Time flies when ...

Unbelievable….another two weeks passed without us publishing anything on the blog. Sorry for that! On one hand we just are very busy, and then when we do have some time left we are very much enjoying being able to see our dvd-movies again. We have been missing them for almost 3 months, so we are trying to catch up with the missed fun ;-)

Anyway…we are now living in our house for 2 weeks, and we really, really, really love it! All the boxes have been upacked by now, the bedroom, kitchen and dining room are in order (all the stuff is in the right place). The other bedrooms are not too bad: Most of our stuff is now in the right room. We just have to arrange it all within the rooms. This Friday a cabinet will be delivered that we can use in the office-room (bedroom 4) to put all the files away. We are also looking round (for example at Ikea, which, although a very big one, is present in Perth) for cupboards for the study and the hobby room (bedroom 3).

As most of you will know, when moving in a house the first 80% of the work gets done in about 20% of the time, but the last 20% always seems to be taking far more time (usually small stuff but a lot of it). Ellen has done a magnificent job by washing every clothing that we have (since most of it has been in the container for 2 months). It took her about a full week to get through it. And we are very fortunate that the washer we have here is a top loader. Although being a bit less water-efficient as the one we had in Holland, it is a lot faster. A full wash cycle takes only 30 or 40 minutes.

In the last weeks we have also met some other Dutch emigrants that we got to know through the xpdite website. This Saturday we have invited some Dutchies to meet at our home and exchange some experiences.

About the work: Last Friday Ellen has had an interview for a 6-month contract job as project manager. She should hear something by the end of this week. Peter has had an interview last Monday for a (permanent) position as change & release manager (this was the job mentioned in the ‘blue to the bone’ post on our weblog). That company has also said to inform by the end of this week if he is the preferred candidate or not. Now we both already found a couple of times that saying ´by the end of this week´ can easily mean in a week or two… So we are also looking for other opportunities at the same time. By the way, we are very happy that we did not have to work the last couple of weeks, because that would hardly be compatible with moving in a new house!

Talking about the new house, we are also waiting for a package by Telstra with the material to install (wireless) adsl at home. Once we have that we will finally be able to upload more photos than we used to do the last 3 months. We will be making some photos of our new house (inside and outside) in the next few days, and upload these anyway.

Last week we were changing a lamp on the ceiling (replacing one of them with one of our halogen lamps). We found that the ceiling is (if we name it correctly) completely made of plasterboard (´gips´ in Dutch). That means that you have to use a bit different methods to attach a lamp to the ceiling. For this one Ellen went up the ceiling which meant she had to climb above the ceiling (through an access panel in the hallway) and there walk from one wooden rafter (or beam) to the next. Because it is not wise to step on the (plasterboard!) ceiling which is attached to the bottom of these rafters (;-), and there are also conduits laying on the ceiling for the ducted air conditioning, this was an adventure in itself!

Fortunately in the mean time we have found other material that can be used to attach stuff to plasterboard ceilings, so any other things we want to attach to the ceiling will be pretty easy to get done.

And as a last remark: winter is slowly starting to creep in. Night temperatures of about 4 degrees, day temperatures around 15 or 16 degrees. Compared to where we are coming from not too bad for winter, but a warm sweater is needed. Only the normal winter rain(s) have not really started yet, but should be getting here.