Furniture Fiesta

We consider ourselves to be reasonable and low expectation people. That's why our plans work out so well most of the time, we're flexible and don't mind if we get there by a different route. As long as we get there, eventually. We've had the wind in our back ever since we set foot on the red earth Down under, but the wind must have been busy the day we decided to buy furniture.

About five weeks ago, still thinking that all was well with the world and feeling truly blessed, we decided to furnish our house and that's when you go to Fyshwick town, because that's where you go to buy stuff. So to Fyshwick we went (again), looked at about 3,754 pieces of furniture in 97 stores over 5 days and decided (Yuum needed comparative data and an analysis, I was done after 15 minutes) on Stylo Homes Furniture. I saw the dining table and a very nice cabinet and was sold on it and that's when we should have quit, but we also bought a bedroom set. I say "we", but now that it went wrong in a rather spectacular way, you will understand that it's my fault...(even though I was not part of the analysis team and had no decision power)

The furniture was said to arrive in two weeks...wait three weeks, uhm, four weeks...., no,no, I am sure I said five weeks! And then it was 2 days late anyway. No worries, mate, you know what, I'll just call you myself fifteen times to hear what the new date and time will be and then you can change it, again. By then we realized we were dealing with a Middle-Eastern businessman and our experience is that you should go diving in the Middle-East, but business deals are not that clearly outlined nor as permanent as a European might think. They smile and smile and smile and nothing gets done. Well, at least he did not say, you are my special friend....

Now, if it had stopped there, that would be sort of okay, like I mentioned, we're flexible. But noooooo. The table base had holes in the wrong place, so no way it would ever fit, the bed headboard and planking looked like it had been savaged by a pack of hungry, wild dingoes, the chairs were not the type we ordered oh and did I mention they were nearly four WEEKS late?!?!?! I'll spare you the customer service follow up and we did get a new base and headboard the next day, but no apology, no explanation.  I'd advise you against ever buying anything there, but since most of you live 16,000 kms away, I guess you are safe. They do have a web shop though...Seriously, go there open the Terms and Conditions and read that notice for yourself: WEBSITE UNDER MAINTINENCE. Dont make any purchase (those are not MY typos)

I consider myself to be reasonably handy, but the construction drawing really put my IKEA skills to the test. The bed set was a total of 9 boxes and the construction instructions were a joke. Enter Yumi the brilliant furniture instructor. As with many other things, I just screwed everything on (or up) and Yuum provided 'advice' on how to do that, good times. In the end I was left with two bags full of excess screws, plugs and some additional planking that we have no idea of where to put. All is well that ends well, I guess, but I think we shouted out, NEVER AGAIN!! about 25 times in the process. Can I see hands for anyone who thinks this was not a good way to spend Good Friday?  If you're thinking, what else could go wrong....well, after 1 night of sleeping in the bed I can tell you, it squeaks like a stuck pig every time you take a deep breath, but as long as you do not move a muscle, you're just fine. Aaaaargh.

Fortunately we also ordered some furniture from a different store (coffee table, console, tv cabinet and side table) and those were all delivered as promised and even though Yuum thought the coffee table to be damaged (If you lean in real close with a microscope, you might just see a scratch riiiiiight there.....oh wait it's a cat hair...no, my bad! I am just really happy that I have drawers to put all that laying-around-getting-hairy-and-dusty-stuff in. In case you wondered, our coffeetable-box and tv-cabinetbox are now living out their days in the box cemetery which was once our two car garage. There's so many boxes in it, we can hardly fit in one car and get out. I've never owned so many boxes in my life and I have no idea what to do with them other than making a really big pile and setting them on fire, which might just upset the neighbors.

This weekend is Easter and not only will the royal couple and son be visiting (only thing on tv), much more importantly, 99.9% all shops were closed on Good Friday. No kidding. Maybe K-Mart was open, I know the IGA supermarket was open (went there for a snack run) but it's really weird to see so little activity going on. Fortunately, the next three days the whole of Australia (aside from people working in stores) are off and set to holiday, buy cars and spend big money on furniture (it's the same everywhere you go). We will take the opportunity to buy some plants (which are really cheap compared to Intratuin) and pots (more expensive than the plants for some reason) and make our house a bit more of a home. Yuum expects me to hide Easter eggs throughout the house and garden, but it's still 23 degrees here, so not such a good idea, I'll hide them in the fridge.

More adventures next time, keep to the left and see you soon, here's some pics to share in our experience

 

Another week in the ACT

We've been in Canberra for a little over two months now and wow, does time fly!

The house is still standing and the cats are behaving as good as can be expected. They cannot really understand that they left the cold and rain, came here in comfortable warmth and now the cold and rain seem to have followed them here. Our autumn is still warmer than the Holland spring, but try and explain that to a cat. The furniture we ordered (bedroom, dining table and cabinet) that was supposed to arrive two weeks ago will now be delivered Monday or Tuesday, so we will no longer sleep on a matress on the floor and have some storage space. Our ocean shipment is also supposed to arrive next week, but with customs, you never really know. The grass keeps growing, despite Gil's efforts to nuke the garden with industrial strength weedkiller. Not one to give up, he is now in the market for depleted uranium, which has the added side effect that everything will glow in the dark!
We thought to have some really cool furniture made, but that required 2,000 dollars more than what we thought was a generous budget. Oh well, next time then, off to Fyshwick (Bataviastad but then really, really big) once again today for a coffee table, tv cabinet and book case. We'll also be shopping for lamps (found exact copies of what we had in Holland) because our football stadium strength lights'that come with the house are not exactly 'çosy' and require wearing your shades inside.

Yuum now has a job offer from Aspen and I was so cheerful that she was about to make a decision, but then another party (National Disability Service) came back faster than expected and ofcourse they want to talk to her.....aaaaaaaaand we're back to indecision 1-on-1. God forbid that another company approaches her, we'll have to get outside help to actually make the decision. I suggested flipping a coin, a turtle race, making a wheel of fortune, going with your gut and drawing straws, but Yuum insists on dragging it out and making it as complicated as possible for fear of making the wrong decision (it's a job for life, you see....). Thank goodness she is not in charge of garden maintenance, we'd have weeds 1 meter high by now. Oh well, if everyone would be like me...Hey, wait up, that is not such a bad idea now is it?!

My job is turning out to be pretty great. Aside from what must have been one of the most akward moments in my life where my 100 pound lady-boss really went to town on one her reports, basically tearing him apart in under 60 seconds. I am sure that if that ever happened to me, I'd either kung-fu the crap out of her right there and leave to never come back.....or start crying. There's all sorts change things going on and people are ready to make a change, but let's wait and see what they say when they hear the plans. Also, what I found to be true about public servants in NL is true for public servants in OZ, they make pretty long days, me included. Might be the level I am at, but emails at 2200or 0500 are fairly common and people really put in the time. They do of course take 1 hour lunches, but who can blame them when you're surrounded by 100 restaurants?! And then there's the lady colleague who confided in me after two days that she had no problem with foreign people, but those Asians(!), not speaking the language and being smelly, well... OMG, really?! Probably never left the ACT in yer life didya, hmm? But wait, let me introduce you to my wife.... Being a communications and change manager is quite the challenge, especially within government where everyone covers their own behinds first, feels they need to have their say and deadlines only apply to the last guy in line (that would be me....) However, reporting to the second in command in the building has its advantages and I am perfecting the age old skill of name-dropping like a boss! To Jelle, Sjoerd and Mieke (ex-Conclusion Communications guys) if you're reading this, thanks for the ProRail experience, so helpful right now!

The bus experience is....educational. People are very well-behaved and mind each other, quite a difference from my limited RTD experiences. (there were good reasons why I hate public transport!)In the morning the bus is so quiet you can actually hear people breathe, kind of spooky. Unless we have the lady that plays classical music on speaker volume 90, than its sort of like being at the movies...music....breathing...shuffling.....music. I have so far identified four types of drivers. The best one is The Entertainer, who plays music, makes comments over the intercom, greets everyone with cheer and is just a really happy person (gets a lot of hate in the morning). Then there's the Brake Tester, who likes to be safe at close distances and thinks that motion sickness only happens to pussies anyway. Hold on when you're with the Failed F1 Driver, who dreamt of a racing career and ended up on a bus, but fails to see the difference (does get you home real fast though). And fourth and final, the Hollywood Waitress, who thought this was only going to be temporary, but has been driving the bus since they invented sliced bread and is sort of indifferent to everything around them. (gets a lot of love in the morning). As long as Yuum does not decide on a job and hogs the car, I am confined to the bus, so you can expect more observations later on.

The change of the season is a remarkable experience as well. To us, we feel like spring should be coming, but being on the other side of the equator makes this autumn and we are on winter time. Good thing is that we're only 8 instead of 10 hours ahead now, so communications with the NL are a bit less challenging timewise. Skype is great for warding off 'heimwee', but it's not a time machine.
It is also somewhat weird experience to go from one of the best English speakers on the block to being 'not quite a native speaker' and because of my years at Rockwell and SkyChannel education, I sound quite American/Canadian, so everyone just assumes I get it. Yuum has the advantage that she's Asian looking, so aside from being smelly, expectations are much lower. There were some challenging momenst last week when I had to make sure wording and grammar were correct because only 1,100 people would read my text, gulp...Good thing my boss is a detail manager who likes to take things into her own hand and has some wicked synonym skills! And then there's Easter holidays, which is like Sinterklaas over here. They've been ramping up to it ever since we got here, with food, holiday deals, really annoying tv commercials, equally annoying kids entertainment and lots and lots of chocolate in all shapes and sizes. Quite the experience, but Yuum and I will be unpacking boxes (hopefully) by then, so we'll take advantage of those days off. We've also got Anzac day, which is sort of a 4/5 May thing, but here's it's a national holiday every year. Living the good life!

Keep to the left, see you soon.
 

My first week as a public servant

With the Monday missing it wasn't technically a whole week, but my contract says 38 hours for a 5 day workweek and I say that I spent at least 40 hours in 4 days, so I am calling it a week!

The job is great, a bit confusing at this point to find out which piece of the puzzle goes where and I have to keep reminding myself that they had 5 months to get where they are now and I don't have to solve it all in 5 days. By next Monday I will get my project manager colleague and I feel that from there on out things will start to roll a bit faster and smoother. In the meanwhile I am figuring out what it means to be a communication and change manager in the public domain. Fortunately people are mostly the same everywhere, when it comes to keeping secrets. Friday morning I ask my boss about who I get to talk to on the plan, she tell's me 4 people. Okay. Few hours later I have a meeting with 4 people who are not the 4 people my boss mentioned and they tell me that, yes they we're sworn to secrecy and informed, but they felt they could trust me to be in the know... Like I said, the same everywhere.

I've met what feels like all 1,100 members of Shared Services (SS does just not sound right does it?)
in 4 days, but it's probably closer to 100. The freaky part is that they all remember my name and I struggle to remember 1 in 4 of theirs. What is really funny is to have them guess where I am from. So far I've had US, South Africa, Denmark (clearly they've never met a Dane), Amsterdam (hahaha, NO!), UK, Germany and....Australia. My American accent throws them off a bit, but when I mention The Netherlands everyone seems have been there, knows someone there and some can even speak a few words in nearly fluent Dutch. I am waiting for them to start using the swearwords as well and then add some new ones. Yes, I am all about continuous improvement and providing service!

Another new thing is the dresscode. Or the lack thereof. Seems like everyone just does as they please, so I wear my suit and tie every day of the week to be on the safe side. Feels a bit like playing dress up, but it's starting to grow on me and it helps with the ad-hoc last minute meeting invites. When you're in a room full of directors (some in trainers and jeans and some in a three-piece suit) you don't want to stick out just yet. I might slack off later on, but for now this works. There's some people who clearly shop at Public-Servants-R-Us (we have it, as long as it's grey and brown), but ladies dress particularly nice, except for the ones in fleece sweaters. The gents could use some help on how long their ties should be (not that short!), length of their pants (not that short!!) and height of their waistband (not that high and certainly not that low). Did I mention one teamleader wears cowboy boots and a skullcover bandana? Good times!

There's more goodness around the office. We have toilets that remind me of roadside reststops. True there's no grafiti, but the stalls are open to the sides and the doors do not reach all the way down, quite the shared experience.... What I do consider smart is that all doors on all floors have the ERT safety instructions on them, gives you something to do when you're there anyway. To balance that out, we also have multiple locations of treats and sweets that you can get through a trust jar system (leave the money and take what you want) Yummm, peanut butter cups! We recycle like crazy, which leads to the annoying part where there's no bins below your desk, but a centralized bin for every 4 sets of cubicles. Sigh. We have cool watertaps that provide boiling water and filtered cool water and about 15 fridges per floor. The office itself has a great viewand enough lighting to be visible from space but they surely did not splash on furniture, which is pretty old and crappy, but maybe I was just spoiled at Rockwell. after 8 years of having a laptop, I now have a desktop computer. So convenient when you move between buildings and locations all the time. I'm giving it the remainder of the month and then start bringing my laptop or tablet because it's allready getting on my nerves. Want email on your phone, no worries, that's just $360 of taxpayer's money....WTF?! Yeah, that whole teleworking thing? They're still waiting for the memo.

My first bus experience on Tuesday was clearly the best of the week and by Friday I remembered why public transport and I just don't mix. The drivers are friendly enough, but if they wanted a career in racing, picking a job as a busdriver would be more fitting if you were planning a terrorist attack instead of providing a transportation service. The buses are on time, except when it rains, then they don't show up or smell like wet person. I do not like wet person smell. I did find out that the folding chairs are the best place to sit and also that people do not know their own dimensions. No, you cannot sit on my lap with your right but cheek, I do not know you that well, get off me!! All in all, I am seriously hoping that Yuum will accept the offer of Aspen, so we can drive to and from work together. The only thing better than getting caught in traffic is getting caught in traffic together and do a how-was-your-day on the way home.

Leaving at 7.30 and returning at 18.30 doesn't leave a lot of room for funstuff and entertainment, but I am sure that once things settle down I'll start kung fu again, seems far away now, but I am really looking forward to that. I started running  at the beginning of March and had a good time of it, but then had to quit last week due to a nasty double shinbone inflamation (hard surface, bad shoes, I know), so now we're waiting for the good shoes to arrive in another few days. Both our new furniture and the seafreight shipment are scheduled to arrive around the 15th of April, so the next post will probably be about home decoration and how happy we are to have our oven dishes and bicycles again.

Keep to the left, see you soon!

First day on the job

My former Rockwell colleagues will wonder why I gave up my cool window spot with a view to the bridge and river for this, but at some point I guess they will have to give me a PC and a phone and pull up the blinds and THEN I will look out over the whole of Canberra from the 9th floor of my city office. I cannot see my house from here, but it does not get a lot higher and better than this. I can see Capital Hill, I can see Lake Burley Griffin, a number of museums and it is an exact 2.38 minutes walk away from Canb City Shopping mall with the best food court ever. (I could have gone faster, but there were old people in my way!) I will ofcourse never get yummy snacks from the 50+ foodstalls, because that would be bad for my diet....

The bus stop is all of 50 meters away from the front of my Eclipse building and going by my first experience this morning, not a terrible option to drive back and forth to work. Contrary to the average Rotterdam bus/tram/metro driver, the Canberra drivers do not have a deathwish for themselves or their passengers and the few times they do need to brake, does not involve the whole of the bus to experience an NCAP rating crashtest. In the meanwhile I somehow managed to get my buscard trapped in the lining of my new suit and spent a good ten minutes to retrieve it through the 'pochette' pocket. Well, at least it kept the other travelers entertained.

As far as work is concerned, there's a lot of unclarity (comes with the job) still, but by Friday I will have had a meeting with the execitive MT and have read the agreement that we are supposed to help implemen . All 95 pages of it, plus the 100+ ppt slides I got 'for my reference' (yeah, thanks). I must say the lady from Price Waterhouse that wrote it knows her stuff and managed to NOT add to the reigning confusion so far. 

I am supposed to leave the office by 17.30 at the latest or wait for the cleaners to let me out. My floor houses all sorts of Finance and Policy & Compliance people, so my Expressive style personality will fit right in, ahem. Aside from the biggest printer (it might just print real live new employees for all I know) I have ever seen, there's lot's of chocolaty snacks with a trust jar of money next to it and a lady who bakes cakes for a hobby in the cubicle next to mine. Good times. The building I am in, also houses the parolee and convict board so I fit right in...sort of. Security is quite tight because of that and forgetting your badge when using the bathroom is not a great plan. I am sure to do that at some point, just wait for it. 

Tomorrow will be lots of reading, the required handshakeround across the department floor and some more settling in. Thanks for all the lovely and funny support messages, now all I have to do is prove you all right. Keep you posted!