iron Cove bay. It incorporates a bridge which turns the track into a circuit approximately 7km long, and is known as "The Bay".

For the last few months Milord and I have been having a race around it almost every Sunday - he does three circuits on his bike, and I jog it. I'm not much of a jogger, so it's jolly hard work, and although Milord enjoys cycling 21km is a long way!

The first time we did it I mostly walked, and finished in 61 minutes, and Milord managed 58 minutes. For the next several weeks I slowly knocked my time down and now I jog more than I walk and I am pretty close to breaking 50 minutes. I actually managed to beat Milord the last couple of times!

I'll cut him a bit of slack though, as he had a nasty throat and nose operation in February that put him out of action for over a month, and then we went away on holiday, so he's not been training much. From May he has no excuse though!

Harbour Cleanup Dive

On Sunday 22nd April Milord and I participated in a harbour cleanup scuba dive to bring up fishing line clogging the bottom at a popular fishing spot in the Ku-Ring-Gai National Park, about half an hour’s drive north of Sydney.

Whenever someone says “harbour” to me I always think of smelly, oily, concrete boat harbours with high walls and breakwaters. Well, in Sydney they just mean an estuary, which has oodles of river mouths and bays and peninsulas and moorings. While there are a few mud banks around, in most places the shore is sheer and rocky and there are some impressive sandstone cliffs.

Illawong Bay has a nice grassy picnic area, and a rocky shore covered in razor sharp oyster shells below the tide line, turning to sludge at around 10m. As you may imagine it’s not particularly good for diving, with plenty of murk and not much coral or whatnot. I’m not sure why it’s good for fishing either, as we didn’t see anything over 10cm long while we were down there.

What we did see was a lot of was fishing line! We came to the conclusion that no fisherman goes home with their line (or a fish) after casting off Illawong Bay, as there are areas where the layers of snarled line, hooks and sinkers are close to a foot deep. I couldn’t work out what I was looking at at first, as it resembled ropes and cables on the sea bed, not slender nylon fishing line! There are also quite a number of rods down there, and bottles and cups, the odd chair and even a few lorry parts. It is amazing what people throw into the sea!

Yes, that really is fishing line - and the vis was that bad!

We were down for nearly an hour, tearing and cutting line away, and stuffing it into a woven bag. The weight of the sinkers we brought up was startling; I reckon we had about 10kg of lead in the bag by the end, which made for some interesting buoyancy control. At one point I got tired and handed the bag to Milord – as I let go he sank like a stone and I rocketed towards the surface! Lots of bubbles and thrashing ensued while we sorted it out, only to do the reverse a bit later when he handed the bag back to me ;-).

10 divers went down for line, and several other folk walked the shoreline collecting litter. Sadly we don’t think we made much difference, as there is just so much to bring up. Hopefully the HarbourKeepers organization will be organizing another cleanup there, with more divers and extra tanks to have another attempt. It's not exactly a great recreational dive, but it's good to be putting something back into the community.

South African Holiday Part 6. Kruger - Pta - Sydney

Part 1 - Sydney - Saldanha
Part 2 - Saldanha - CT
Part 3 - Cape Town
Part 4 - Pretoria - Kruger
Part 5 - Kruger Park

The final camp we stayed in was Olifants, and although the closest exit gate to there is Phalaborwa Gate we decided to exit via the Orpen Gate as the best animal viewing is around Satara and we fancied a dramatic last drive. We were out of the camp at 6am, and left the Kruger at 11am on Saturday 18th March.

During the drive I was looking at the map and I realized that the Klein Drakensberg (small dragon) range was really close by, so we took a detour through the mountains on the way back to Pretoria. The mountains are stunning, they rear up from the lowlands in a wall of rock layers, and I couldn’t help thinking of the early explorers and trekkers having to find a way through. I’d also picked up a copy of Jock of the Bushveld (one of my favorite books as a child) while we were in the Kruger, so the ox-wagon era was fresh in my mind.


We had a glorious drive though the Berg, stopping at a few lookouts and pausing at Bourkes Luck Potholes. Milord reckons that is the most uninviting name ever for a spectacular river gorge, and if I hadn’t been raving about it he wouldn’t have stopped! (In my teens I did a 3 day hike along the Blyde River which ended at Bourkes Luck Potholes, so I knew all about them) In that area the Blyde River has carved a deep gorge, and where the water eddies it has created bowls and tubes through the rock, called the potholes, quite spectacular, and lovely to see running water after so long in the dry bushveld. We stopped to look out over the escarpment at Gods Window, and then made our way to Graskop where we grabbed a couple of burgers for a late lunch. Then down, down, down the mountain and south to pick up the N4 and head back to Pretoria.


We got back to Shane’s around 6pm, which meant we’d been on the go for 12 hours! Milord said it was such an interesting drive that he hadn’t felt tired. Even once night fell the “Hijacking Hotspot” signs on the highway kept him alert ;-). At Shane’s we had a very well earned couple of beers and I was asleep before 10.

Our final Sunday in South Africa was spent quietly. While Shane and her family were at church Milord and I burned all our photos to a dvd and started packing. Stephan cooked a chicken in the kettle braai and we had lunch sitting outside in the glorious dry heat. We were so lucky with the weather while we were in South Africa. Only one day of rain the whole time, only a couple of windy days in Cape Town, and generally hot. It was scorching in the Kruger Park, but so dry that it was bearable – at one point Milord said “How can it be 38 degrees and I’m not soaked in sweat?” We blessed the car aircon, and it was a pleasure to step into cool buildings every so often, but really we enjoyed the heat most of the time. The past summer in Sydney has been so disappointing that it was lovely just to be hot!

Shane and family dropped us at the airport at 3pm, we flew out at 5pm, and got into Sydney at 2:30pm Monday afternoon after 11 hours in the air. Argh, lost a day somewhere there! We had a shower, went out for dinner, and were asleep by 8pm and slept a solid 12 hours to 8am on Tuesday. Milord went to work and I started sorting out our photos. It took a week to cull and stitch them from 600+ to 300!