We're here!

Well as you can see by the new title of this blog, we've now officially left Malaysia and we are one week into our new life in Sydney.

So far so good. We've found a great neighborhood in the inner suburbs - Artarmon. It is leafy and green with a handful of good restaurants, a local butcher and vegetable market. It's just 20 minutes via the train to downtown and just 15 minutes in the opposite direction for Ian to get to work.

Housing here is incredibly expensive and competitive ($525-650 a week for a smallish 2 bed, 1 bath place), so we've been on a bit of learning curve. The process for renting here is not dissimilar to buying a house - for most rental properties a short open house is arranged on a given morning and then anyone interested can turn up and submit an application.  Competition can be fierce so it isn't uncommon to offer more than the asking rental price to increase your chances.

Otherwise things are going smoothly, prices are high, but aren't quite as bad as I imagined - and things actually go on SALE. Nothing ever, ever goes on sale at the supermarket in Malaysia (largely because so many foods are subsidized by the government).

In between house-hunting we've been getting out to explore our new city. The sheer amount of things to see and do here is overwhelming (and wonderful). Even though we've both been here before, we couldn't resist the temptation to race down to the harbour and ogle at the bridge and opera house. We've explored some of the northern beaches and today plan on checking out our closest (and by close I'm mean 10 minute drive!) to Lane Cove National Park.

There will literally be a national park in our backyard. We are very happy people.

Oh, did I mention the wine? My god, it doesn't taste like vinegar here - it tastes like, wine! Nice wine.

The movers are coming!

The end is getting awfully near. Yesterday was our last ófficial' day at work. One week today we are on a plane with one-way tickets to Sydney.

Tomorrow the movers will come and pack up all of our things - many of them amazing things that will make the journey to Sydney and remind us of what an awesome adventure we've had here - Javanese masks, Chinese porcelain lamps, a Dayak statue from Borneo, art from Vietnam and Thailand and so much more.

I was just looking back and re-reading my early posts on this blog, reliving the excitement and anticipation of when we came to Malaysia 3 years and 3 months ago - the first geko in the house, our first encounters with Asian driving, the fabulous food. It was terrific.

We are ready for something new but I'm pleased that after 9 years and counting of living abroad the excitement hasn't completely worn off. (I'm also still very aware of what a privilege it is to live abroad as we have, and how very different it is from simply travelling to places).

To live in Sydney will be a whole new kind of adventure - less exotic, and a known quantity, but that is what we are now ready for. We're ready for a place where we feel we 'belong' (Malaysia has been very good to us, but it would take many, many more years for it to truly feel like home.) For a wandering British/American couple, Australia is perhaps our ultimate half-way house.

Final countdown

The movers come in 10 days. After that we have 5 days to re-home, dispose or squeeze into a suitcase everything that is left behind.

Cat #2 will be the first to go. He leaves us on Saturday, going to a good home, the home of a close friend. Catface stays with us till the bitter end, before she goes to the cattery where she will spend 6 weeks before catching her own flight to Sydney and then pulling through a final 10 days in quarantine before we get her back and beg her forgiveness.

Aside from the cats, we're feeling pretty calm about things. We've done this before with less money, less time and less experience. Also going from the second-world to the first-world, is so much easier than the reverse. We already have bank accounts, three weeks accommodation and visas for Australia. When we arrived in Malaysia three years ago, we had none of that.

Old pros with international moves, we've been sorting and culling junk for weeks, parting with things we didn't know we'd even acquired.

We've also been making a running list of the things that must make it into the suitcase. It's an odd list, but as we will beat our shipment to Oz by some weeks, there's some surprising things that you need:

• Bath towels
• A good knife
• Chopping board
• A pan
• Sheets
• Coffee press . . . 

Things that you can't live without, but to re-buy them for just a few weeks when you have your own on the way is infuriating. And expensive. So expensive. Even with a great company-paid moving package, international moves are expensive. The constant dining out  because you don't have a kitchen, the deposits, the essentials that can't make it into the suitcase, buying a new car and in our case the goddamn cat.