Gazumped in Magical Realism

We arrived in Australia in late March, still a little shellshocked but overall life has been really good. We were incredibly fortunate in our process as we received special global talent visas that came with permanent residency right away, which would allow us to buy a place, better options of jobs, etc. Basically we had to make the case that our coming here would be beneficial to Australia, which I feel is so subjective, but it worked out.

Strangely one of the most difficult things was “proving” A and I are in a committed relationship, as I guess if you are not legally married the main metric they use is whether you are financially dependent on each other? Which has never been the case with us, but fortunately the lawyers managed to cobble together a weird mix of “proof” including:
- Consecutive passport numbers from 2003
- New York Times article from a few years ago mentioning we had been together for x number of years at the time
- 2 years of statements showing A paid internet and electricity bill at my apartment

Isn’t it strange what the government considers a relationship? I guess it’s good we made it somewhat official as we get older.

We had 3 months of temporary housing in a really cute place with a balcony overlooking the water. Spent the first few weeks trying to get to know the different neighborhoods (called “suburbs”?) and then started house seeking in earnest. The real estate market was a bit crazy at the time and similar to NYC, we lost out on a few places for various reasons, including getting “gazumped” which means outbid by a sniper buyer after our offer had been accepted but before the contracts had officially been exchanged.

A had/has good work life balance, rarely working past 5pm and a great commute of a scenic 10 minute walk. We did things like open local bank accounts, tax numbers, all the admin stuff of moving to a new place. We got medicare and bought private health insurance, and were able to transfer our US drivers licenses to Australian ones. I did some job searching and slowly tried to return to “normal” life.

After a couple of weeks, I ended up getting a contract job with a Big 4 firm right away. It was for a 6 months term but I figured I’d try it out which was something I wouldn’t have considered in the US as my healthcare would have been tied to having a permanent role. None of the colleagues or clients I worked with were local to me, so I worked from home. On paper the role should have been a good fit and everyone was supernice but it quickly became unmanageable. They had a lot of issues with structure, systems, and all my time was spent troubleshooting on things that had gone wrong without much capacity to improve or fix things long term. Hours were already around 60 a week and this was before heading into peak season. The person I replaced told me they had worked a month’s worth of “in lieu” time (overtime) in just 3 months in the last peak season. (!)

I started to dread logging in and when I was contacted by other firms I decided to keep my options open. Fortunately I had a couple of good offers right away, one from a boutique firm an old colleague worked with, and the other from my long-term former employer. I felt bad as the Big 4 contract was definitely expecting me to stay on for at least 6 months and indicated they wanted to keep me permanently, but I had to consider my own health and well-being. They offered me a bonus and things to stay on but I knew it would not be for the best for me. Compared to my last experience resigning a job, everyone was very nice and gracious about it after the initial bid to stay. A needed to do a work trip back to NYC around the same time so we booked the trip between my last day and my first day. It was a bit hectic but it was a good mental break.

When we got back our real estate agent let us know about an open unit in our same building, the same view/layout we liked but a little bigger with a bigger balcony. Went to see it and it was on! The unit was vacant and our temporary housing was about to end, so the owner very kindly agreed to let us move in after contracts were signed, even though it was another 30 days before settlement. Things got delayed with our bank and it was all very touch and go, but we managed about 10 hours overlap between getting the keys to the new place and having to be out of the temp housing. Then, all our boxes from NYC arrived the next day after that! It was stressful at the time but overall everything was as seamless as possible. Overall an auspicious start to our time here I think.