"See you in the Under Down" - our journey of arrival after drifting

[Bigvan07]

Ahhhh,

I'm good again for another month or so

Thanks for the update, I appreciate it more than I can express. It sounds like you are doing well, keep up the good spirit, I am sure in a year's time you are going to look back at this and think, wth?

Push hard, I am sure that promotion is going to be worth it. Push hard with the fitbit, you will not recognise yourself at the end of the year and it is a little something social as well.

Enjoy the party. Give ol' Lucy the biggest of hugs and a good head scratch from me, I love Scotties and have a character myself named Pepsi(Don't ask, my wife thought it was cute, I wanted to name her Haggis )

I like how you are infiltrating behind enemy lines and wooing them with beskuit, so South African of you. Heehee

Enjoy the long nights, the sleep is precious.

[Tazzn]

Awesome update Toitjie. Glad all is going well!

[Toitjie]

11 October 2014

It's been a while since I have written in this journal. There just aren't enough hours in each day to cover everything. One thing that is happening more and more is my feelings of intense guilt that Im neglecting my kids. I work too hard, I know it. And I dont switch off when Im at home, the computer is always on and when I have the day off, I still answer emails and do work that is urgent. I dont know how else because if I dont do it, no-one will. But I feel awful and I realise my kids are growing up and one day I will bitterly regret not spending more time with them, so even typing this journal makes me feel guilty

The winter in Canberra, honestly! was not as bad as I thought it would be. Its exactly like Pretoria, maybe not even as cold. I didn't use my thermal underwear at all, so all in all I was pleasantly surprised, this type of weather I can handle. The weather at the moment is absolutely gorgeous! clear crisp days, not too hot and not too cold. Just perfect

At work I am in two minds...I still enjoy the work, my clients and candidates love me and trust me. I guess because I have never worked in an agency environment before Im not as focussed as the others on only making revenue, I rather invest my personal time and interest in the people I work with and I can see how they respond to that. They confide in me, they phone me to tell me about their problems etc. I love being appreciated, who doesn't?

But the promotion I was promised didnt happen and I was quite upset for a while there. I got a good increase, whereas most industries dont really have increases like we are used to in RSA (6-8%) but at least that was something. Im now told the promotion will be in January. I was angry about this, but kept it to myself.

It's extremely difficult not to compare and feel a little unloved. I don't want to sound like a whinger (new ozzie word I learned) but I work ten times as hard because the money we make from industrial jobs is about 4% margin whereas the IT guys make around 20% in margin I think. So for me to bring in the same amount of money as them I have to have 4 times more clients, and my work is much more involved due to the nature (industrial) so I have to do extensive risk assessments etc. Yet, Im in the junior role and the new IT guy in the senior role, just because it's IT. Real bugger! So yes, I will admit it, it's hard being junior again and some days a bitter pill especially if a carrot is dangled in front of you and then yanked away.

I am considering enrolling for a Cert IV in Occupational Health and Safety as I like that part of my job and with that qualification I will be able to do a career change. Through TAFE it's not expensive, just under $600 for half year.

At least the people i work with are awesome. I cannot fault any of them and I know a lot of people are desperately unhappy due to unfriendly colleagues or difficult working circumstances. That counts a lot and as Im happy at the moment, I will be loathe to start in a new job. If I only knew that I will have the chance to grow, I will stay.

I bought hubby a ticket back to RSA for his birthday. The date was for this September/October school holidays so he went for 2 weeks and my mom came for the same 2 weeks to visit ut.

My husband is having the holiday from hell. I felt so sorry for him! His family is extremely dependant on him or anyone really. Very hard to be around them. His brother is a psychopath who cheats anyone out of anything and has taken just about all his parents' money that he could from them, including their car which he sold. So they have nothing, no car, no money except a meagre Spoornet or Transnet pension. They cannot drive anywhere. Hubby's other brother has to help with food. We will have to start paying their levy, which Im not happy about. We are earning peanuts at the moment and to pay something to RSA with the possibility of this psycho getting the money somehow is upsetting. But we will have to work it out. They are having it bad. His other kids are sort of ok, one is not doing to good, she might need a kidney transplant so it's really hard on him knowing this but not being there.

And he bumped the rental car. Not his fault and damage was minimal but it's such a schlep and a high premium that he had it fixed himself. Looks brandnew now.

The two weeks with my mom was hard. First because I always struggle when people are in my house. Im a very private person and it's difficult to adapt to people around me all the time, and also because we have never had a good relationship so it took some getting used to. But we found a good rythm and I actually enjoyed having her here. She was fantastic with the kids and they had a good time.

But hubby in RSA and her here brought a lot of stress in terms of things happening in our home country. She received an email from my previous lovely employer, the City of Tshwane, for an elec account for her townhouse of R 7000. Outrageous, and it brought back many memories of immense stress. Up to that point I didnt realise how little stress I had here in terms of service delivery etc. But we got it sorted in the end. Only for the next disaster. UNISA didnt pay her salary. One person that dislikes her immensely managed to not send in her timesheet and she wasnt paid. I had to pay a lot of money from my Standard Bank overdraft to cover her expenses. To date she still hasnt received her salary.

Im so worried about the future of our parents there. They cant look after themselves, they dont have a lot of money. My mother has zero pension as she always had it pay out when she moved to a new employer and she is 63. So 2 years of work left and possible 20-30 years of life, but what quality? I cannot afford to maintain her lifestyle.

This morning she flew to Melbourne for a quick visit to my brother and she will fly home on Wednesday. At the Canberra airport it was extremely painful and heartbreaking to say goodbye. She cried so much and Kayla did too. Kayla still cries a lot and even I cannot stop. It was really awful. For the first time I realised how they must have felt when we left. If you get on a plane there is some element of excitement. For those going back to an empty house it's a different story. It's really so hard and I feel so sad...I think now that she has been here and I finally connected with her a little more and realised how hard this must have been for her, it is finally sinking in how much damage this is doing to our loved ones.

Just add on that guilt please, triple shot!

So, to get out of this depressingly empty house I took Lucy the Scotty and the kids to the Scotthish Highland Games at the Kambah Oval today. We participated in the parade although I dont think we were supposed to there was a big big Scottish band with bagpipes (stunning!!) and we walked behind them (about 12 Scotties) but when they stopped, the ladies who arranged it kept on walking, to the front! so when they halted, the ceremony began and there we stood with the dogs, in between the bagpipe players, the dogs snarling at each other, Lucy whining because she is hot and generally I got the feeling we shouldnt have been there but all good, it was good to be out and with others, seeing other Scotties.

We will probably go for a quick walk down to the lake and feed the ducks (yes I know we shouldnt but we will anyway).

Thank you for listening....it felt good to get this off my chest.

I have come to realise, and I think I have posted something to this effect earlier, our lives here in Australia sort of normalises due to work and family committments, but there is only a very thin scab or veneer over that. It takes precious little to rock the boat. A very small incident causes a big stir in our lives or minds. Something small goes wrong at work and Im in despair. I dont know if others experienced it like that? Maybe just me.

We are coming up on 1 year next month...cant believe it!

[Eyebrow]

I felt so sad for you reading this.

It is unbelieveably hard.

And you are right, as long as things are going well then one can cope.

But when things are not so good, then you realise that you dont have that ingrained sense of belonging that comes from having been born in a place.

Maybe it gets easier with time? I dont know. The other forum members who have been here for longer may have some answers.