What is a blog for?

I feel the need to write down some of my thoughts for my friends to read, without putting an essay on Facebook. Hence it is time I went back to my blog.

I had intended to write about the technical trials and tribulations of relocating Down Under and what that meant with regard to internet access, email, gaming, websites, TV, mobile phones etc... Well it turns out that I couldn’t be bothered! No idea why, since that stuff used to rock my boat!

So this is more of a general commentary on our progress so far with surviving emigrating.

We are 5 months in now and have leapt through most of the hoops you would expect, such as accommodation, schooling and jobs and I won’t say it was painless, but the outcomes have been favourable and tolerable.

What surprises me the most though is how comfortable it all feels. I am sitting here 26 floors above central Sydney with a killer commute every day. I have bought an Apple product to help pass the time. I struggle at night and weekends with substandard broadband performance, I hardly watch any Australian TV, the local sport is pretty rubbish, it’s winter time and I haven’t really had chance to make any new friends. Yet I am content and happy.

It helps that Lauren and Jocey are enjoying life down here. Lauren particularly has fitted in well to her new school and Jocey is growing up normally. They clearly miss their grandparents, whom we Skype every weekend, and Lauren talks about life in the UK occasionally, but not in a way that suggests that she misses it.

Lauren’s accent may be the death of me though! Talk about killing Queens English! I cringe every time her T’s become D’s! I am looking forward to my Mum’s response to that in November!!!!!!

We are buying a house. It is not what I expected or pre-planned in my mind before we emigrated, but it most definitely feels right. The fact that every indication is that internet connectivity at the new place will be worse than I am getting now, doesn’t change my mind! The fact that we can’t afford the dream house or the pool straight away doesn’t seem to matter either. However the plot of land is a killer... It got under my skin. There are aspects of the plot that scare me, but only in a good way. They pose problems that intrigue me, but I know that in the short term I can just pay them to go away and sort them out properly in 2-5 years time.

In reality I suspect it will be 5-10 years before the house is “finished” close to the ideas in mine and Serena’s heads, but then I don’t think we really know what all those ideas are yet! We’ll plan and build a home on the site of the current house in the next couple of years, but the landscaping, granny flat, pool, kitchen garden, stables(?), orchard, hot tub etc will all come along later once we have lived with it a bit and watched the kids grow up! All those years of watching Grand Designs on Channel 4 are coming back to haunt me!

So where does that leave me? Well at the moment I have 3 things on my mind.

1/ Work is turning a bit dull as we move into the Test Phase of the project... Still it will all be over by November and the pay is good.

2/ Money! It was all OK before we decided to buy the house. Now it has been stressing me out a little as the costs associated with the mortgage etc are currently unknown numbers. They’ll firm up in the next few weeks, but for now they are bugging me!

3/ Level 80! My World of Warcraft Paladin made it to Level 65 last night. I can smell Level 80 now, and I don’t know why, but I am really enjoying levelling up a character for the first time in years! It had all become such a grind, but the end game is in my sites and I really want to get another character there.

So when / what will I blog next? Who knows?