Sweden 2 Australia

So last year I was in for a big surprise. We had been talking about moving to Australia for a loooong time. But something always got in the way. Then pieces suddenly started falling into place. And by saying "suddenly" I mean really really fast.

Just for fun I looked at the intranet career pages at work every now and then. Once in a while something popped up that I liked and sort of thought "wow, that would be great". So it went on until February 2016 when I saw THE ad. SIEM specialist in Australia. Suits me nicely I thought and told my wife about it. She of course told me to apply and a couple of days later I was ready to submit my letter. Back to the Jobseeker site and... it was gone... disaster!

I had no choice but to go back home and deliver the sad news. Maybe it was the way it was meant to be. We'll just stay in Sweden and grow old.

Weeks went by, and I thought maybe something similar would appear from nowhere and make my day, but nothing surfaced. Not even on external sites. Nothing that caught my eye, nothing of real interest.

Then one day the ad re-appeared. With a slightly different description, but clearly the same job. So this time I didn't waste my time and sent the letter right away. Mind you, it was already written, just a few modifications needed. A couple of weeks went by and I was told that "if I haven't heard anything within a week, it's gone. That's the way it works in Australia".

Disappointed, to be fair, I started packing for the April holidays we had planned in Denmark. And I got a mail from HR. Would I be interested in an interview for the job? The coming Friday?

Does the pope wear a funny hat? Really?

Holidays or not, yes I was interested. The interview was arranged for early Friday morning Denmark time. I guess this could be seen from two angles. Bad side - late Friday afternoon in Australia would mean the interviewers just want to go home, won't give a donkeys arse about the Swede on the other side of the planet. On the good side - they might be interested but want to go home and forget to ask the tricky questions. Either way it was going to be short. My butt... 90 minutes later in the interview it felt quite ok and the call ended with "we have a few more interviews to go through, we'll let you know"... Have I heard that one before?

Oh well, at least I tried and got a bit on the way.

Come Monday and back to work, and a mail arrived from HR. I was offered the job... ehmmm... Didn't know what to think but hoped for the best.

From there on everything went fast. My boss wasn't too interested in letting me go on a short notice but my boss to be insisted that I'd start on July 1st. Only obstacle was to organize selling of cars, house, my wife telling her boss, getting rid of stuff we wouldn't need... oh, and work permit, visa, plane tickets, somewhere to live... small things like that... Super fast super quick, I was ready to go, papers en masse back and forth. The last week in June everything was done and I could book a one way ticket. Even if I thought I had done a lot towards this I had to leave my wife and kids to fix everything else, which I now know was the major part. I will always be in debt for that. I can't imagine all the effort she had to put in just to make her (and the kids') move to Melbourne. While I was here already working.

Family arrived in mid-September and container followed in December. Although we are renting for a while, we have settled in and now looking for work for my wife. Kids are in school and adopting to the new world. Hopefully SIEM will keep me busy for a long time...