Matts blog

I’ve spent the day rewriting my CV, I had updated it during the last couple of weeks in Beijing and it seems my english had fallen to an all time low and it contained fantasticly big mistakes. I guess spending so much time speaking broken english had effected my more than I’d thought. The good news is that I must be getting better again

From a Cyclades press release on the website it seems Avocent have acquired them for $90m. I’d heard a rumour that something like this was to happen, but wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon. I wonder what the plan is now? Will Avocent integrate Cyclades technology in to their current platform?? Will Avocent take the customers and drop the technology? What will John and Daniel do? So many questions…. Maybe I should have stuck around a little longer to find the answers.

So after a lot of running around collecting letters from our family and friends and chest xrays to proove I’m TB free after living in China for 11 months, we’ve finally submitted my application for a work visa as a partner of Lizzie to the New Zealand Immigration Service in Sydney. The NZIS website lists the turn around on Work visa’s to be around 4 weeks, but I guess a partnership visa may take a little longer, theres a whole load of paperwork to read through!!

I’m looking forward to finally being able to arrive in New Zealand and being entitled to get a professional job and settle down for a bit of stability at last.

So the new year is upon us, I watched the new year arrive downtown in Melbourne, the city put on a very good show of fireworks, but after a scorching day that reached 43C we headed home and to bed around 1.30AM and for the first time ever woke up without a hangover on new years day!!!

That day we started stripping wallpaper in one of the children’s rooms, it took us the best part of 2 days to get the paper off, and for me to do a bit of plastering to make good the bad state of the wall in places, but yesterday we finally finished the second coat of paint and ripped up the carpet, and it looks really good, I’ll stick some pictures on the website sometime soon.

I’ve also spent a bit of time investigating visas and immigration to NZ, there’s been some changes to the WHS (Working Holiday Scheme) and you can now apply from anywhere via the internet, have either 12 month or 23 month length and there seems to be no mention of the number of times you can obtain the visa, so I’ve reapplied, unfortunately, after 11 months in China I have to take a full medical and chest xray for TB, so I have booked myself in for next Tuesday, and will be $450 AUD worse off. Hopefully this will work for all my visa applications though.

I’ve also submitted a EOI (Expression Of Interest) to the NZIS, which was a whole load of online forms, and my application is now in a pool waiting for the next time the pool is accessed, 1st Feb. I have 135 points, which seems very positive - my experience in Thus and Cyclades mean I have 6 years in telecoms and IT now - over 140 points and you are automatically drawn out of the pool and invited to apply for residency, so fingers crossed