The Times They Are A-changin’
Seems like I’m back to my old tricks again having not blogged here since our Wedding Anniversary in July. What’s worse is that, unlike previous times when I had nothing to blog about quite a lot has happened since July. Perhaps the single most important event happened at the beginning of last month as, after two years of waiting, our permanent residency visas for Australia were granted! It’s been a long, long wait and at times I must confess that I thought we might never get there or have our application rejected. Thankfully neither happened and we have now booked our one-way flights out for February next year. Between now and then comes the sorting, the packing, the goodbyes and other things besides; it’s a scary prospect.
What’s weird is whilst we’ve talked about it for years and sort of prepped ourselves we still weren’t quite prepared for how we both felt when we got the news. I was very excited and buzzing straight away whereas things took a little longer to sink in, I think, for Cat. We were also overcome with the sudden realization that, because we never knew when our visas would be granted, we never really did too much planning. So because of that there are lots to do and not as much time as you think to do it in. As I said the flights are book but we’ve still got to figure out where to stay initially in Canberra, sort out what we want to take and what we don’t as well as know what to sort out when we arrive in Australia. Things are slowly clicking in to place and we do at least now have a rough idea of areas in Canberra where we’d like to look for places to rent. We’ll look at jobs around Dec-Jan well aware, however, that we’re more likely to get interviews/jobs with us actually out there! We’ve already booked a meetup too with the ACT migration team which is nice. I’m sure we’ll get a load of helpful info from it so looking forward to that but I’m mostly looking forward to Valentines in Sydney as we’re due to arrive there on the 13th.
Enough talking about Australia however as I’ve also done some, rather impressive I think, sporting achievements. Not long after our Anniversary I completed the Great Weston Ride (56mi cycle ride) and then the Mendips Sportive (62mi cycle ride) in August. After that I rode to my parents in Yorkshire which was roughly 250 miles and then topped it all off by completing the DIFC London to Brigton ride (54mi Cycle ride). With all of this coupled with cycling to work I’ve now shed over two stone in weight! I still want to lose a couple more stone but I’m well on my way to being the correct weight for my height though to be fair I don’t put too much stock in BMI ratings but it’s a decent enough benchmark.
The times they are a-changin’.
