Things were progressing well with the visa process and apart from one hiccup during the English exam, the overall process was running smoothly. We had completed the first 3 major steps in the visa process i.e. of getting my education and experience verified by an Australian agency to be as per Australian standards and subsequently filing for an “Expression of Interest” and getting our invite to apply for the visa. The next step was the actual application to be filed with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). This was the final step in the process!!
While we were quite confident of getting the visa, it was supposed to be a long and time consuming step, taking sometimes upwards of 6 months to get the final visa, given the number of people applying for the same. Thus post filing the requisite papers with DIBP, which was not a big deal as all the papers were now already available with the consultant, it was a wait and watch situation now.
So, in the meantime, we had to prepare for our “departure to Aussieland”, in case we got the visa approved (not being over confident, but we both somehow knew we would get the visa approval given the strength of our application). That was a big step… infact the biggest in the whole process. It required lot more discussion on how to manage things when we would actually land in Aussieland. And also the big question which still needed to be answered….
Should we move to Sydney or Melbourne???????
Since we had applied for a national visa, it was upon us to decide which city we wanted to call our new home.
Hmmmmmm…. This was getting serious now!! Our dream was inching closer to becoming a reality…
During this time, while we were in touch with our friends who had already been living in Sydney for little over a year now, we wanted to get some perspective on Melbourne as a city too. After all Melbourne was the “Most liveable city in the world” at that time (sadly, it has been de-throned now!! :-(). We had done some research of our own about both the cities and had a fair amount of idea on the comparative cost of living, job scenario, rentals, transport options etc. of both the cities. It was evident that Sydney was definitely an expensive place to stay in as compared to Melbourne, though Sydney had much more job opportunities. Now, here again my Punjabi CA mind had to intervene and complex costing formulas had already started working in my mind. Cost of living was a big factor for us as we knew there was a big chance that we would need to survive on our savings for initial part of our stay in either of the cities, and thus Sydney would be an expensive affair.
We still wanted a first-hand view on Melbourne from somebody living there… could not take such a big decision based only on information from Google and You Tube videos put up by some self-proclaimed city experts (pretty good animations etc. in videos but after all we were Indians and on top of it me being a CA and also a Punjabi…. Lethal combination I say to simply believe on online information)
At that time we were lucky enough to be introduced to a person who had been staying in Melbourne for last 22 years. He turned out to be a wealth of information for us on Melbourne as a city and every minutest detail we wanted to know about it. We had numerous phone calls with him and got every inch of detail from him. He was a great help at that time. Somehow, knowingly unknowingly, while passing on the information to us on the city, he was unconsciously convincing us to choose Melbourne over Sydney. He actually had a pro-con list of both the cities prepared and I loved his detailed approach which suited my way of working too (As luck would have it, he later turned into a good friend of ours once we landed in Melbourne. I now call him “Googleman!!” ;-) as I don’t need to Google stuff on Melbourne or anything else when he is around!! Lol!!).
So, based on all the information we had gathered till now and after long discussions and deliberation between me and my partner (obviously at our favorite pub near our house because as one learned person had said earlier ( i.e. me J)… such discussions need the company of few chilled beers to get your mind to think out of the ordinary… or to say out of the normal bullshit) we had it narrowed down finally……..
Melbourne it was!!!! The city which we would call our home from 2018 onwards!!
That was one big decision done!!!! Yayyy!!
It made sense to us, given the situation we were expected to be in once we land there (no job in hand and living on savings), i.e. a cheaper city to live in initially (comparatively) so that we could manage our finances and once we settled in, we could move to either of the cities within Australia as required. And also we had our “Googleman” there who made our lives so much easier!!
So it was set in stone now…. Soon we would be part of the “Most liveable city in the world” (at that time)..
Obviously all this was assuming we would get the visa. This time my partner was also in sync with my so called over confidence!! :-)
Time was running fast and 2017 had already come to an end. Three months had already passed since the time we had filed our visa application. I had already developed a habit of checking my email every morning immediately after getting up to see if there was any email from the visa authorities. Now, you know of my love for my phone from my earlier post (Part 4: English Vinglish) and what major issue it had caused me. My partner was never too happy with the intimate relationship I shared with my phone, but in this case she was also ok with this habit of mine. She too was now neck deep in the game and eager to know the result of our application.
And, so it happened one fine morning in mid-February of 2018………
As I was rubbing my eyes after getting up and habitually flicking through my email, I noticed an email from DIBP. The subject read “Immigration grant notification… Sameer Thareja”. My eye opened wide and my breath stopped. I said to myself… “It had to be the email we had been waiting for”. My dear partner was still somewhere between sleep and consciousness, trying to get up. I shouted to her…..
“Babes, I think this is it…. We have the email from them!!!!”
I guess I was too excited (and rightly so) as my scream jerked her out of the remaining bit of sleep she was trying to come out of. (Till today I am told that I am surviving because the reason for shouting was acceptable… else……………………………..). The email was blank except for an attachment in it.
Gosh….. So much for keeping the suspense!!!!
We both eagerly waited for the attachment to download. Once the download was complete, it was time to open the attachment and get to know our destiny (Till today I feel stupid for not realizing that the email subject already said it was a grant notification, but because of our excitement we ignored it!).
The first few lines of the letter were enough for us! It clearly mentioned…
“A decision has been made on this application and Visa has been granted to the applicants………..”
Our happiness knew no bounds at that time. We started to scream with joy and hugged each other.
We had finally made it…. We got the visa….. It was time to fulfill our dream!!!!
I would have loved to open champagne at that time but something in me said… “Let’s not do that at 9 AM in the morning… something’s better be done as per its designated time.. You have to go to office also”. We called our respective mothers to give them the good news. They were obviously happy to hear the news too.
We planned for a celebration in the evening and I started to get on with my morning routine.
That’s when it hit me!! I had one more hurdle to cross…….
“I had to inform my boss at office of my intention to move to Australia permanently.”
What made the situation even more complicated were two things i.e. firstly, I was recently promoted and secondly, I had taken up a new role in my company 2 months back. Though I had very good relations with my current boss, I was still skeptical of how the situation will unfurl.
To make matters worse, we had to plan the actual migration to Melbourne in a manner which was least risky, financially, and also as far as possible, viable to ensure a smooth transition.
Now, we both knew it was asking for too much, as we were moving to a new country altogether, not moving to a different city within India. It will definitely come with its own complications and issues, and somehow in our minds we were ready for it as we had gone through intensive discussion with “Googleman” and he had briefed us of all the possible issues we would face. But, as one wise man had said…
“You don’t come to know of the intensity of the waves till the time you don’t plunge into the ocean!!!!”
PS: I am sure you can guess who this wise man is… ;-)
My boss was on leave for a few days, thus I still had few days to break the news to him. So we put that on the back burner for the next few days.
In the meantime, my partner and I plunged into one more round of intensive discussions on the plan for our actual departure to Aussieland. This time, we had to put the whole thing in black and white.
We named the plan “Mission Aussieland”.
A new word document was opened in the laptop (We are very tech savvy kind of people you see!! Hehehe!!) and mission objectives were defined, as I mentioned above. Now the actual plan was to be documented. The battle bugle had been sounded!!
The plan had to include the details of how both of us will move to Melbourne i.e. the who, when, where, what of the whole situation. The most important of this was the “who” and “when” i.e. who would move to Melbourne first between both of us or do we move there together and when should we plan our move? This was a big decision!!
A lot of deliberation about whether we should move together or one of us should move first, was based on the fact who wanted to sacrifice his or her job here and be the first one to try and find a job in Melbourne or we both quit our jobs and try to find jobs there together. Since I had recently got promoted in my job and my notice period was longer one as compared to her’s, my partner volunteered to quit her job (she was anyways not very happy with her job here!) and agreed to move to Melbourne first and look for a job. In the mean time I would serve my notice after she moves there and then join her later.
It was a big decision she had taken!!
Deciding to live in an alien country all alone for a considerable amount of time (about 3 months roughly) was not going to be easy and she was aware of that. But, it made sense in the current situation. “Googleman” also endorsed our decision.
I give her all the kudos till today for having made this big sacrifice!! (More details on her whole experience in my subsequent posts… look out for it!)
So the first step in the move was decided, we thought! But life isn’t so easy… right!!!
What needed to be done next was to convince our parents of our “intelligent” decision. It was one hell of a job!! We had to go through rounds of discussion with both the mothers to convince them that it was the most appropriate decision. Every phone call initially ended with the comments like..
"You guys have got Australia fever, you guys are not thinking straight!” or “what kind of a husband leave his wife alone in an alien country… Is this how I brought you up?” and so on....
It was an emotional roller-coaster for both of us; trying to get them to see the “logic” in the decision, because as per them we were making a big mistake by doing this. We understood, it’s not an easy situation for any parent to digest.
Finally, after a lot discussions and providing them with live examples of people who have suffered after taking a decision otherwise i.e. both partners moving together, we were able to get a reluctant approval from them. One of the conditions of approval was that my partner would have an unlimited access to India calling, whatever it costs, so that she can call me or either of the moms in case she was in trouble. I obviously agreed to it!
So, a date was set for our first departure to Melbourne based on my partner’s relieving date from her current job and keeping a buffer of few days for her to spend some time with her family back in Delhi. As it was decided, we both would fly to Melbourne initially and I would help her settle down i.e. get her a house, set it up and familiarize with the city a little bit before I return back to India and start my process of getting relieved from my job. In the meantime, she will start looking for a job.
All fingers were crossed!!
Next immediate and important step was to talk to my boss and get through with the discussion of my migration to Aussieland.
Contrary to my thinking, my discussion with my boss went pretty smooth. He was quite supportive of my decision of moving to Australia and in fact promised to try and get me a job within my current company in Australia. It was my lucky day!!!! Till date I have high regards for him for being so understanding and supportive.
So, finally my two weeks leave from work was approved and we booked our tickets for our first entry into Melbourne, Aussieland!!! Yayyyyy!!!!
Both of us could taste and feel the Melbourne air now. But, in parallel there were mixed emotions going through our minds. Though we had made this decision of my partner staying in Melbourne alone, it was a scary decision. Frankly, I was little more scared than my partner. My partner had experience of staying alone in early part of her life, but not outside of India. She still felt that she would be able to manage it there alone, as it was important for both of us at this stage.
Well, what had to be done, had to be done!!!
What follows in the next post is the rollercoaster ride of our first visit to Melbourne, the trials and tribulations of my partner in Melbourne and our post marriage long distance relationship and its twists and turns (never thought I would get my bachelorhood back after marriage, but this was one of the perks of this decision for sure… lol).
So read on guys!!!!!