March

Well it is the start of March and as we are living in Australia we made a very Australian purchase today. We bought a Holden Commodore. Albeit that it is a 1999 model with plenty of KM's on the clock it looks to be in pretty good nick. It has registration till October so at least we have that worry out of the way for a few months.

Let me tell you though it is no pleasure to go used car shopping (there are a few shockers out there). Dodgy dealers aside we wen to RA Motors in Granville. If I have any issues with the car believe me I will blog about it.

I am just thankful to live in a country where there is at least a semblance of regulation on a used car industry but I believe the phrase caveat emptor (buyer beware) still applies.

Till next time keep on moving my little holden

Blog Traffic

I reckon that one of the most common ways of getting your blog noticed is to post a blog about how to get your blog noticed. If you search in Google for driving traffic to your blog you will notice the most common sites have roughly the same content.

One of the most commonly regurgitated lists is something off John TP's blog:

1. Submit your blog
   to all of the directories listed on Pingomatic which allows you to ping a few services all at once.
2. Submit your blog to Pingoat which allows you to ping over fifty blog ping services all at once.
3. Sign up for an account at BlogExplosion and register your blog there. After registering visit other members blogs to earn credits.
4. Submit your blog to all of the directores listed at RSS Feeds directory
5. Sign up for My Yahoo and add your blogs feed to your own “My Yahoo” account. This will get your blog included in Yahoo very quickly.
6. Sign up for My MSN, and add your blog to your own “My MSN” account. This will get your blog included in MSN very quickly.
7. Sign up for Google Pages, and add add some content (non spam) and link to your blog. This will get your blog included in Google very quickly.
8. Place a link to your blog in your signature, so that any posts to Forums, Outgoing Emails, etc, will promote your blog.
9. Place your blog on all the major search engines. AddMe.com will submit your blog free to the top 14 Search engines.
10. SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 Search engines.
11. Submit your good articles to Ezine Articles
12. Locate blogs with a lot of traffic and place relevant comments in their comment box .
13. Do not spam or place the ‘I like your site,visit mine’ type comments.
14. And last, post quality content as often as possible.

It seems the lastest game with blogs is to see if you can make money with your blog, but like most good ideas you should have gotten in early. If you have only recently started a blog you better hope and pray that you have some influential people who will link to your blog otherwise you will be the proprietor of a ghost town much as this blog is at the moment.

I don't mind as a blog is the 21st century version of a diary and most people were not trying to make money off their diaries - perhaps in hindsight if there was a paper based version of google ad sense they would have.

If there is anyone out there who believes there is a simpler way to get your blog noticed I am all up for suggestions.

Handyman Continued

Having the furniture at home the job looked simple. I have a wrought iron frame that is missing a few nuts and bolts to keep it all in one piece so just replace the bolts.........wrong. The designer of said furniture was obviously having a trippy day and thought that the whole joining process can be done like you would do with a wooden dowel.

Needless to say I was going to have to get the drill out and drill through the steel frame to put new bolts in the frame. Having never drilled in metal before I did not know what I was up against - so I did as the manufacturer did and treated the steel like wood and drilled high speed into the steel frame. If you have never drilled in steel before this is a very bad idea because all that happens is you get a blunt drill bit and a shiny divot in the steel.

So I had to go to that most traditional weekend places to visit for the handyman - a local Bunnings so that I could get a new drill bit. This time around it all went quite well after doing some online research into drilling into steel. Slowly Slowly lots of pressure is the trick.

When being a Handyman is hard work

Having recently moved to Australia (again) we moved from a 3 bedroom house into a rental house with 4 bedrooms a study and 3 living rooms and a dining room. As you can imagine we are living in a cavern at the moment with furniture randomly scattered to create the impression that we are living here.

My wife is incredibly house proud so we needed to get a dining room suite as soon as possible. She has discovered the wonders of eBay and won her first purchase for $150.00. So now the next issue how do you get a dining room suite to your house when you are on a budget. Hey thats what mates are for. One of my mates has a Ford Transit and he loaned it to me so that I could go and pick up the dining room suite.

Things always seem to work out for me in this way: when I arrived there, the only person there was the lady that we had bought the dining room suite from. I was on my own as my wife was at home looking after the kids. So I had to enlist her help to get the Ford Transit loaded up. Let me tell you I have a desk job and moving furniture is a job I will leave to the professionals in future as by the time I had loaded the dining room suite in the van I was "finished".

Luckily the trip back was uneventful but now the real hard work would need to start - the refurbishment of the dining room suite, but that is a story for another day.

The Daily Commute

Something that is taken for granted in Sydney is public transportation. I worked in South Africa for many years and the only way to get to your job was to drive and then park. Note in the latter part of my career parking close to the building and preferably inside the building became a key criteria as your odds of being mugged at night were pretty good.

I had one of my team members mugged right in front of a police station one evening. This alone is enough to drive one insane. (Sorry had to rant so I am slightly off topic).

I have a theory about public transportation and the modern era. I believe countries without public transportation run the risk of losing out on valuable research time. My hour long commute on a bus in the morning sees me browsing and reading in a week more than I did in the last 2 years that I was in South Africa. This has got my mind out of the fear and back into learning mode.

Remember people love your public transport it has the ability to make you smarter.

The Heat

It is always tragic to learn that others are struggling out there. Entire communities in Victoria have been devestated by bush fires and it will be weeks until the full extent of the toll is known. My heart goes out to all those people out there that are faced with a very uncertain couple of weeks.

Put yourself in their situation - a lot of these people have lost all their worldly possessions and one of the most common things we take for granted (a roof over their heads). Let's keep all these families and their loved ones in our prayers and wish them a speedy recovery.

Ways to get into Australia

As a South African who went to Australia then back to South Africa and is now back in Australia I am often asked how did you get into Australia. My answer is quite simple I am fortunate to be skilled in an area of highly skilled work where a worldwide shortage of people exist.

There are many ways to get into Australia but by far the simplest method is a subclass 457 visa. The only catch here is that you need to find a prospective employer who is willing to sponsor you (lets face it at the moment most companies are cutting back so I think the 457 visa's will be at a premium for the next few months until the global economy starts to settle and everyone has finished licking their wounds). The paperwork for a 457 visa is not that detailed you need to provide all your relevant qualifications and undergo an X-Ray (checking for TB) if you have kids under a certain age they will need to go for medical exams as they cannot be X-Rayed.

The turn-around time for the application varies although I have been through the 457 visa process numerous times and the longest it has taken is 2 weeks. There are drawbacks to a 457 visa:

• Maximum time is 4 years
• You are not entitled to Medicare (Public health system)
• If you lose your job you will have a month to find a new one otherwise you will need to leave the country
• Does not count towards permanent residency

On the other hand it is the simplest way to get into Australia and once you are here it is easier to convince employers that you are worth keeping for the long term and typically if you remain with the same company for 2 years they can sponsor you for permanent residency. This will normally take a few months and once you have that you are on your way to becoming a citizen.

I myself am on my second year and will be looking at doing my permanent residency application at the end of the year as I can no longer live in limbo (I need a new home - plus my kids were born in Australia).

Good luck to anyone out there.

Living in Australia

Life is a mystery 2 years ago we packed up from Australia to return to South Africa after spending six years getting used to the country.

Let nobody tell you otherwise it is one of the most difficult things to leave your home country and move to another. First you have to get over the differences in culture. Remember one of the most formative parts of your upbringing will be your school life. It is also the place where you logically make your friends and start to form friendship circles. By packing up and moving to another country you will lose these friendship circles and discover that it is quite hard forming friendships with people who have had a different cultural upbringing.

For myself I have found that it is quite common that the first friends that one makes outside of people from your own country are people from other countries as you logically have something in common (stranger in another mans land).

I am quite fortunate that I have spent a lot of time in Australia so I have the semblances of a friendship circle starting to take shape (this is difficult for me as I am quite an introvert in a lot of ways) thanks to my wife and funnily enough my kids. Having young children tends to put you in situations where the opportunity to socialise is much easier as at least you have a conversation starter. If you want evidence about the friendship circles forming at a young age watch how quickly the young children become part of the new society.

I am writing this blog for 2 main reasons one to help other expats and perhaps share experiences with other expats and 2 it gives me a way to purge my soul.