bah, it's just money.

Once we got back from Paris, we sat down, worked out how much money we had, and a budget. Last night, we set a definitive date when we would have to pack up and run home with our tails between our legs.

That date was defined as October 31st. It's about the only point where we can afford to get back, and still have (some) money to try and settle back in Melbourne.

The Irony...

never ceases. This week-end is, obviously, the Easter weekend. And we'd planned to go away, up to the Isle Of Man, and then over to Belfast, and then around Ireland. I'll tell you more about this in future posts, however we haven't really planned much beyond the IOM transport and accommodation, which is possibly a good thing....

An NI number...

Is one of the essential things you need to work (legally) here in the UK. It's kind of a cross between our Medicare and Tax File numbers back at home, except, it's both.
NI stands for National Insurance...

To keep money...

One must have a bank account. Getting a bank account in the UK is notoriously difficult. There's also quite a number of differences, and gotchas, particularly with Australian bank cards, which I'll explain below.
You should also bear in mind the difficulties involved in communicating with banks when you're in a different time zone, and that you can't go into a branch to sort things out. Changing institutions is going to be very difficult, unless you're created a power of attorney (which we discussed, but did not do. Damnit.)

Job hunting...

Ain't all it's cracked up to be. I'm hammering off heaps of applications, and I've had a couple of agents come back here and there seeming interested, but so far, not-so good. Rhiannon has already started working, so we're not totally bereft of money so far - in fact, we calculated before we left that even if I didn't work, if she got 5 days a week (which is looking pretty likely) then we'd have enough to survive without touching our savings. I'm getting bored though.

So much so, that I applied for a temp, part time IT support role on Gumtree yesterday. It was an.... interesting.... experience.