Today John and I moved into our new apartment. All went smoothly and thanks to John’s sister, Alice’s, loan of her furniture it already looks fairly well kitted out. It seems that we have use of a gym and a swimming pool so it looks like I might have to end my 5 year long gym self imposed embargo. The area seems great – good cafes and good access to the city.

The last few days have been great – we’ve had good weather, the Maclaren boys got a 1,2 at Monaco (yes I did manage to watch it thanks to an early evening nap) and we watched John’s rugby league team, the New Zealand Warriors, get thrashed.  

My big news is that I now have a joint bank account and a joint tenancy – my first joint anything! scary or what? 

Tomorrow I have to fend for myself as John goes back to work. On Friday I’m meeting up with my University friend Marian who has been over here since January. Apparently she lives quite close to where we are living.

Hey – I’m here – I’ve finally made it to Sydney. Just a small number of dramas in the last few days – the main ones being my tennants going AWOL and a powercut at work on my last day prevented me from completing all my work, meaning I had to finish some reports off from home the following week.

Anyway – I’m in Sydney now, dealing with jet lag and receiving plenty of kisses and hugs from John. We are staying in a great hotel right in the centre for the first couple of days.

Yesterday (my first day) we headed out to the apartment John had seen the week before. It seems great, it meets my criteria of having a dishwasher and a bath and shower, and it has a fabulous view over a golf course which gives it a real sense of space. We put in our application and we should hear whether we have got it or not on Tuesday – so we have our fingers crossed. In the afternoon we went out to the western suburbs to meet up with so people John knows and then we headed back to our hotel for some room service and the Australia v Wales game – Wales totally robbed in the last seconds.

Yeah – my conference abstract that I submitted to the 2007 Australasian Evaluation Society Conference has been accepted. The conference is going to be in Melbourne in September.

I can’t decide whether they are really interested in the evaluation of the UK National Diabetes Support Team or are simple accepting anyone from a foreign country so they have an international flavour to the event.

The initial delight has some what faded since I realised how much it’s going to cost me – conference fees (mega expensive when you are personally funding your attendance), flights, hotels and food. Still its got to be a good networking event and I’ll get an international conference on my CV.

My diary is jammed packed with goodbye dinners and drinks with friends – I’m even offering lunchtime slots now to fit everyone in and there are still some requests I’m yet to make arrangements for. It’s really nice that so many of my friends want to say goodbye and wish me well – but I’m getting a little worried about my waistline - I’m going to arrive in Sydney a fat bloater! 

One of the good things about big life changing activities is that they make you sort out the things that you’ve been meaning to do for ages. In January I developed a list of stuff to sort out before I went – the major ones being shutting down two old bank accounts and sorting out a new mortgage deal. I hate going to banks on a Saturday – the queues to see personal bankers are huge, so I decided that it would be worthwhile taking a day of annual leave to get things sorted.

So in early March I took the day off and I went to Lloyds bank and filled in the forms and watched them cut up my cards, and they agreed to transfer my money into my new Nationwide account. I then did exactly the same at Barclays (although this almosted ended up in me being involved in a fight with another customerwho claimed I jumped the queue) and then came home and sorted out a new mortgage deal over the telephone. 

All three companies have messed up! Barclays have shut my account, but my money in it has never reached my new account, Lloyds have sent me no notification that they shut my account, and my suspicions that they hadn’t were confirmed last week whent they sent me a new bank card, and yesterday my mortgage company seem to have failed to have put my new mortgage in place. Therefore, today I’m taking some more leave to essentially repeat all the tasks I did in March – I’m not happy!