Who Eats Biscuits in the shower anyway.......?

Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Perth
January 6th 2011

Published: January 6th 2011

Hello everyone,
Happy New Year (when's the cut off for saying that, at what point does it go from being ok to say it, to a bit weird?) Sorry, as always it's seems to have been a while. Mark here, (in case you hadn't already spotted my witty prose)
I hope Santa (or Satan, depending on your point of view, ever notice how close those two words are.....and he dresses in red....hmmmmmmm) brought you everything you wanted for Xmas, and that you all drank and ate too much.
I'm trying to cast my mind back to when I wrote the last blog, must've been the Bali Blog.....that was October....blimey. So Verlie's been on her jetsetting travels, visiting friends and family in England, Florida and LA, stopping over in Melbourne before finally getting home almost a month later. She got home on 9th Dec, I have to be honest it was the longest month ever. I honestly thought I'd breeze it, whole bed to myself, watch what I want on TV, and with a mini harem of willing (semi-willing in some cases) girls at the hostel to look after me in the domestic sense, and the odd much needed hug thrown in. I thought I may not be travelling the world, but I'd quite enjoy my month.
Two days in and the novelty wore off, and I was miserable for the next 3 and a half weeks. I mentioned this to several people both at home and in the hostel, and was surprised that upon hearing how much I was missing Verlie, people commented "Well at least you know you made the right move marrying her" Which I can't help being insulted by, because it suggests that I would marry someone If I was only half sure, or a little bit sure, or I had a good feeling about...........obviously not.

So the month dragged by and Marije and Christie (the aformentioned mini harem) did their best to cheer me up, hung out with me and were generally totally awesome. On the upside, not only did I have the bonus of Verlie back in Dec, she came bearing gifts, of shorts and Crocs. I now own 9 pairs of Crocs, It's all I wear on my feet....ever!

December was also the month we took great strides forward in our quest for permenant resdiency in Australia. The process had been updated, basically there was a list of jobs that were in demand in Australia. Just the one list for the whole of Australia. New legislation was brought in to allow each state to create it's own list. This was announced in Feb 2010. and everything basically went on hold until the list for each state was announced. So it took the best part of a year for this to come into effect. What it meant for us was that if my trade (fitter -general) was on Western Australia's list then we would be bumped up to the front of the waiting list. If it wasn't on it, we'd be waiting another 2-3 years at best.
The states began to announce one at a time. ACT and Victoria were first, and my trade was on both those lists, but having already secured sponsorship from Western Australia, that state was our only real option, unless we went right back and started all over again. Then came Northern Territory, I was on that list also, the Queensland list came out, and there was not a single engineering or construction trade on it. But I was pretty confident given the huge demand for trades in WA (it's the reason we decided to settle here in the first place) that we would be ok, but as usual no matter how often I told Verlie not to worry, she still did.
Great joy then, the day WA announced it's list and there were nothing but engineering and construction trades on the list, and we were on it........we sprang into action immediately applying for our police clearance certificates and arranging our medicals. These are the final two pieces of the immigration puzzle and you have to wait until you are allocated a case officer by the immigration dept who will look at the documentation you have already uploaded, and then contact you and request Police certs and medicals.
A common practice among potential migrants is "front loading" where these last two things are already put in place before a case officer is allocated by immigration. It does speed things up, but the catch is meds and PCC's as they are known are only valid for one year. so if you are not allocated a case officer in that time, you have to get them done again.
ACT and Victoria applicants were receiving case officers within a few weeks and we felt that front loading was the way we wanted to go.

So I sent off our police clearance applications, unfortunately I forgot to get Verlie to sign hers, and so we had to post a page off again, setting us back a couple of weeks. Mine came back this week, and I'm pleased and slightly relieved to say I have the all clear, no criminal record, cautions or warrants outstanding. New years Eve we went for our Medicals, very basic, Blood test, urine test, height/weight (gulp!) Chest X ray. They didn't even ask any family history. The doctor very kindly told me how fat I was, but that my BMI is within immigration guidelines as I am otherwise healthy. (not even high blood pressure) just before he took my blood pressure I was thinking about David Brent in the last episode of series one of The Office, pretending he didn't want the job at head office, when he'd actually failed the medical because of high blood pressure, which made me laugh and probably relaxed me a bit!
We told right there in the doctors office there would be no issues with our medicals, another huge hurdle overcome.......

So here we are now, with 95% of the required documentation uploaded, and once Verlie's Police Clearance comes we'll be done, and just waiting for someone at Immigration to rubber stamp our application, at the current rate I'm expecting it to be a couple of months.
You'll be probably be wondering how I know it'll only be a couple of months. We've been members of this internet forum "poms in Oz" for a year or two, and I have to say in all honesty, we could not have done it without the knowledge and help/advice we've got from other people like us, who've nudged us in the right direction and offered at times crucial nuggets of info that we would have been unaware of. Everyone on the site shares their "timeline" that is to say the date order of Skills assesments, State Sponsorship applications and visa lodgement dates, also case officers assigned and finally visa grant date. Some very clever people on the forum collate all this information and from this, you can get a rough idea, how long each step is going to take, they've been awesome, and allowed us to go through this roller coaster ride, without the expensive (£6000+) safety net of a migration agent. I go out of my way to try and help other people on there now, who are just starting out. A stressed out wife was getting upset the other night because her husband is 6ft and 18 stone and she was worried he'd fail the medical........HA! I hoped I'd put her mind at rest anyway!

So what are our plans post visa application? I didn't want to jinx anything, and I've only just recently allowed myself to daydream about what we might do once our permenant residency is granted. First thing strangely is that we will have to leave the country. Our case officer will email us, when our visa is ready to be granted, and we will have to leave Australia it only has to be for one day if we want, but the type of visa we have applied for means that it cannot be granted whilst we are in Australia. The moment we pass back into Australia is when we officially become Permenant Australian Residents!!!
We are just now discussing where we might go.....watch this space, a few weeks in Vietnam and Thailand seems favourite though.
Work-wise I'll be honest in-spite of my earlier ravings about working at the hostel, it's getting to me a bit. As always with me, it's the small things that get to me. I'll give you some examples.

1. picking the paint off the walls....Someone and for their sake I'd best not find out who it is, sits on the boys toilet and picks the paint off of the walls. The upstairs has already been re-painted because of it and now it's starting downstairs as well. The most annoying thing is without CCTV in there, I'll never know who it is, without sitting outside the toilet hour after hour, checking it whenever someone comes out.......

2. We have free tea and coffee here for all guests, unlimited, however.........There was a guest here, who I'm astonished to even type the words........he used to make a cup of tea, in a saucepan with EIGHT teabags......EIGHT TEABAGS, for ONE cup of tea.......However yesterday he didn't wash up his saucepan, and I fined him $10, as a great man once said, needless to say, I had the last laugh.....Jurassic Park!

3. Being disturbed when we're not working. Reception hours are 8am to 8pm, these are our hours of work. Unfortunately we also live here, and people tend to think that even at 9 or 10 in the evening, its ok to ask me for change, or for cigarettes, when we are trying to chill out. We resorted to hiding in our room, but this didn't stop people knocking on our door, even when we are IN BED to ask us for things, stupid things, non-urgent things........We now have a sign on our door that says....." Reasons you may knock on this door.....1. The Building is on fire.........."

As I typed that last paragraph, I'm sitting behind the shutters in Reception in front of a bright Orange sign that says "RECEPTION IS CLOSED" someone, who actually had to peer around the sign to see me, asked me for change for the internet kiosk..........

4. Tripadvisor.com
I've worked hard since we've been here building up our reputation online. I recently sent a facebook message to all the Ozi Inn facebook friends, with the link to review us. We received about 16 reviews in about 10 days. A week or so later, I received an email from Tripadvisor letting me know that they were onto my little scam of publsihing reviews myself, and that if I didn't stop, They would lower us in the rankings (we were at the time the number 1 hostel in Perth) and place a bright red banner over our trip advisor page, letting prospective guests know that we falsified reviews. After much investigation, it turns out they were removed because they were "too good" REALLY? I've sent everyone who reviewed us the link to contact tripadvisor to re-instate their reviews, as yet, nothing doing. Although, they did allow a review to stand that was entirely false and slanderous, which the reviewer had told me she would leave If i didn't refund her some money when she checked out. She literally said those words to me "If you don't refund me some money, I'll leave you a bad review on tripadvisor" and she did, and I complained, but it was allowed to be on our page, while all the real reviews were removed. A little more research reveals an impending class action against Tripadvisor from thousands of hotels and restuarants who have misleading and malicious reviews on thier pages............we are currently number 23 in Perth.

5. Being asked stupid questions, at first it was a little bit funny, now it's really annoying......Eg:

Mark, what should I do If I'm driving in my car and I run into a cyclone?

Mark, what time does the train run from Perth to (insert name of any WA backwater town here)

(from some random old bloke who walked in off the street) Excuse me, where can I buy a newspaper

Hi, I've just been kicked out of the Underground Backpackers (3 doors down) have you got any vacancies in here?

6. Finally I went into the shower last night and as well as the usual bits of soap the size of a postage stamp, empty shower gel bottles and disposable razor blade guards, I saw to my utter astonishment, an empty chocolate biscuit wrapper, who the hell goes for a shower and thinks.....Shower gel - Check, Towel - Check, Chocolate Biscuit -CHECK!

Don't get me wrong this is a light hearted rant, We've enjoyed our time here immensley, it's been awesome and we've made some amazing friends and had some real good times, but the times, as another great man once said, they are a changing..............

Who Eats Biscuits in the shower anyway.......?

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