Packed

How am I feeling right now?

Conflicted about leaving. Especially since S has been grousing that she will be missing her friends and Singapore. I keep worrying about whether I'm doing the right thing tearing them away from a life that they are so comfortable and happy with.

The overriding emotion though?

Tired.

Tired from all the packing and last minute cramming to meet weight requirements for the flight.

4 lives condensed to this ...

While we were packing, I felt that we were bringing too much.
Now that we are done though, the finality has set in and it's sobering to see your life condensed into a suitcase.

I tell my children though that as long as we have one another and we hold on to each other, we're gonna be ok.

Now it's time for me to believe that.

Chaos amid the packing

Movers are coming tomorrow.

Packing is still unfinished.

I should be packing ... 

I'll go pack.

Aussie Telcos

Can't sleep.

The endless packing to squeeze our life's belongings into 4 suitcases is mentally tiring to say the least.
It almost feels like a liquidation of the life that we've built up thus far.

Anyway, since I could not sleep, I decided to do a little more research to facilitate our decision making once we landed in Perth.

Tackled ISPs the other time so I wanted to have a look at telcos this time round.

Did not bother to look at some of the smaller operators ... maybe that'll be a mistake.

As it stands, I thought that it would take a while to separate the telcos but each and every website seemed to carry the same message. Check out this pretty informative site.
1) Every telco will have it's dark spots ... areas where they have poor or non-existent signal coverage. It's simply because the country is so big.
2) If you visit the rural (read - countryside) often - go with Telstra.
3) Vodafone is catching up but it's usually still in 3rd place behind Telstra/Optus.

I looked at SIM only plans since I have my own device.

Looked at offerings from TPG, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra and Optus.
One thing that struck me was how much data was being offered!
I'm stuck on 2GB in SG and paying close to $50 a month!

TPGs offerings were anaemic ... (they are partnered with Vodafone, a recent partnership) - $29.99 for 2GB and $39.99 for 5GB

Virgin Mobile had decent offerings $40 for 4GB, $50 for 6GB, $60 for 10GB and lastly $80 for 12GB.

Telstra could do more. $40 for 2.5GB and $60 for 10GB

Vodafone (supposedly coming off big upgrades to it's networks and trying to gain marketshare) offered $30 for 1GB, $40 for 10GB, $50 for 8GB (yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense), $60 for 12GB and $80 for 20GB.

Optus had very very few plans for me to choose from. In fact, they only had one $40 for 10GB.

Long story short. It was a very short decision making process because it's so obvious where the sweet spot is.

It came down to a choice between Optus and Vodafone and since supposedly Optus has the stronger network, I'll be going with that. Throw in the fact that it offers 300 international minutes to Vodafone's 90 minutes and data pooling between family member, it was a pretty easy choice.

Thing is both offers from Optus and Vodafone expire on the 4th of Jan 2016.
It's going to be a mad rush to sign up for that seeing as we are still in Singapore.


Further digging reveals ---

Optus: offer found here
* 10GB data
* Unlimited talk to Australian mobiles and landlines
* Unlimited SMS/MMS
* 300 international mins  (Singapore is one of the selected countries! yay!)
* Data pooling between family member on Optus.

Vodafone: (offer found here - do check it out as they have many different expiry dates)
* 10GB data
* 1/2 price for the first month
* Unlimited talk to Australian mobiles and landlines
* Unlimited SMS/MMS
* 90 international minutes  (Singapore is included again)
* $5/day international roaming
* Unlimited data for 1st 2 months
* Ability to share this plan and get 500MB more data per month in Oz for the life of the plan.

Rental agreement

It's late but we've finally concluded our discussion with our prospective tenants and their agent.

I did not realise that there were so many nitty-gritty details to nail down in a tenant agreement.

Now that's it done, that's one less thing to worry. Concluding the agreement though meant that we now have more things to settle to ready the house for the tenants.

What to leave behind, what to bring and what to dispose off.

For example, we were going to leave our curtains behind but apparently it's the 'norm' that tenants get their own curtains to forestall any disagreements over damage to curtains. Really? What could they be doing to the curtains that would result in damage? Oh well.

Pots, pans and cutlery all have to go as the tenants prefer to use their own.

Where on earth are we going to store all those cutlery?

Also supposed to ensure that the house receives a good cleaning too before we hand over. Our agent was able to recommend us a contact who would handle this part, for a fee of course.

Some of the lights also need to be fixed and one or two of  the rooms need to be painted.

As for the rental agreement. It is for a duration of two years with an option for a third, dependent on a rental fee review. If you hire an agent to represent you, their commission is half a months' rental for a 1 year agreement. This being a 2 year agreement, our agent was due a full months' rental as her fee.

The landlord pays the property tax while the tenants are in charge of whatever utilities they incur.

Note to self that I need to read up on the property tax. There was mention that since we are occupying the HDB flat, we're only paying 4% but since we will be renting it up, that percentage is set to rise to 10%. This is in addition to being taxed on the money you earn from your rental income.

The good thing though is that I feel rather comfortable with my tenants, they seem to be good people - Filipinos who have been working in Singapore for the past few years and working towards their permanent residency. I don't feel as conflicted about leaving now that I know that this abode that has sheltered my family for the past decade is going to be looked after.

I wonder what we'll experience when it's our turn to seek a rental property.

Final payslip

Today, I received my last payslip as a teacher.
Well to be precise, my last email notification of my payslip.
I should probably be happy right?


No more grumbling about how much I disliked how certain things were done.
No more complaining about how schools expected teachers to devote non-working hours to the job.
No more frustration over parents calling or messaging at all hours.
No more travelling all over Singapore during competition periods with CCA teams.
No more early morning national anthem and pledge taking.
No more rushing of paperwork because of audits or filing purposes.
No more anger over days that started at 7am and ended at 6 pm or later.
No more reporting to different levels of management - all with a different agenda for me to fulfil.

But you know what?

I'm going to miss teaching.
I'm going to miss the interactions with the kids.
I'm going to miss coming up with witty retorts to whatever comments they have.
I'm going to miss blowing my whistle as I send them out for their physical activities.
I'm going to miss celebrating their birthdays.
I'm going to miss managing all the little crises the students get themselves into.
I'm going to miss the looks on their faces as we broaden their experiences.
I'm going to miss looking at them when they are Secondary 4 and remembering them when they had just stepped into the school.
I'm going to miss the camaraderie amongst my colleagues. (PE colleagues are the best!)

I'm walking away from a job that I love despite its many imperfections.
That has given me the freedom (no, not going to use the cheesy line about 'moulding the future of our nation') to partake in so many dreams - to see so many futures brought to life.
That has given me a peculiar perception of time as I follow my ex-students via social media as they journey through life.
That has given me the resources to comfortably feed and nurture my own family.

I'm walking away but I have nothing bitter to say about teaching.

At the end of the day, it was all worth it.

I would undertake the same journey all over again if I was just starting out.

Throughout my time in teaching, I was innundated with quotes about teaching but then as now, I still find myself affected by the one I'm going to end this post with.

Fancy flying to Australia?

The Internet is full of information and there's this little piece of advice about when to purchase air-tickets.

Basically, the advice is to purchase it between 6 to 8 weeks of your departure date.

We tried to keep to that but we're still not sure if we got the best deal. We didn't really follow the prices once we've gotten the tickets but we did miss out on some cheaper airfares while we were waiting for the 'golden period'. Honestly speaking, if you see a nice price that you're satisfied with? Just go with it.

How are we feeling? Excitement touched with trepidation.

Ah well. Truth to tell? I think I'm the most worried out of the whole family. I think it has to do with my fear that I'll be unable to provide for them once I'm in Oz. Doesn't help with every well-meaning relative chiming in that they 'hear' it's hard to get a job now in Australia. Doesn't help too that I have no idea what I'm going to work as. It definitely didn't help matters any when I told them I was willing to try anything. Their looks said it all - "You're going there without a plan?" What is it about Singaporeans and plans?

Brave. That's what some of my friends said.

Foolish maybe?

Anyway, the dice has been rolled. We'll see what turns up.
At the end of it all, life is a journey and wouldn't it be boring if you already figured out every single step of the way?

I might be feeling fearful BUT I want to walk this journey with my family, through the good and the bad but we'll walk it together.

Again, I've digressed though. We were talking about air-tickets to Australia.

We had basically 4 choices, SIA, Scoot, Jetstar and Qantas.

Children wanted SIA and for my family size, it would've cost us approximately $3.1k. Definitely out!

Qantas would've cost us roughly $2.2k. Cheaper but we need to conserve money. Not to mention the flight drops us in Australia at midnight.

Scoot would ferry us over for $1k, a figure that included 30kg of check-in baggage per passenger. Not too bad but it would drop us at the airport at 6.10pm.

Jetstar had, in my opinion, the nicest timing. It would drop us at 6am or so at the airport. It also cost about the same as Scoot at $1k+ with 30kg check-in baggage per passenger.

So, Jetstar it is. One-third of the price of flying on SIA.
Here's hoping for a smooth flight.

T-25 and counting

There's less than a month to the move and there's still so much yet to be done.

Where do we even start?

It is when you start that you realize how many binds there are to cut.

Today we tried to close up some of the financial stuff.

Settling outstanding loans, getting new 2 factor tokens so that they wouldn't run out of power once we were out of Singapore and closing accounts that we wouldn't be using anymore.

Out of curiosity, I enquired if we could get a new 2 factor token sent to us if we were living overseas. Sadly the answer was no. Hence what turned out to be a simple, short visit to the bank to refund our cheque books and closure of accounts turned into a rather long session as we got them to renew/refresh out tokens and credit cards.

Couple that with accounts held in different banks and it was a busy day indeed. Still much was accomplished.

On the homefront, we've let go of some of our furniture and much of the items that we've accumulated over the years but honestly, there's still so much more. When did we ever buy so many books and toys? Truly a testament to the materialistic lifestyle!

Oh and the boxes from the movers arrived today. Time to start some serious packing and then to see what else that leaves us with.