Shawny: Shaun joining the "trek"

[Shawny]

Hi guys, I have been following the topics on this forum for some time now, and now that we are finally moving in about 5 weeks I decided to join the forums and give my views (however useless they may be )

We are moving from Rustenburg to Mackay, and in the process crossing 8 timezones, and I am dreading the jet lag we are gonna get

Anyway, I am Shaun, the 18 year old son of my mom and dad (Linda and George) and we are all moving to oz along with my sister, 16. The only problem I have is that we are leaving about 2 weeks before my record exams start, and I heard somewhere that grade 11 and 12 are integrated that side, so you cannot simply re-join school that side in grade 12. So, courtesy of Wikipedia, I found out that people are allowed to go to a TAFE collage to get a matric certificate, but I am not sure, any comments?

My sister and I are both in an Afrikaans high school here in Rustenburg, but we are in an English houshold. The entire family has been to England for 3 years and we have had equal contact with both English and Afrikaans people all over the place, so I would consider us pretty bilingual (not too sure about my sister though, she is one of those that love mixing the two languages so much that it sounds very bad! )

So basically that is what has been happening, and is there anyone here that can give comments about the Mackay area, I know it is about 400k's from Townsville, but that is pretty much all I know about that area of the globe

Shawny (aka Shaun )

[The Parsons Family]

Hey Shawny!

Welcome, good luck, there are a lot of us this side envious of you.

I cant give you any answers to your questions but we do have mates from Townsville, If they anything to go by you in for a great time!

cheers and good luck.

[Shawny]

Hi The Parsons Family

Thanks for the welcome. Some of my teachers are also very envious, and some of my friends just say we are doff making the move, but they know it is most probably the best move people can make these days

Especially with the fact that I am a very talented programmer (not boasting, but if you can, why not ) there are not many opportunities for me here. That is one of the main reasons my dad decided to make the move, because once I am done with uni here, I will most probably emmigrate to somewhere on this globe where I can challange myself, and my parents don't want the familly split up, so they chose Australia, and I am very happy with that

Well anyways, nice to hear from you

[Guest Sunshine Sister]

Hey Shawny,

Welcome to our forum. Oh wow, you have quite an adventure to look forward to !! Oh yes, as a talented programmer you will have loads of opportunities in Oz. What kind of programming are you into ? Probably .net, Java and those kind of things ? All the trendy stuff..

Great to have you on the forum. Good luck with the next couple of weeks and don't even worry about the jetlag, 3 days of a bit of hassle at most and you'll be into Oz-time. No worries !

Love

SS

Edited July 20, 2006 by Sunshine Sister

[Shawny]

Hi Sunshine Sister

I am in to PHP and MySQL with a little Javascript on the side. I am actually the creator and project lead of a nice RPG game on the net (http://www.the-merchant.co.uk) and the development team now includes 2 other guys. I have been thinking of also coding some sort of forum software, but that is another kettle of fish

Anyway, I am so excited about leaving, but I have some friends here that I have been with since grade 8, so it is 5 years now, and they are truly good friends, we have never had any fights and have stuck together through the worst of times. But I guess I will have to suck it up and hope for the best on the other side.

Cheers!

[Guest Sunshine Sister]

Hey there,

Oh ok, trendy stuff indeed !! Good for you on getting some really valuable experience so early on !!

No need to give up on the friends you have now, I still have regular contact with two of my best friends from when I was in Std. 2 (yes, I am very old, I was at school back in the day when we still had Standards in Schools, hehehehehe, no pun intended !). Just teasing. Rather look at it as adding new friends, than losing the old ones. It's not as if you are moving to the moon, (yet) they are only one flight away, and you can be the cool guy with the fabulous holiday pozzie, which they can all come visit sooner and/or later !!

Chat again soon.

Love from Sydney

SS

[Shawny]

Yeah, I do plan on keeping in contact with them, but with the state of internet services here in SA, email is pretty much out of the picture. None of them have internet in any case. But SMS's will still work

I will just have to coax them into using the net, because they aren't really bothered about it, and maybe once we have moved they will see the light that is the net

[Sulona]

Hi Shawny,

I'm also new to the forum. We intended to move from Rustenburg to Australia (Perth).

I whish we were where you are now, about to tackle the big move. We just started with our visa applications and you know how things are here in SA everything takes twice as long as any where ells in the world.

I think you should thank your parents for their decision to move to Oz, they are doing you a big favour - no migration admin for you and believe me there is lots and lots of admin.

Good luck with the goodbyes and the traveling.

Sulona

[Shawny]

Hi Sulona,

I am grateful for the move, I love the idea of leaving. But because my dad is at work during the day, and I am at home, I tend to handle some of the admin aswell, this is a family effort as my dad puts it

But the migration agent is lodging the 457 application online and in Oz, so she is taking the brunt of the work, all we have done really is scan in certificates and qualifications etc.. and sent them to her. So we are getting it pretty lightly.

Back to my original question, has anyone got advice about the matric problem? Will I be able to go to a college that side to get my Australian Matric Certificate?

[drakie]

Hey Shawny. glad to see some other young people in the forum aswell! Well i dont really know about the tafe effect, i did my technical Matric (N3) in SA, and when i wanted to go to a tafe for a pre-apprenticeship course, i had to go to the overseas qualification uit , to basically get them to recognise my tehnical matric...but im still waiting.

Advice i can give you, is get your previous year/s certificates (with all your subjects on it) in order, I had individual subject certificates of my Matric, coz im still waiting for my matric certificate to be issued out of south africa ... take note, i wrote my matric in 2004.....and in june 2006 the guys at Brits Campus told me i can MAYBE get it in 6 months time ...anyways, i got a letter from brits in which they said i passed and blah blah blah, so HOPEFULLY i can get my matric recognised soon.....

I dont know if it will work the same with you, I think you will have to go to the "Curriculum Council" to get your school years recognised, but i may be wrong.

Well see ya around!

[Shawny]

Hi drakie

Thought I was alone in my age group, the Youth forum seems to be the place for younger people

Anyway, SA is like that when it comes to Matric Certificates, and the fact that you have been waiting since 2004 just tells you certain things about the current education dept.

Well, we will see what I do when I get there, according to teachers and admin staff at my school (Bergsig Hoërskool, you might know it) they said many of their students moved to Australia, and that they reported back saying that no report, transfer letter, or certificate was accepted that side. So I could immagine that you have to write some sort of apptitude test to assess your knowledge.

Well anyways, cheers!

Edited July 20, 2006 by Shawny

[drakie]

Well, i didnt write any test yet, but quite frankly, i dont care anymore, i got an apprenticeship without having to do an pre-apprenticeship so its all good.

Oh yeah, the tafe evaluate you on a point system, you have to have an certain amount of points before you can get in, but it will be easier if you just want to do the normal matric - i tried for an electrical pre-ap, but got turned down coz i couldnt get my Matric recognised in time, and electrical is high in demand so they make it harder to get in, but like i said, ive got my electrical apprenticeship now.

Well good luck!

[Shawny]

Nice to hear you got your apprenticeship

I am going for programming, so we will see how that pans out. Maybe I should contact some dept. over there by email and see what they have to say. There might be an even easier route to take and I don't know about it.

Thanks for the help

[Dreamcatcher]

That is one of the main reasons my dad decided to make the move, because once I am done with uni here, I will most probably emmigrate to somewhere on this globe where I can challange myself, and my parents don't want the familly split up, so they chose Australia, and I am very happy with that

Hey Shawny, your parents have their heads screwed on the right way. That is a very good argument to why many of us are leaving the country. Not only for our children to have the educational and vocational opportunities, but also because we don't want to grow old with our kids somewhere over the sea in a different country (How selfish of us )

We intended to move from Rustenburg to Australia (Perth).

Hi Sulona, are there any people left in Rustenburg? Anyone who is not on their way out? I know a few lot of people who have moved from there, and some who are still there. If you are interested, I can get you in touch with them if you aren't already. PM me if you like.

Greetings,

Dreamy