99% complete and empty

Our planning efforts for the Big Move are starting to make the Normandy Invasion look like the Annual Poortugaal Boy Scout field day  and after last weekend and Monday we can now safely say that the biggest part is behind us. 

The Saturday Send off  (See-you-later-this-is not-goodbye) party started with Gil picking up the 020 family from Roffa CS and giving them a short tour of the hood he grew up in (Zuidhoek re.pre.sent) before arriving in Poortugaal. Soon enough everyone, including 5 kids, which is sort of a record for our house, was there and we had a big cake-eating fest and snackorama. Fortunately, most people also took something home with them or at least reserved it for future delivery. As with all good parties, we finished late and ate Chinese food, which is about as good as it gets when partying in Poortguaal.

Sunday was all about getting rid off most of the big pieces of furniture to Gil's Sister's twice-removed cousin's cleaning lady's poker buddy's stripper's friend from Oostvoorne (of all places). When her brother showed up with just a flat bed trailer one and a half hour later than agreed, we thought....well, never mind what we thought, but it turned out that the guy had some serious stacking skills and more binders than you'd think possible, so in just under two hours with four cars, three drives and a little help from her friends, neighbors and random Hoogvliet strangers, the lady was set up with our stuff and our house was 75% empty.

Before

After

On Monday we lugged the another 22% downstairs (the other 2% is in the suitcases), which is the stuff we planned to take with us to Oz from the start. The move guy and Gil both agreed that it would amount to about 3m3 or 20 boxes and old hands as they are at estimating the exact number of nearly everything, it turned out that we had 22 boxes, 2 bicycles, 2 paintings, 2 toolboxes and 2 diving kits. Because the power of the number two started to freak Asperger Gil out, we included 1 box full of clothes hangers (about 64, which is 2x2x2x2x2x2). Needless to say there were 2 movers and it took them 2 hours to get it all packed and ready. 

Right now there's nothing left to do than to pay some bills, watch a few movies, write some thank you cards (finding the right words takes a lot more time than you'd think), buy some last minute essentials (because OMG we will soooo die if we do not have these really important things, like international power plug adapters...,) cleaning the house (hahahahah....no), eat the remaining food ( oh yeah!) and wait for Friday to arrive so we can leave Poortugaal once and for all and check in at the Stamet Hotel in Huissen. On Monday we'll migrate the circus to the Kruidenier Rhoon Residence, where Hester (a.k.a.Die-hard-early-riser- supermom-BFF) picks us up to take us and Gil's dad and sister to Schiphol on Tuesday morning where we'll be greeted and amazed by some more family and friends with banners, fireworks, ponies and clowns around 07:30'ish. Expect another update in a week, unless we crash, than it might be a little later. (finding good free WiFi can be such a pain :-)).

You can't put a price on life! Oh wait, you can.

Now that we're nearing the departure date, it starts to make sense to investigate what our cost of living will be as we will be unemployed but in need of lots of things.  Go on any blog and people will tell you that Australia is ridiculously expensive and for tourists that's probably true, but the same can be said about Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, New York and so on. We have to agree, there's some pretty interesting differences between what 100 EUR will get you here and what the same 100 EUR (135 AUD) will get you there. An Australian Dollar is about 0.65 Euro cents, but let's say it's 2/3's, to keep it simple. We started with supermarkets and other life essentials. Furniture and housing stuff will follow later. Gil promised to not make PowerPoints and Excel sheets for as long as he is unemployed, so we'll just categorize into four categories: (1) cheaper, (2) more expensive, (3) about the same and (4) holy-hell-are you for-real-more expensive.

As stated before, our savings will comfortably last us about 15-18 months of living in splendor as we do now. If Gil decides not to buy the Bentley, take flying and rock climbing lessons, learn how to ride a Ducati Monster and go whale diving in the first month, that might just go up to 24 months. Apparently sometimes you have to make sacrifices and be boring... All in all, we're pretty confident that we'll be alright, budgeting our way to new found riches and we'll keep you posted on our adventurous expeditions into the realms of:

1) Cheaper

• Haircuts are more expensive for Yuum in general, but she rarely goes and they're about 30% cheaper for Gil. The average prices go from 26$ all the way up to 70$ but that might include all sorts of touching in inappropriate places, so 26$ it is every four weeks (yeah, looking this good has its price).
• Taxes are much less than in the Netherlands. Goods tax (BTW) is a 10% flat rate and income tax is 10% to 75k, 20% for 75-150k and after 150k, well, who cares...
• Carrots are cheaper by about 30% and we eat lots of those, same as tomatoes.
• Any frozen vegetable (except for mushrooms) are about 20-40% cheaper, so helloooo mr. Freezer!
• Fuel for our to be car is 40% cheaper at 1,50$/ltr, so that's why everyone has a 4.0 liter engine.
• Apple TV is 25% cheaper (sorry Just, the laptops are still crazy expensive, but also very shiny).
• Health care is free (well, most of it) and it doesn't get any cheaper than that.
• Pizza delivery is 20% cheaper than over here, so we'll just have to sample every single one of them to see which one is good...

2) More expensive

• Housing is about 40% more expensive than in the Netherlands, which is what happens when you don't have "hypotheerente aftrek". Remember those low taxes? This is how they can do that.
• Visiting the cinema on any other day then Tuesday is 18$ vs 13$ here.
• Diet Coke tastes yuck and is about 30% more pricey than in Holland, but Gil might as well stop drinking it all together and then it doesn't matter if it's 3,30 or 300% more expensive, right?
• Any pre-cut and pre-packed food is about 100% more expensive, but that makes sense as it is the same in the Netherlands and everywhere else we've been. We'll just bring our fancy knives and dice and julienne the crap out of everything ourselves as long as we have the time.
• Toothpaste of any brand is about 20% more expensive, but the measured content and brands are so different that we'll just have to shop around anyway. For now Gil bought 6 packs of Elmex that should last him a while to span that testing phase.

3) About the same (and therefore boring so summarized)
Milk, bread, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, monthly phone plans, internet, home appliances, kung fu training, toilet paper and computers. Incredible but true, Australians are still waiting for fair-use policy on their internet connections, so they actually have monthly 10, 50 or 100Gb or more data  plans. Wow, how "welcome to the dark ages of the internet".

4) Holy-hell-are-you-for real?!

• Mushrooms are 300% as expensive as in the Netherlands, not because they're imported, probably just because Ozzies hate mushrooms and you can't blame 'em right? right?! Then again, we're talking dollars, not 100's of 'em and haters will hate.
• Barbeques are about 100% more expensive. For everyone who does not understand that, think back to middle school and the law of demand and supply. High demand means high price and where moms in Holland show of their jewelry, designer clothing and other luxury items, Yuum will show of her Premium Beefmaster 6 Burner BBQ and/or BeefEater Signature 3000e. How's that for seamless integration, huh?!
• Eggs are 60% more expensive and that's when you buy them in 30's at a time. Now, Gil loves eggs, but 30 a week is a bit much even for his taste. Hopefully the chickens have a 8 bedroom villa with a private garden, a spa and fitness facilities where they can relax, kick back and every once in a while lay an egg, but only if they feel like it, no pressure. Yeah, not very likely.
• Cheese of any sort is 40-70%  more expensive and the variety is approximately 55 of what you can get in any corner shop in the Netherlands, so yeah, Gil's screwed.
• 'Real' Yogurt is about  300% more expensive and the variety is just silly restricted. Unless you want sugared or flavored yogurt, then you can have 1,000,000 different types. They have a 'Greek style' that is about as Greek as Macedonia, but if this is the worst they can do, Gil says: Bring.It.

The Sikkel Retirement Home

A lot has happened since the last update, nearly all of it according to plan fortunately. Check out the fully updated timeline for upcoming events if you'd like to know more. Now that we are retired (or unemployed, take your pick) and can do our shopping anytime we want, we finally can experience standing in line at the Kruidvat for 15 minutes and not have a care in the world. We are amazed daily to see what other people do while we used to work. Now we just take it slow, sleep longer (Yuum mostly), game (Gil mostly), cook weird new recipes (some good, some...interesting) and find out stuff from all sorts of documentaries that we watch. We'll keep out the boring stuff and to keep it somewhat structured, we'll run you through it by category and fill in most of the details as we go along.

Work
Leaving was about as tough as we expected, especially as everyone had made such a huge effort to make us feel appreciated. At the risk of sounding lame, we've always felt appreciated, but it's nice when people take a lot of time to arrange something special. Yuum got a very nice diner, a memorable picture of her colleagues and a nice financial injection. Gil's colleagues took it one step beyond and delivered a full-on interactive power point presentation with music and a quiz (incl. Chuck Norris), a beautiful speech by Tiago, guest appearances of colleagues on leave, a digereedoo performance (I kid you not), diet coke and rice crackers, a scrap book and a season ticket to the Sydney Opera House that we will put to good use. To all of you: Best.Colleagues.Ever.

Kung Fu
Well, as long as he doesn't breathe, it wasn't all that painful (cracked ribs do heal themselves and bruises are the lightest form of internal bleeding)....It wasn't as bad physically as Gil had thought, but man oh man. leaving those people sure put a few nasty bruises on the heart. Monday was great with a nice training and a not so nice circle fight of 9 vs 1 (Gil) but it all ended with a very nice cake those guys had ordered in his honor and pictures with the team. Tuesday was equally tough and fun, but fortunately Sifu Kruit punched Gil in the face pretty good as a prep for the circle of 12 vs 1 (Gil). Thursday was most impressive with knife training, people bringing gifts, last training with my little big sis and Sifu van Die showing his respect to Gil for his 2 years of dedication (wow). As the Thursday did not include a circle fight (really, mercy is a good thing), the Friday team decided to treat Gil to two rounds of a 29 vs 1 (Gil) circle and yes, that's a lot of punches, but all things considered (including 3 black belts and 7 brown belts) he gave as good as he got and was still standing after what felt like 20 minutes, but was probably no longer than 30 seconds. Nothing says we'll miss you like a good fight and this was a great experience. Gil misses it already. (see Kung Fu section for some pictures)

House and Inventory
The paperwork is done and ready to be signed at the notary on the 31st, we're contacting real estate agents in Canberra as you read and every day our house becomes a little emptier. All the stuff we put in the online store is spoken for and the new owners will also keep some of our stuff. Our plants are gone to Yuum's mom and Gil's sister. Garden furniture and gardening stuff is mostly gone, power tools and assorted items are mostly gone as well. A lot of clothing and even some cupboards have gone. We hope to give more stuff away on the 25th and clear out a lot on the 26th to a friend of Gil's sister who can use a little help in the interior supply section of life. On Monday the 27th at 0830 the movers will move in (move in, get it....) and take most of our stuff. What's left after the dust settles will either be airfreight, carry on board, a cat or make its way to the Albrandswaard dump.

Cats
This is the part of the plan that went slightly different than expected. We got the permit without a hitch and the quarantine team was friendly enough to charge us in advance for the stay to then tell us that they would have a spot available by.....the 3rd March 2014 [insert scratchy record sound here]. Okaaaaaay, after a slight panic attack we were fortunate to arrange that Yuum's parents will care for our furry weapons of mass destruction in the additional month including the final stages of the veterinary process and airport drop off. You'd think that them being cats, with all their superiority, they would have figured out how to get to Schiphol and find Australia by themselves, but no.... The upside of it all is that they will live like royalty for another month, see a new environment, get to fight daily with their cat cousins and allow us the time to set up their kingdom in Canberra as good servants are supposed to do.

Well, back to another day of retirement for us, we'll just have to suck it up...