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Published: February 24th 2008
So the dreaded Monday morning arrived and we had to start work. This was a bit of a shock to the system firstly because we hadn’t worked for 2 months and also because it was a call centre….In addition to this, we hadn't even been in the country a week yet.
Wait till I tell you what we do though. Basically the tax in this country is really high - like 30% at least, even for low incomes, so the Government have come up with the scheme where you can salary sacrifice a certain percentage or amount of your pre tax income and put it into an account with the company we are working for. Then you can use those funds to pay for certain things or benefits. But, there is a catch, for some of these benefits you still attract another tax at 46.5%. Now you can imagine that we found it hard to get our head round at first until we realised that most Government Departments let their employees use either 17000 or 30000 dollars that don’t attract this additional tax. Also some specific benefits don’t attract tax - like buying a laptop…confused…yes so were we… We are going to write to the prime minister to advise that we think he should just lower the income tax rates.
Not much else to report for the week I’m afraid as we have been working everyday. By Wednesday we were on the phones and chatting away to customers. The bonus is that everyone is lovely and the customers are lovely too so it helps. Oh and we moved into our apartment on Wednesday night so no more hostel and being kept up till 6am from music blaring and vibrating through our walls….believe it or not that did happen…..I know they were just having fun but 6am do they not realise some people have to work!! I probably sound about 80 years old now……The apartment has everything when they say fully furnished they mean it - cutlery, crockery, tv, stereo, alarm clocks everything and it is brilliant.
On Tuesday evening we met a really lovely lady from another recruitment agency, she is from the UK and emigrated last year so it was great to chat to her.
Steve and I went out for a few drinks on Friday night to a really great bar. One bottle of wine turned into 2 and we were both quite drunk by the end of the night. It was really cool though as we only had to stagger back about 100 metres and we were home.
On Saturday we spent the day exploring the areas surrounding the CBD - West End, which is chabby chic area, and also Fortitude Valley, which is where China Town is. On Sunday we caught the train out to Manly, which is about 40 mins outside of the city. We walked along the pier but it turned out to be more like Blackpool as we got caught in a torrential down pour. Imagine us running for shelter in our flip flops...more like slip slops. It is a really beautiful place though so we plan to go back in a few weeks and spend the day with our packed lunches.
Oh...nearly forgot to mention, we also purchased rollerblades, and of course helmets and all the padding...I am officially terrible at it but Steve is really good so he has to pull me up hills. This seems to be a great way to keep fit together and its a bit of a laugh. We have also bumped into a rollerblading club, they do all sorts of skates out in the city and beyond, so we are going to join them sometime. The apartments also have a sauna and a hot tub, which are on our floor, so after some hard exercise, we can wind down right outside our door.
We now have internet too so hopefully my blog entries will be a little bit more frequent.
We are really loving it so far and the lifestyle is great. Everyone is really nice and friendly and the weather helps. Although we have had some rain most days, you normally get at least half a day of bright blue skies and sunshine and it makes it easier to get out of bed in a morning.
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Fanny x x
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Roller blading!!!!!!1
Haha.....that takes me back to the Moor in Sheffield ste! Can just see you pair arm in arm rolling down the streets. Just dont go knocking anyone onver eh!