Up to speed 2

well it's been nearly a year since the last the last time I brought this blog up to date so here we go - and I have much more reason to actually stick with my resolution to keep this up to date as I'm off on a great big adventure!!

since last time the following has happened

• have become an Aunt!!
• been offered and accepted a job with Saudi Aramco
• departed the UK for Aus (just 3 days shy of my visa expiring it turns out)

and now I am in Aus waiting for my Visa to Saudi Arabia to finalised.

I'm going to be working as a secretary on the western side of Saudi Arabia - not exactly sure where as yet.

For those that know my family - Sister, Hubby and my darlin neice are in Sydney and have recently bought a house, and Parents are currently traipsing around the US of A on their way back to Aus.

UK here I come

after a round of lunches, coffee's (well hot chocolates actually), dancing and general relaxing around Perth - I'm off on the next leg of my travels - London - via 19 hours flying

Book Capture!!!

Exciting news!!!

The third book I released through Bookcrossing has been captured and had an entry logged!!!

I recall seeing the lady pick up the book and wave it at the train when I released the book go here to read the story of it's capture.

I realised 2 more at Melbourne Airport on my way to Perth - wonder if they will manage to travel further a field

Perth here I am

After much umming and ahhing packing and repacking and forgeting of things arrived in Perth yesterday lunch time.

At the airport I was met by the delicious Louise and from there back to her house for an afternoon of nattering.

After a nanna nap it was time to go dancing!!! CerocPerth's Hawaiian Dance Party was on and there was dancing to be done.

It was fabulous to see everyone again and I had many lovely dances and chats.

Watching the dancing was great especially as Louise pointed with a Hawaiian theme is there is always so much more colour on the dance floor than other night - grass skirts, sarongs, lai's and hawaiian shirts of course.

Snap Happy

bought a digital camera last thursday the very pretty and rather nifty Caplio R3

Haven't yet worked out how to drive it proberbly - but am very happy with it so far and have a couple of long flights to read the manual properly and learn how to really make it sing

So long farewell

Had my last night of Melbourne dancing last night - which was a lot of fun and a bit sad as well. Shaun taught a fun beginners class - really nice routine which he followed up with an equally nifty intromediate class.

enjoyed getting lots of photos of all my Albert Park favourites - which I will share as soon as I can load them online.

Photos @ Kodak

the count down begins

well time for the count down to begin - only 3 sleeps until I leave Melbourne!!!!!! First to sunny Perth and then to the UK - and the adventure that awaits me.

Finished work yesterday and have started packing today - and so far it's going pretty well - not sure that I will be saying the same on Saturday morning though ;)

Vrroom vrrroom

As the proud owner of an international drivers license I can now legally drive in 170 different countries.

However at this point I am completely unfluent in the language of approx 150 of those countries.

let the mayhem begin ;)

Books can travel too

I love to read – you will rarely find me with out at least one book in my bag. This however poses a problem for prolonged travelling as I can’t bear not to have books to read – a bored Yli is not a pretty sight, but I like to keep them – have boxes and boxes of them in storage – the poor things – I’m sure they miss their sunny shelves in my spare room in Perth.

So to spare me many thousands of dollars in excess luggage I’ve come up with a 2 part solution – the first part is to buy cheap books to read. My local news agency is great for this they have stand with 3 books for $12.95 – cheaper than magazines or daily paper as a book will generally last me a week of commuting. And when I'm actually travelling well beggars can't be choosers.

The second part of the solution is to then release these books into the wild for others to enjoy.

If you’ve never heard of book releases this is were you leave (release) a book at a public place (the wild) for someone else to read, and if you register your book with Bookcrossing and leave it with a short note of explanation then you may even get to find out where you book travels to if the person goes to the website and adds to the books journal.

I’m doing my first book release today on my way home from work - will be interesting to see how far it will travel.

And a Mission is begun

One thing I have been warned of is the difficulties involved in obtaining a UK - based bank account – as I am intending to work legally while in the UK figured that I would get started on this sooner rather than later.

So having picked out a bank HSBC – attempted to ring my local branch – a 1300 number and 12 press this button prompts later I get to speak to a “REAL PERSON” - I had a very simple question – did I need to make an appointment to open a new account – either Australian or UK.

10 minutes later the answer was finally produced – no – I could just walk into the nearest branch and open a local account – but would have to brave the automated phone system *gulp* to open a UK account once my local account is open.

Now I just have to find (apparently they are somewhere on the website) and decipher the forms that I have to take with me to open the local account

Full steam ahead and damn the luggage

Well there is no going back now - my ticket is now paid for in full!!

Now all I have to do is work out how to pack enough belongings to get me through a year of life and travels in the UK, Europe and beyond in 20kgs!

I long for a luggage of my own

The Luggage had an elemental nature, absolutely no brain, a homicidal attitude towards anything that threatened it's master, and he wasn't quite sure that it's inside occupied the same space-time frame work as it's outside.

Getting underway

Luggage has been aquired, visa's issued, tickets booked!!! Now I just have to survive waiting to depart.