Saturday 19 December 2009

RIP Baa

Today, we have had the call that we all dread when we move so far from home...
Today our family lost our matriarch-our rock-our family's glue.
May her spirit give us all the strength to get through this difficult time, and may our prayers lay her soul to rest in peace.

We will never forget the stories and jokes we shared with our beloved gran.

You will always be in our hearts and our thoughts.

Love you forever baa

From Sham, Shak and Kunj

xxx

Thursday 3 December 2009

November 2009 - What a busy month!

So Heena left (after helping to pack up the kitchen!), and then, our busiest month here began:

31/10 We moved! Leaving the northern beaches of Sydney to enjoy the Inner West! Blamain is lovely with lots of bars, restaurants and boutiquey shops. The journey to work is now less than 30 mins. Here are a few pics from move day and of our new home!








2/11 Although we had signed a 12 month lease for our new house, we technically only had just over a month left on our visa. In fact, we still had a return flight booked for November 30th! So on November 2nd, my company lodged the application for our 4 year visa. The lawyers quoted us an approximate 4 week turn around...

3/11 Melbourne cup day in Oz is I suppose the equivalent of the Grand National... but its actually crazy. Getting on the bus at 7.30am, I was greeted by girls in full on racing gear - facinators, little frocks, the works... all very strange considering the races were in Melbourne - and we were in Sydney!! It was a REALLY REALLY hot day too so it was not going to be fun for these girls! Anyway, I won one of the sweepstakes at work so ended up $60 up! The oter thing that we won't forget about that day is that the temp reached 40 degrees! it was tooooo hot to do anything, so we took shelter in a nice cool cinema and watched the MJ film.

5/11 VISA GRANTED! This means we can now stay in Australia for the next 4 years (as long as I still work where I am now, we apply for residency or we find another employer to take over my visa)... the details don't matter too much - WE ARE STAYING!!

14/11 A few reasons to celebrate. With the new house, visa and my forth coming birthday all within a few weeks, we cobbled together a bit of a bbq/ curry afternoon with everyone that was around.






19/11 My first summer birthday. Sham had told me we were going for dinner - just the two of us, and it was a lovely surprise to arrive at the restaurant and have lots of the gang there!




21/11 Summer in full swing! The gang spent Saturday afternoon in Centennial park - public bbq, beer and football/ cricket in the park. Perfect!





23/11 - 27/11 3 interviews and 2 job offers for Sham! He started his new job on the 27th - for the first time in the year we have been here, we both have permanent jobs!

Friday 6 November 2009

Message home from Sham!

Hi all
I am still working on getting some pics together from Heenas trip, but in the meantime, here is a copy of an email Sham sent to family back home... kinda rounds up the last few weeks for now... more to follow in the next few days!

Hope you are all well... Apologise for not being in touch for a while
but thought I would let you all know what has been happening with us.
You can look at http://shahsinoz.blogspot.com to have a better idea of
what has been happening throughout our time here, but here’s a quick
update...

I stopped working about a month ago as my contract was up... In that
time we had a friend over from the UK so I was being a tour guide.
Kunj was working hard, making sure we had food on the table and a roof
over our head! The lease on our flat in Manly also expired so we
needed to find somewhere new to stay and say goodbye to having a beach
on our doorstep! We decided to move closer to the city for the
convenience of work and also a slightly cheaper cost of living... We
moved to Balmain... email us for address and phone numbers!
We’ll send some pictures of the new place soon. It is a lovely little
house and nice area. People say it is similar to Muswell Hill back in
London. We moved well with the help of a few friends and are now
settled.

We also got some good news this morning that Kunj’s sponsorship visa
has come through which means we are allowed to stay in Sydney until
2013!! We have been trying to get something like this sorted since we
came here (nearly a year ago) and finally it has come through! Talk
about last minute! This is really good news for us as we can properly
start to live. I can go back to work in the next week or so too!! BTW
– this also means that you can come and visit us now as we are here
long term!

On the down side... we did have a return ticket booked to come back
home in Dec, but this is now unlikely. We will probably come home
sometime next year for a proper holiday and see all of you guys!

I think that’s all folks! Keep an eye on our blog for more regular updates.

Until next time...

Take Care and we’ll catch up soon.

Love Sham and Kunj x

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