Pack your bags mate!!!! Lets do some OZ!!

When I move, it usually happens because of inertia. With 'move' I mean the physical equivalent of a move. The amount of laziness in my day to day life can be used to make atleast 3 people super lazy (if you use the lame 'amount of money that x has can feed y number of...' analogy). That said when I realized that within a couple of months of moving from one job to another (as if this was not too much), I would be moving to a completely different country, lock stock and barrel !!!!! I lost much of the meagre 8+ hours of sleep that I usually get each day.

Its not easy, I can tell you with first hand experience. There are so many moving parts to this process which are not visible on the surface and absolutely anything can go wrong and frustrate the crap out of you. In my case it was the Visa process. Believe me I didnt even had to apply for it, Google hired some agency to do it for me. But the whole retarded process of waiting for it is like the 80's hindi film songs where the lead pair is running towards each other in slow motion. That is really irritating, everyone knows they would end up hugging and kissing each other, then why the slow motion. Just do it. Well, even I knew my visa is going to come but they took 6 weeks just to put a stamp on it.

I took that in my stride, visa came, everything is fine, done and dusted. Now the grind starts. This time there is no red tape to blame, nothing you could probably get done by slipping a quick note to the God while praying each day. This was the stuff that me and Shveta had to accomplish within a week : Pack the stuff in the house, send it back to Bilaspur, sell my car, Some shopping here and there, paying the bills, meeting everyone, go back home meet parents, probably attend a wedding, find a international courier to send stuff to Sydney and last but not the least if there is time left, get some rest/sleep etc. This is where the 'move' thing comes. I am constantly in Inertia of Rest, as Newton would have called it. The Escapist inside me, who tries to puts everything off till the last minute is a full-time employee of mine. That procrastinator is my personal assistant, he cancels all the meetings and important decisions till about the 11th hour and also is efficient enough to provide me with excuses for doing that. I never had any complaints for him (though my wife hates him), hence I never found any grounds to fire him.

But this time because of peer pressure and pressure from the Board of Directors (read wife) he has to be fired. It pained my heart but it had to be done. So, my days during the process became something like this : wake up at 6, try to go running, cajole my mind out of it, sleep till 7, start calling packers and movers for quotes, go to market- do random stuff, start packing everything according to the guidelines created by Shveta, Shopping time, review the to-do lists, sleep, wake up in the middle of the night - think about what the hell is going on. Now repeat this for atleast 15 days and you have a recipe that takes you to a mental asylum and not the sunshine country.

I dont know how but all this stuff was wrapped up too, all in a week's time. Though super hectic but still fun. The moment we buckled up in the plane to fly for Sydney from Delhi, I started missing India. Remember the feeling of sending a mail and then thinking "Shit!! Can I unsend it and think about it a bit"? I had the very same feeling, I kept telling Shveta that we are going to come back soon. Already little sad about leaving India we overcame the sadness by criticizing the bad service and seats on the plane (apparently an instant mood-uplifter for most Indians: Criticizing). Soon, we were loving it, our sadness was transformed into sheer displeasure for the service, even after flying business. Halfway through the Journey, that feeling was already gone, replaced by hunger and pain from stiff necks. Loved the second leg of the journey though, amazing proactive service and great food. One Tip: If you wish to travel International in the near future, make sure you travel with a Pregnant lady ;). They take really good care of them in the skies.

Sydney gave us a cold and wet reception, almost like a snob neighborhood kid who is not happy to see you because he thinks you are here to take his toys away. Thank God for the fact that we were going home to my sister and could anticipate some nice hot India food. That kind of cold and wet weather makes you a hell lot homesick. We thought its not going to be easy settling in. Boohoo, we were missing India.

Its been more than 1 month since that day. I feel settled in, Shveta feels at home and summers here are just a month away. Sydney is beautiful, has these pockets of calm and chaos,old and new and makes you a friend easily. My next project is finding a nice place to call home, I keep improvising my shortlist all the time.

All this while I am trying to keep pace with the city, catching trains on time, brisk walking to office and enjoying being orderly and disciplined. In this 1 month I have already figured out the train timetables for Sydney, learned how to make coffee in the coffee machine at office (designed to make people quit drinking coffee), can almost decipher the meaning out of an Australian English conversation, got a hang of the driving rules and have come to terms with life without honking and jumping queues. But Still, sometimes when I wake up in the morning, all I crave for is 'The Times of India' to kick start my day.


Ciao