Flux

This may or may not come as a surprise but getting a visa is a lot of work and a lot of money. Not because you don't fit the criteria or because you did shady things in the past but because there are a lot of fricking forms you need to fill in. And by forms I mean 26 page mountains you need to climb. One of the questions in my visa application asks me to write down all the countries I've been to in the last ten years! Ten years! This may not be such a task for some people but for someone who loves to travel and when ten years is half of the life you've lived it's a LOT to write down. They even wanted the specific dates of when I visited each country. I don't know about you but when I like a certain country I return to it more than once so I had to make a list:

• Iceland - because well I have family there and I used to go there every year when I could still afford it
• Germany – I've been to Germany many times because I have friends there who I met in Japan
• Japan – As you know I went here as an exchange student in High School.
• Australia – Because, you know...
• Belgium - Just because it's right there!
• England
• Northern Ireland
• France
• Croatia
• Austria
• Switzerland
• Spain
• Denmark
• Jamaica – It has been a long time since I went to Jamaica and it has probably been more than ten years ago.
• Italy - Also think this was more than ten years ago. 
• Czech Republic

 They wanted to know all the names and birth-dates of my family even my stepfamily, at least two statutory declarations of Australian citizens who know us and can verify our relationship, multiple pass photo's of both of us with our name written in the back, a written statement of how we met and with proof of our relationship, a certified copy of my birth certificate and my passport, – don't even get me started on what 'certified' means – a certified copy of my partner's birth certificate and passport and then another copy of his birth certificate for his 20 page form.

It was highly confusing and stressful!

We decided to start and IndieGoGo funding project to try and cover some of our moving costs. We have had a few backers so far so I'd like to remind everyone how awesome the stuff is that we have left. We have a lot of things we can't take with us that I would love to give away to our helpers: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fund-our-love So please help us out even if it's just a little bit it really means a lot to us.

After all this I had decided to be excited about Australia: I could probably start studying again. My boyfriend would have more chance to find job and I could go diving in one the most beautiful diving spots on earth. I looked around and even found a diving club I would like to join and a University that had some studies I was interested in. I talked positively about Australia because it made me feel better about the decision and I hoped it would make my boyfriend happier about it too. But the more positive I was the more negative he became. He didn't want to go back he wanted to stay and then he got a job offer from the interview he had a few days earlier. I wasn't happy, I wasn't unhappy. I was confused. I thought the universe wanted us to move to Australia but now it was giving us all these mixed signals. My boyfriend was very happy. He got what he wanted. We could stay. Yet all I could think about was that now I had to find a job too and I wouldn't be able to go to university until my boyfriend had a steady job. I did want to stay but suddenly staying meant that I couldn't study, or dive. My boyfriend would go from contract to contract hoping he could stay here for at least five years so he could get citizenship and not worry about being deported. Five years. I don't want to wait five years before I can start my life. It would've been nice if everything had worked out but it didn't and now we seemed to be stuck on this ledge of insecurity and uncertainty. If I looked more than a few weeks ahead my mind would go blank on where we would be or what we'd be doing. Nothing seemed certain. And then they called again a few days later saying they weren't sure whether they could actually afford him, they were going to have a meeting about it and they would know by 12^th November 2013. When they didn't call we called and found out his recruiter was on holiday. He wouldn't be back until the 24^th. So the 24^th came and we called again, he said they hadn't made a decision yet and that he would call the next week. I wonder if people ever consider whether their actions mean making life-changing decisions for other people. It feels like being stuck in an endless state of flux.

But even job offers have an expiry date, especially when your visa has one too. We still haven't received an answer to this day and we're going to accept that we never will. We have finally sent off our visa application, we canceled our house, sold our car and we're getting ready to move on the 10th of January.

A few nights ago I had a very interesting and scary dream. I had grown old and so had my boyfriend. Regardless of our age we went rock climbing. In the beginning there was a pretty clear cut path and although it was steep and difficult it wasn't that bad. There were two lines of rope on each side showing us where to go. But after a while it got more and more difficult so much so that we started tying ourselves to the rock. Then after a while the ropes stopped and there were only islands of rock sticking out that we needed to jump to, and you couldn't look down because we were above the clouds. That's when I woke up.

Decisions

My boyfriend was happy at his new workplace. The people working there were very different from him and he was still quite awkward but he was good at the job and there were a couple of people that really appreciated his work. The perks were nice, he had a pretty good pay and they even invited him on the company trip to Spain. I was excited and started planning ahead. We both got a gym memberships that we use at least twice a week – on a bad week. I wasn't worried about finances much and we went on a few weekend mini breaks just because we could. Things were going pretty well. The only downside was that he had only gotten a three month contract and we were nervous about the extension but that was something to worry about later. We were pretty relieved when after about a month and a half the manager said to my boyfriend that he thought he was doing a wonderful job and would definitely extend his contract for either another three months or even a year. This took all our worries away since his visa was dependent on his job and if he lost his job at any point he would be required to immediately leave the country.

Just when my boyfriend was settling into his job I got told that the café I was working at had to close down because the swimming pool that was next door decided they wanted a different company running the space next to them - the café was technically owned by the swimming pool even though they outsourced they still had the final call on who runs the space. I didn't mind that much because the pay was low – technically my pay was the same as a Barista but the café opened later and closed sooner so my overall pay went down. And I still couldn't stand my colleague. So when my contract ended I had prepared myself and had been applying for jobs. I managed to get a job as a management trainee at a fast food joint which was supposed to start right when my contract at the café ended. So when I didn't hear anything on the day I was supposed to start my new job I started wondering if I had just dreamt it all. I checked my emails and but there were no new messages. After a while I decided not to seem too pushy or needy and sent him an email asking about my start date details. When I didn't get any response for two days I decided to call on the second day. The restaurant owner who hired me said that he was just about to call me to schedule my contract signing. So a few days later I signed my contract but he didn't want me to actually start until the week after that. I was pretty confused about why he would say one thing and do another but I didn't want to sound whiny or desperate so I didn't ask. Then later it turned out he was about to have a baby so he was pretty stressed out.

My time between jobs had been right around when my boyfriend's family was here to visit him so I spent quite some time with them and got to know them a lot better. A Thursday in October was when I started working at my new job for the first time. It didn't go off to a great start to be honest. Nobody had told me what to do or what was expected of me as the first few steps when starting the job. I came and waited in line in order to get to speak to someone about what to do. She told me to have a seat and wait because it was busy – you know because there were about three people in line. Later it turned out that two girls just hadn't shown up for work so they were grossly understaffed. Nobody knew I was starting that day and nobody really cared. The girl who was supposedly showing me the ropes was using all her effort to work both kitchens and the drive-thru and as a result didn't have any time to really explain anything and I was expected to be able to suddenly just do everything right when I couldn't even tell the difference between the five types of frozen pieces of chicken. After a few hours the store manager arrived and she taught me how to make hamburgers and cheeseburgers. That's when I realised that all the people that had arrived one by one were about 16 years old and goofing around while working. I know it sounds cheesy – haha get it? Cheesy... but I couldn't connect to any of my colleagues and I absolutely hated this work. I knew I had to be able to work everywhere in order to become a manager but I just hated myself for what I was doing. It was like working in a factory being surrounded by kids and losing brain cells after completing every burger. I respect people who are able to make themselves work at a fast food joint because I just couldn't.

That's when it happened. The unthinkable. Something we weren't prepared for. My boyfriend lost his job that Friday. His manager said that he just didn't fit in. They were willing to give him a recommendation on his technical skills but he just wasn't right for this company. We were devastated. After all the build up and promises and the hopes we had it just broke down completely. We didn't know what to do. To us it seemed as though all hope had been lost. When we came here after my trip through Australia we knew things weren't going to be easy but we never imagined it to be this hard. I decided to quit my job. Maybe it was a mistake but I don't regret it.

As our back-up plan to gain us some time we went to Belfast for a weekend which is in the UK and therefore in a different visa-area. When we came back my boyfriend was allowed to stay for another
three months on a tourist visa. This visa ends on the 20^th of January 2014. We avoided the issue for a while but had a long and hard talk when we were ready to face the consequences. We decided to move back to Australia. We would have a place to start, some family and friends, familiar surroundings and I could get a visa – I can get a visa as long as we can prove we've been together for at least a year. Australia seemed like the best option. Our house here is only temporary and neither of us has a job. My boyfriend decided he wanted to stay here and applied for a whole bunch of jobs and even got a job interview for one of them. This was through the same recruitment agency as his previous job so they were also willing to arrange his visa for him. However we had no hope that he would get it since we had become just that pessimistic. We were getting ready for the move, we started sorting out forms for my visa and we even started packing and sorting through some things we'd had in storage for ages. We told all our friends and family about our decision to move to the other side of the planet.

Progress

In the Netherlands we have a law that states that houses or office buildings or really any liveable building for that matter cannot be empty for longer than 6 months. Housing is a major problem in the Netherlands so I think this is a really good law. Because of this law something called anti-squatting has become very popular. In Amsterdam there is one company that does most of the anti-squatting placements. It basically means that the owner of a house tells this company to find someone to live in their property temporarily. You barely pay any rent but in exchange they can kick you out every 28 days. There has been a registration stop for Amsterdam because it's so popular and in demand there just isn't enough housing. But sometimes this company posts on facebook that they have property available and you write an application letter convincing them why you deserve a place to stay. You have to have an income and no children or pets are allowed. They posted a place and I decided to go for it and write them a letter about our situation. We were invited the very next day for an intake interview. They told us at the interview that they had a place available for us and that we had to move in there within 12 hours. Without ever seeing the property we agreed and signed the contract. To this day I am so incredibly thankful to that company for giving us a place to stay. It turned out to be a house with a garden and everything. It is a great place to live and our neighbours are lovely. However we still had the problem of my boyfriends visa. I knew that after 6 months we were going to have to move to England or Australia because there was no way a job would come along that was willing to sponsor him to stay in the Netherlands. I decided to just be happy that we had a place and live in the moment.

We moved a couple of days later – we were required by law to place a chair, a table and a bed the same day that we got the key and signed the contract. We even went to the city hall the very same day and signed up as the new inhabitants. - Slowly but surely we made the place our home. We weren't allowed to drill of paint so we had to think of some creative ways to cover the windows and the empty concrete wall. We hung a massive map of the world on the ugly wall and stapled some fabric to the wood above the windows. 

This is what our living room wall looks like.

I got settled into my job and did a poor job the first few weeks since it had been a while since I made coffee but I got better and better and eventually made about 800 coffee's and cappuccino's a day. Being a barista wasn't too bad but they were 9 hours shifts and it was hard work. Since the café had only recently opened it was full all the time. We had about 1500 customers a day. The company I worked for has more than 60 locations across the Netherlands and I eventually asked if there was any way I could be transferred to a less demanding job. My manager said she saw how tired I was every night and said she thought my work ethic was good and always tried to find more to do – if there was a moment of rest. She said she wanted to keep me within the same company and started looking around for another place to work. I eventually got placed at a small café right next to my barista job. This time however I didn't have to make only coffee I did everything. Serving, cash register, making sandwiches etc... It was much nicer to do a variety of things than to be concentrated on just making coffee all day. 

Dreaming of coffee wasn't uncommon.

What I hadn't anticipated was that my colleague would be the most annoying guy to work with in the history of my career - so far. Since it was just a small café with usually less than 50 customers a day we worked in pairs. There were usually two people managing the café and the actually manager would come maybe once a week to create a new schedule and to do some minor administration. I usually worked with one particular person who worked there 6 days a week and because he had been there since the opening of the café he decided it was his job to boss other people around. Nothing I did was ever good enough. When I stayed late to clean everything thoroughly I was taking too long, when I went home sooner but couldn't finish everything as thoroughly I hadn't cleaned properly. If I didn't make a certain salad in time I was being irresponsible. And by on time I mean the time that he find appropriate not an official time limit of salad making. If I didn't do things his way they weren't right. Even though when it comes to coffee making I now have full confidence I know what I'm doing. I wasn't using a spoon to make a cappuccino so according to my colleague, I was doing it wrong. Of course no self-respecting barista in today's coffee culture uses a spoon. I was frustrated but realised that going against him resulted in nothing. So I went along with everything except the coffee making, I stood my ground on that and he eventually accepted that. Even though the work wasn't actually that bad I dreaded going to work every day because of my colleague. All the while my boyfriend was still sitting at home and moving to England seemed like the right thing to do. I didn't like my job anyway, our house was only temporary and in England he could get an ancestry visa because his grandfather was born in England. But then again we didn't know anyone in England, it was very expensive, the job market was quite bad and we wouldn't have a place to go. It was a list of pro's and cons but when you're forced out of the country you don't have much choice.

July came and September was our deadline. Just as I was getting ready for me and my boyfriend to move to England - we even applied for his ancestry visa for England and received it - the best-case-scenario happened. He got hired for a job that was willing to sponsor him. Finally I wasn't the sole provider anymore on my minimum wage. He finally wasn't sitting at home all day and we both had a job, a place to stay. Things finally picked up and we were both feeling a lot less sorry for ourselves. I was still stuck doing something I hated with a person I couldn't get along with but we had income and prospect. If everything came through I would perhaps even be able to start studying again and do something I love.