Status (last updated Feb 2004)

Our skilled independent VISA for Australia was granted in April 2003, so theoretically we can pack our bags and be on our way to Sydney. However, we've decided to postpone our immigration plans to Australia for a couple of years. During the summer of 2002 it became clear that the Australian IT job market (just like everywhere else) hit an all time low. Articles started to appear in newspapers and on websites warning about this, followed by DIMA's decision to cancel fast tracking of IT people. The latter meant our visa application was going to take much longer than we originally expected. That's why we've decided to stay in the UK for a few more years and wait for the VISA to come through. Ultimately, for the visa to be permanent, you have to have lived in Australia for 2 years following the 5 years after the visa was granted. It's not to say that we will definitely move to Australia but if we do we need to do so before mid 2006.

• July 2003: Made a tortuous trip to Perth to active our VISA. Fly out on Saturday, arrive on Sunday, stamp in my passport, back in the plane on Monday and back home on Tuesday. I got really sick on the way back (threw up every hour during the 5 hours trip to Singapore) and started to hyperventilate; had to be wheel chaired to a doctor in Singapore airport to get something to calm my stomach down. The 12 hours from Singapore to Manchester were the worst in my life - ever! Birgit flew out a few days earlier and stayed in Singapore before joining me on the way to Perth. She got sick the day after we got home and had to stay in bed for a couple of days. A lot of money, a lot of sickness and a lot of hassle for.... a stamp in our passports. I have only one word for it: madness!
  
• 11 Apr 2003: YES!! Our VISA has been approved. Last thing to do is go down under to activate it.
  
• 15 Feb 2003: Believe it or not, after 8 months of complete silence we have *finally* received DIMA's request for medicals and police checks.
  
• 31 May 2002: We received the acknowledgement and file reference number from DIMA.
  
• 5 April 2002: They must have started working on it; Peter's credit card has been debited. We've registered ourselves on the Australian Timeline website as well.
• 18 March 2002: Posted the visa application to DIMA this morning; half a kilo of paperwork. The next and final step is to wait for DIMA to tell us to do a medical test and to get police statements from both Manchester (UK) and Rotterdam (The Netherlands).
  We don't really know how long the visa application processing will take. We've heard the average processing time for non-IT people is 20 months because they are on a waiting list, IT people like ourselves are allegedly fast tracked in 4-6 months. Count down started,... tick,...tick,... tick...
• 4 March 2002: Received the result of Peter's skills assessment; his qualifications have been assessed to be suitable for migration under 2231-15 of the ASCO code. Yes!!
  We now have all the official paperwork to apply for the actual visa, which we hope to submit in the next few weeks.
• 27 Feb 2002: Received our IELTS score; we both had an overall band of 7.5 on a scale from 1-9. This is more than enough for the visa and even gives us some bonus points ;-)
• 16 Feb 2002: English test (IELTS) day for both of us. This is going to be such an exciting day in which our English speaking, listening, reading and writing skills will be tested.
• Dec 2001: Submitted paperwork to the Australian Computing Society for Peter's skills assessment. Processing time is about 6 - 8 weeks.
• Oct 2001: Came back from holiday and made the decision to move to Sydney. Started to set things in motion by gathering official documents for the skills assessment and making certified copies of them.
• Sept 2001: Had a fantastic holiday in Oz! It was a bit short (two and a half weeks) but the main purpose was to check the place (read: Sydney) out.
• Jan 2001: First thoughts on moving to Oz. Decided to plan a holiday to go and see Sydney and Melbourne for ourselves.

Birgit and I are both Dutch and have been living in the UK (Manchester) since February 1998. Although the UK is not a bad country to live in at all, we feel it's time to move on. The US and most European countries were on the list of "countries-to-live-in-next", but we've stricken them all off on the grounds of climate (Scandinavian countries), work ethos (USA - 10 holidays per year for crying out loud), attitude (tomorrow-mentality in Mediterranean countries) etc.

We had never given Australia any serious thought, simply because it's on the other side of the world. Only after friends of ours moved to Oz and some other friends came back from a holiday - all of them with exciting and colourful stories - we started to think about it. So, we decided to go on a holiday and see for ourselves. We visited our friends in Sydney and stayed there for about a week, then we rented a car and drove to Melbourne via Canberra and the south east coast. These bigger Australian cities had a real Western European atmosphere and at times it felt we weren't on holiday at all because of the familiar surroundings. It's probably a good sign because we've come to the conclusion that idyllic holiday destinations which are so different from what we're used to at home, are unlikely to be places we will ever adjust to when living there. Australia is not going to be utopia of course, but we think (and hope) it has the right balance in things like climate, work ethos and life style.

When will you move to Oz?

See status above.

What about jobs?

Yup, we'll be needing jobs down under. At some convenient point in the future we'll put our cv's on the web. For the time being you'll have to do with the following summary. If you're that keen to offer us that once in a life time golden opportunity, feel free to drop us a line.

About Birgit (mail)

• Born May 1966 in Delft, The Netherlands, Dutch nationality.
• Master's degree (1991) in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands - applied Mathematics group.
• Currently working as a senior Java software engineer for Westhawk Ltd., a software house specialising in customised Java solutions. Started to work for Westhawk in Jan 1997.
• Skills keywords: 7 years Java; Swing, Servlets. Oracle database developer; experience in SQL, XSQL, XML, XSL.
• Projects include Java UI for chemical plant simulator, SNMP stack in Java, Oracle development for a number of projects like Manchester Tourism, Snap Stars websites and the company WestPoint Ltd. Software development (C, XMotif) on proposal handling for the ESA ISO satellite.

About Peter (mail)

• Born July 1970 in Heerlen, The Netherlands, Dutch nationality.
• Master's degree (1995) in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands - operating systems and distributed systems group.
• Currently working as a software architecture manager for SonyEricsson developing Symbian OS smart phones (GSM & 3G mobile phones with built-in PDA and multi-media functionality). Started to work for SonyEricsson (Ericsson at the time) in Oct. 1998.
  
• Skills keywords: 9 years practical C/C++ experience on Windows 9X/NT/2000, various flavours of Unix and Symbian OS.
• Active open source developer. Projects include DOS & Win95 file system driver for Linux' ext2 file system, virtual desktop manager for Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, porting Mame & Doom & Game boy emulator & Chess software (Winboard, Crafty and GnuChess) to Symbian OS and porting Linux to the Psion Series 7 and Agilent's ARM 920 based system on a chip solution. For more details see peter's place.

Back to Peter's Home Page.