Maya Amelia Duff

On Wednesday September 10th, 2014 my beautiful niece Maya Amelia Duff was born happy and healthy to two amazing parents!

Although, I knew for 9 months that my niecphew (as me and my sister called it because we didn't know the gender) would be coming, nothing would prepare me for it!

With the 11 hour time difference, I didn't sleep properly for the better part of 3 days between her due date and when she was born. On Monday night (aussie time), I couldn't sleep - I was up every 2 hours checking my phone to see if my sister had gone into labour! Call it a sister's connection or something but that morning at 4am, when I checked my phone again - sure enough sis was on her way to the hospital.

After a full day in hospital, Maya was born to a very surprised mummy! Through the entire pregnancy, my sister was convinced that she was having a boy while my brother in law was convinced they were having a girl! (MJK was right!)

Maya came into the world around 5.30pm with all four grandparents waiting for her arrival in London! With the efficiency of air travel, my parents managed to get from Toronto to London before the Duff grandparents left from Newcastle to London!

Although, extremely excited for this new addition. My heart hurts because I'm not there to share in the smallest of things with my sister and my niece. For two sisters that are extremely close, we've had a tenacious relationship growing up that has settled into something that is part sister, part best friend, part parental and everything in-between! I've been with her through every major milestone and it killed me to be so far away during this one. Even though she was exhausted and adjusting to being a new mummy,  I wanted more than anything to see her and my niece in hospital but I guess somethings just aren't meant to be.

For the past week, I have been face timing and imessaging with my sister at the most random times of day. I am realizing I may never have her undivided attention again but she will always be that sister, best friend and part mummy that she has already been; just this time we have a sidekick with us!

2 years as a Sydneysider … The Other Side

So yesterday marks the 2 years anniversary since Pri and I landed in Sydney and although it should be seen as a major milestone, I can't help but look back at it all with a ton of sadness.

Pri and I moved to Sydney a few months after we got married in Toronto with all the best intensions at heart. It was part opportunity, part excitement and part escape for both of us. We had come off of a whirlwind year of wedding planning where our (and our families) relationships were put through the ringer… which is typical of most indian weddings! We were both mentally exhausted with Toronto and looking for a place to start fresh and start our lives together.

Sydney was that solution.

In what should have been an amazing two years for both of us, opportunity has not treated me so kindly. Although I have had the chance to develop in many ways (running, career change), I often feel empty and cold when I think of Sydney.

I look at Pri, who is absolutely thriving in this environment. He has overcome adversity and found a job that he loves and been promoted relatively quickly. He is enjoying a life with little/no commitments where we can just be and most importantly (for him) the weather is warm almost all year round.

In contrast, I am out of work yet again. I haven't been able to make friends, I miss my family to no end, I miss our community, my skin has gone haywire and I have realized I don't particular like warm weather.  I have become an introvert in a place that has made me feel empty and alone on countless occasions.

Missing family aside, my biggest personal letdown is my career or lack there of. I made this ambitious change into events which I know is my calling but I have not been able to find stability in roles that allow me to develop into that career forward female I always thought I would be.

Through high school and uni, I was always that progressive female that took on every opportunity to develop my skills and leadership potential. I graduated and landed a prestigious graduate program at GE where I had two years of further leadership development and finance work experience.

We got engaged and my priorities drastically changed from me to we.

In truth,  I don't regret moving here but I do often wonder when it is going to be my time again to shine. When my career and my personal development will come first, be at the same level… or if maybe taking the passenger seat on this roller coaster ride is how my life is mean't to play out.

At the end of the day, it may be my pessimistic attitude that is attracting the negative experiences or it may be my lack of internal happiness but I hope the next 2 years will be kinder to me as we try to sort out what is next.

2 years as a Sydneysider

Its been two years since we moved from Canada. It feels like at least five because so much has happened while we've been here.

When we started this blog, we thought hey, lets use technology to keep in touch with all the people we're going to miss so dearly. The blog will give them a way to see what we're up to and so when we do get around to chatting we'll have more to discuss than the weather. The blog was also meant to be a source for us to look back on how things evolved after we moved here.

Turns out by the two year mark you learn a few things. One, the only people that actually really care enough to keep in touch regularly are your immediate family and your siblings. Friends quickly get caught up in their own lives and you in yours. Two, you slowly stop blogging because things go from being a new adventure to a routine.

At two years, you still find yourself in moments when you miss home, but its in a different way to before. It is hard to explain, its more like a reminiscent memory rather than a "I need to be back home to feel happy" feeling. At two years you start to question whether moving is still part of an adventure or a long term life style change. The question is a lot harder to ask when you've been living somewhere for two years because you now have routines in place, a new place to call home, a growing set of hand picked friends. You are no longer struggling to find a place to live or trying to figure out administrative things related to being new in a country. You are now doing your second tax return, have lived in the same place for a while, have accumulated random things around your home, are being invited to the same annual party for second or third time. You somewhat know the drill now. You start to take things for granted and slowly forget what it was that you took for granted in your previous country.

When we first moved I was eager to have any friends, there was nothing more frustrating that not being able to call on someone to go grab a beer with after a tough week at work. Now its different, I have options and can be selective about who I want to spend my time with, and when no options exist I'm ok with that. You condition yourself to not get so disappointed when you do not have a friend to call on.

At two years, we've had the opportunity to help others who have recently moved. We're no longer the newbies. You quickly forget how you struggled with so many simple things when you first move. You're now discovering new things much more slowly, you create a sense of adventure by having more depth. By this stage you've done all the surface things (top sites, top restaurants, visited various suburbs, etc.), so now you're looking to try something new within the same area, perhaps uncover a new park, going further out, trying the same dish but in a different restaurant. You also go to your favourites more often, you can afford to visit the same place twice without having to feel like you're missing out on something. You have enough points of comparison to know where to rank something, versus when you're new you have no idea if that meal you just had was great or just average, for you its new and its either lovely or its not, no depth, just good or bad. Depth adds colour; it adds complexity. For example before we moved, we didn't drink much coffee. Now I enjoy one several times a week. But its not just a coffee, its a Soy Chai Latte freshly brewed. We now know where to get a good one, and where they're just average. Coffee is so much better here than UK and Canada thats for sure.

So how do I feel about Australia at this point in time? Well I could delve into pro's and con's or create a list of things that I do or don't like, but I think its a more complicated question than that. I think despite being made redundant and having been thrown against the ropes with no easy outs, Australia has still been kinder and easier for me than it has for my partner. I have fortunately prospered in the face adversity. I recently got promoted to a fairly respectable role within the company. Jaime has also done really well in so many ways, she's now a runner, has switch careers and developed in so many ways. However, I feel as though Australia has always been a temporary play for her and nothing more, difficult situations cause resentment towards the country rather than the situation. I think I'd do the same if our roles were reversed. Part of it is personality driven and part of it is circumstance. Do I think we will retire here, probably not, do we have a few more years left here, maybe, do I want to leave tomorrow, I don't think so. Right now no where else is calling my name and giving us a good reason to move. A move at this stage in our lives will be driven less by a sense of adventure, it will be a strategic play to align with our long term goals (i.e. house, kids, further career enhancements, proximity to family). The easy answer is to move back to North America or Europe, but the thought of doing so is both daunting and overwhelming. Its not as exciting when you know exactly what you're signing up for. Here's to hoping the desire to settle down with outweigh the unappealing feeling of 'settling'.

The evening of our 2 year anniversary in Sydney. McMahons Point.

Happy Australia Day 2014

Pictures from today's Australia Day Festivities. All taken form Blues Point Reserve

Ferrython

21 Gun Salute from Kirribilli

Qantas Mascot making his rounds

A380 low flyover

Stand up paddle boarder

Concert on the barge

Jessica Mauboy, Samantha Jade, Nathaniel and Justice Crew

it's hot outside.... fancy a Coke?

It is peak summer here at the moment, a great time to be unemployed I suppose. Last week it hit 40 degrees and today is uncommonly humid. But I digress.

Today marked a day where I could let out one of my biggest sighs of relief ever. Let me tell you why...

So back in October I was told that most of the BlackBerry Australia office would be let go. I was offered a position in Singapore or could take a redundancy package with a few benefits to help us move back to Canada.

This essentially left us with 3 options:

1. Take the job in Singapore
2. Take the redundancy package and relocate back to Canada (or move to another country)
3. Find a job locally and get the employer sponsor on my long term visa transferred to a new sponsor (within 90 days - before the conditions of employment for the visa were in violation)

I was determined to make option 3 work, but it was the hardest of the available options for a variety of reasons.  Mainly because it is hard enough to find a job, but then finding someone willing to sponsor you and doing it within 90 days with Christmas literally around the corner

So this is what I did to give it my best shot at giving us a fighting chance.

I networked. I networked like I've never networked before. I can confidently say I have a higher caliber network in Australia from the last 3 months than I did in all my time in Canada, mostly out of dire necessity. So, who did I network with? I had a meeting with Canadian Consulate, people from all levels in all sorts of industries (1:1's with CEO's, Senior Managers, Directors, Influencers and the well connected), 4-5 recruiters and everyone in between.

During this time I had recruiters telling me that no one was willing to take on the burden of sponsorship right now. I also had a few dead leads where there was slim to no chance of anything positive coming out of it.

However, during this time I had a lot of support from a lot of good people, people willing to open up their contact list to me, people willing to have an informational interview, people introducing me to others in the hopes they could help.

I had custom designed personal business cards shipped rush order from Reena in Montreal to take to interviews and hand out at meet and greets. I also coupled the networking with dozens of job applications, some to companies I've never heard of. I also started spending time on LinkedIn like a 13 year old girl would on Facebook. I upgraded my account and proceeded to add 150+ connections in the span of 4 weeks in order to get the widest group to network with. The objective being to come up more in search results, news feeds and so on. Then I tried to post interesting articles to get higher profile views. Which sort of worked:

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LinkedIn profile views as of mid October

Then all that effort seemed to have started to pay off. I got 3 interviews with 3 different companies in the same week I was signing redundancy papers at Blackberry. That was a busy week to say the least.

I was buying new shirts just for interviewing, and getting more wear out of my suits in a month than Indian wedding season in UK.

I even had an interview with a fellow Laurier alumni - class of '87 (now a CFO at a pharmaceutical CRO company based out of Sydney). I had offers to interview with companies who specialize in making Poker machines and pay very well. Both were good opportunities but not my cup of tea.

One time I had an interview with someone in Ireland for a position in Sydney. The recruiter asked me to attend at the recruitment agency office because it would be over Skype, so I turn up in a suit. Turned out to just be a regular telephone interview, which the recruiter already knew. Was so frustrating and big waste of my time. Sensing my frustration, the recruiter said its more professional when you wear a suit for a telephone interview. Bullshit.

And after all that, I ended up getting a job offer from the very first company I interviewed with (after 2 interviews and some on the spot business case testing). However, despite having a job offer in hand it was no time to celebrate. Now came the next crucial step, trying to get the 457 long term work visa transferred from BlackBerry to my new employer. Unfortunately doing so is completely handled by the new company, their lawyers and the government. I was given a time frame of 4-6 weeks processing time, however with Christmas in between and usual slow processing times at government organizations, it took closer to 2 months. During which time I had no way to directly escalate, get updates or inquire. So was left  reliant on updates from the company. In the end they created a business case for an urgent approval of the visa transfer request. The application was approved the same day they decided to open my file, probably in a matter of hours. 2 months of waiting was solved in a matter of hours, that is bureaucracy for you. Its ironic because they could have been collecting taxes on all that lost income due to the time wasted while I waited.

The hardest part of all of this was the waiting without knowing. It was incredibly frustrating every time a friend of family member called and asked the same question for the billionth time. Spending a prolonged period of time not know if you'll be starting work next week or having to move to another country can be extremely stressful. There are only so many things you can do to keep your mind occupied when really important decisions are out of your realm of control.

Alas, it is with great pleasure I announce that the visa transfer has finally been approved. My new manager called me to give me the news today , and then asked when would be convenient to start, I said "see you in the morning".

And where will I be working? There is a clue in this post somewhere. Or you could call me and ask.

Twisties, hairpins, sweeping benders.... not talking about bad hair, but about the roads down here

Did a 200km+ cruise today to check out some roads and re-visit some of my new favourites. Basically went up Old Pacific Hwy to Mooney Mooney through Calga across to Wisemans ferry, back down to Hornsby via Galston Gorge. For most people reading this, it probably means very little unless you're a local or have a map handy. So here you go (or click this link):

Probably doesn't look like too glamorous of a ride, but the following spots just make the whole trip worth smiling about. Anyone who's into driving or rides knows how much fun a road like this can be:

Add in the fact that you ride onto a ferry that takes you across the Hawkesbury River in Wisemans Ferry:

+Twisties, signs saying curves for the next 25+ km, rapidly changing altitude, glimpses of a lake or river while in the mountains and then smooth curves cruising along the river bank. Also, hairpin turns so tight you almost have to put a foot down.

Australia really does offers the ultimate riding conditions: twisties within an hour of the city, good weather year round, well paved roads, motorists used to co-existing with bikes and cycles alike. Honestly, this can probably only be paralleled with a few places in the world, e.g. parts of the States and Europe.

Yes, you need to stick to the limits because there are a lot of traffic cameras. Also, like any major city the traffic within Sydney is horrid, but that's about it. Also, insurance is a lot cheaper than than Canada, like 50-70% cheaper.

On to more pictures. Some with an ex-colleague at Blackberry who just happened to have the same bike but in a different spec.

jet boat racing

Bewowra Waters Ferry on another cruise

Galston Hairpin Turns