When I arrived in Brisbane, a weight fell of my shoulders. After organising and planning, your suddenly there. The first morning was a bit like a scene of a movie, the one where you hear this uptempo song playing on the background mixed with singing birds and someone is wandering through a town gazing at the shops, with sun and greenery everywhere, wishing good morning to everyone on the street and getting a coffee around the corner. This was me. Sorry, people of Australia, if I was making weird dance moves while walking.
However this movie state did not last too long, even though I am still very happy. It might look (and sometimes feel) a bit like a holiday, but this is my life now. No job to fall back on, barely any people you know. After spending the first night on the couch at my friends’ house, it already began on the first day: opening a bank account, applying for a Tax File Number, moving into my house and getting to know the area. This then followed by searching for a car through a jungle of offers on Gumtree (comparable to the Dutch ‘Marktplaats’), researching how registering a car works, roadworthy’s, timing belt or timing chain, petrol or diesel (or should I get gas?) and so many other things to take into consideration . It feels great to be able to do all of this and I almost felt like the Wolf of Wallstreet by spending all this money. However, I am very aware that I am living from my savings, which is a bit unsettling at times.
Hence the reason for full force job hunting. Firing a bullet wherever you go by networking, networking, networking. Your housemates, people in (coffee) bars, the landlord, the guys you bought a guitar from or a cashier in the supermarket. Applying for jobs is a full time job. In the mornings I searched for jobs online, sitting in different coffee bars (with aircon!) and in the afternoons I got on a bus to get out at a random stop. To explore, but also to keep your eyes open for the construction signs, advertisements and real estate companies. Just to find the right companies and the ones that are worth applying for.
I already got many rejections and those aren’t very motivating. Especially those e-mail titled: ‘feedback regarding your application’. It sounds promising, but basically means ‘bye, bye, zwaai, zwaai, you are not the one’. Even though your mind goes through so many states and emotions on one single day, I am not letting the rejections get the better of me. I just have to be more creative…
Lianne Vreugdenhil 