DjMagra’s stuff ‘n’ stuff

I always thought that moving countries would be a breeze, and especially moving from your second on to third, as you should have far less ‘baggage’ (literal and otherwise) in doing so. I can tell you know, even if you have a rather simple, carefree life, moving countries is far more difficult than you imagine! I would suggest to everyone planning on doing it that they start planning well in advance, making a list and starting to de-clutter long before they need to. I’m glad that I did, as it’s left me with less than a week to go feeling pretty happy that I’m on top of everything. I’ve monitored my mail coming into the apartment for the last 6 weeks or so, and ensured that I canceled or re-directed anything important that was coming through. I’ve been onto the bank / tv licence / phone / broadband / council etc settling up all my bills (given how slow some of these companies move, starting well in advance is vital if you want to get things done).

I had a heap of things that I shipped over from Ireland that are just not feasible to move to Australia, and whilst ebay has been a great help in offloading some stuff, it was nowhere near as good as I had been expecting, leaving me having to find other ways of selling / offloading things. I hate throwing out stuff that people could get good use out of, so, rather than doing that I’ve been working quite hard to find homes for things.

Despite my plans to literally bring my camera bag and some clean clothes for a few days, packing up a suitcase that already weighs 5kg and keeping it under the 20kg limit is a little more difficult than I had thought. I’ve already emptied and re-packed twice, and I think I’m still overweight. Alan’s going to bring a scales down this weekend to verify that.

And as for breaking a lease on an apartment, all I can say on this is, at any costs, stay well away from dealing with Foxtons if you are moving to London at any stage. I have every intention of opening up and explaining the full horrors of my experiences with Foxtons since I came here, but, I think I will leave that until I have moved along and don’t need to have any further dealings with them.