Part 1: Settling In and Adjusting
Part 2: Checking In...
Part 3: House Hunting
Part 4: Best and Final
Part 5: Gazumped!
Part 6: School Worries...
Part 7: We did it!
Part 8: Travelling to and Remembering Sydney
Part 9: Searching for a New Used Car
Part 10: Quarantine, WTF!!!!!!!
It is done! We did the final settlement inspection this morning after dropping the kids off at school... and we also got to meet the previous owners who were really really nice! It was great to be able to put human faces and stories to the names on the contract, and we were able to exchange contact details as well. They have a great bush-style garden that we will want to keep up... but we will need some advice, so it will be quite handy to be able to ask the people who set it up!
They even left behind some pretty decent appliances and furniture for us as well... so, that helps lots... again, lower costs of replacing all the big stuff! And they are in really good condition as well! So, definitely no complaints!
There is something quite comforting about knowing that we will have a place to call our own... it has been quite nice living with our parents in law, but there is always going to be that sense of being guests, and that everything is quite temporary...
Things have settled in pretty smoothly so far... my wife and I have managed to land some decent batches of work, and our sea shipment will arrive at our new place next week. This week will consist of slowly moving things over from the temporary guest pad to our permanent home, and also collecting the various furniture gifts and donations that friends and family have made available for us!
Really... we have been inundated with so much good will and assistance. We will always be passing that onwards as we have in the past! It is such a special thing to be welcomed back into the friend, community and family network after such a long time away. All of that has made the transition less jarring and so much smoother than we had ever expected!
So, in a couple of weeks, my own family will drop by for a visit and they will no doubt help out with many things around the house as well. There are many things that will need to be unpacked and moved into place (or to find their place) in the house to make it our own place.... but that can now just take place slowly over the next decades. As I've mentioned before, I am hoping that this is the last move that we make in our lives... this will be our home for a long long long time!
I will have administrative things to do... utilities to set up, addresses to update and all of that sort of thing. There will also need to be the pianos and other large instruments that will need to be sorted out, as they are still stuck in Europe due to high air shipment prices. But, my wife and I have decided that we will just eat the extra costs... our costs of settling in here have been less than we anticipated, so we will just send the pianos at the higher prices. We need them... they are the tools of our trade after all!
We will have to pick up some gardening tools, some minor maintenance things that we would like to do around the new place... and there is a later plan to take out an internal wall and to build out a library/studio as well. But these are longer term plans... they can wait! First things first... we will spend the next month slowly moving things over... we should be living and sleeping there within the fortnight, but we are just taking our time at the moment. No hurry... but definitely looking forward to having it all done!
Soon... we will have to do the jigsaw/Tetris game of fitting everything in... I will just take instructions from my wife and the girls. I suspect that most of my suggestions will be outvoted anyway!
I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x
Handy Crypto Tools
Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
Kucoin: My second choice in exchanges, many tokens listed here that you can't get on Binance!
FTX: Regulated US-based exchange with some pretty interesting and useful discounts on trading and withdrawal fees for FTT holders. Decent fiat on-ramp as well!
MXC: Listings of lots of interesting tokens that are usually only available on DEXs. Avoid high gas prices!
Huobi: One of the largest exchanges in the world, some very interesting listings and early access sales through Primelist.
Gate.io: If you are after some of the weirdest and strangest tokens, this is one of the easiest off-chain places to get them!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
Stoic: A USD maximisation bot trading on Binance using long-term long strategies, powered by the AI/human system of Cindicator.
StakeDAO: Decentralised pooled staking of PoS assets.
Poloniex: One of the older regulated exchanges that has come into new ownership. I used to use it quite a lot, but have since stopped.
Bitfinex: Ahhh... another oldie, but a goodie exchange. Most noted for the close affiliation with USDT and the Basic "no-KYC" tier!
