Back in Australia!

 On 12 August 1999, with a roaring hangover, I boarded an Ansett flight to Osaka via Sydney. It was the first time I had left Australia. While I would come back for holidays, it would be 23 years before I returned for good. When I left, I had two bags that weighed 35kg in total and a backpack that was 10 kg. Essentially all my worldly possessions save a couple of small(ish) boxes of stuff at mum and dad’s. On my return, I have a whole family and between the four of us, about 12 cubic meters of stuff. Including a swimming pool!

Moving to Australia brought the question of ‘home’ into sharp focus. Having lived overseas for more than 20 years, the idea of home is kind of complicated. I had an article published in a magazine in Singapore about this question. As I conclude in the article, Melbourne is now home for us. Which is great because Melbourne is a great city and we fortunately live in a lovely part of town. 

Moving was a pretty big deal. We all came down to Melbourne in late March and moved into our new house (perused and applied for completely online with only photographs and video to go on). Unusually, the real estate photographer did a good job of making the place look smaller than it actually is. Given the rental market in Melbourne, we were quite fortunate to get this place. We were also super fortunate to have people around us to help. Bruce and Christine (friends from our time in Singapore) picked up our keys and passed them on the mum and dad who came down to meet our furniture deliveries. Mel’s mum and dad also came over from NZ to help out after I left.

With 4 months left on my contract, I returned to Singapore to tidy up our house and get rid of stuff. This was a really tough time for us all. 

*UPDATE*

I'm so crap at blogging! I started this post last year some time. Anyhoo, it has been two full years since we moved to Melbourne. It has been challenging but I think we are reasonably well settled. Mel has started a new job as IBDP co-ordinator at MLC which just down the road from my school. Matilda has started Year 7 at Auburn High School, which is just down the road from our house. She was quite chuffed to be accepted into their SEAL programme. This is an accelerated learning programme for Years 7 to 9. Flynn is now in Year 2 at Auburn South Primary School, which is across the road from Matilda's school. Although he is well settled at school, he still thinks of himself as Singaporean.

And the Madness ends!

Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary. We actually celebrated a couple of weeks ago when Mel's mum was visiting. We had a really nice staycation at the Shangri La. When I was explaining to Matilda that Mel and I would be staying away for the night to celebrate our wedding anniversary, her response was "I wanna come too! I've never been to a wedding before!" I explained that it wasn't an actual wedding but celebrating the day we were married. I suggested that we go out for lunch on the actual day to celebrate. And yesterday was that day and we had lunch at one of our favourite restaurants.

And so to the "Madness". This past 18 months has been the crazy busiest time I have known. It started just before we broke up for the Christmas holidays in 2015 when Mel said "I'm going out at lunchtime but I'll be back". I though "ok, whatever. You go out for lunch every Friday". I didn't think much more about it until I was walking to class after lunch. I ran into Mel on my way and she said "we need to talk". It sounded serious and I was immediately thinking about would could be wrong. We walked into Mel's classroom and she held out something in her hand. As I got closer, I could see it was a pregnancy tester. And it was pink! I looked up and said "fuck!" We had a quick chat but class was starting so I had to go. As I walked into class, all I could hear in my mind was "Fuck! What the fuck? Holy shit!" etc.. You get the general idea. I assume this was all in my mind because no-one said "oi, stop swearing!"

Anyhow, it took a while for us to get used to the idea of another baby. The last trimester was pretty difficult for Mel (and we would find out later that she developed hernia at this time). As usual, the last few weeks of term was manicly busy and this was compounded by having to pack our gear to move out of our apartment. We didn't want to move but our landlords (who live next door) wanted their parents to move in. They were very good about it and luckily we were to take over the lease on an apartment close to school from a colleague who was leaving Singapore . The building we moved to is literally a 5 minute walk to school and, as it was built in the 1980s, is very spacious. We have two great balconies; one looking over a forested area with loads of bird life and the other looking due west so we regularly see magnificent sunsets. And the moon as well:)

Once school finished, we had to finish packing before we headed to Bali for a week or so to recharge. The original plan was to go in early July to meet up with Mel's mum & dad and her sister & family. But with Flynn due for late July those plans had to be revised and we went as soon as we could. The timing wasn't fantastic as the day after we got back was moving day! It was a nice holiday though and it was cool to watch Matilda release a turtle hatchling back into the ocean.

After moving, we started to get ourselves unpacked and sorted. It was a slowish process as Mel was struggling a bit. And of course, by the end of July our little guy was ready to put in an appearance. Mel and I headed to the hospital on the evening of 31 July. After lots of hard work from Mel, Flynn showed up around 1:50am on 1 August. We were very lucky to have Mel's mum staying with us for a few weeks, which made the transition a little easier. Especially for Matilda. Flynn's arrival meant that I missed the first couple of days at school. In some ways it was good as I didn't have to sit through dry, boring stuff. It did mean that I was a little bit behind where I wanted to be in terms of preparation. Oh well.

This year at school was busy as usual, but different because of the broken sleep for first term. It was a bit of a struggle at times but once we were home from Bali after the October holidays, Flynn settled into a nice sleep routine and Mel and I started to catch up on our missed sleep. Our trip to Bali ended up being good after a rocky start. We had booked a villa on Air BnB. When we arrived we found the place not really matching the photos. The place was tired looking and there was mould on the curtains and underneath the wall paper. The bathroom basin drained straight on to the floor which was really dangerous. The place was generally not clean and there was a wasp nest in the kitchen area. The pool was nice though and if it had been Mel & I by ourselves, we might have stayed. But with two little kids it wasn't ok.

We got in touch with the owner with no success. We had to go through AirBnB's conflict resolution process and I have to say they were really helpful and we ended getting our money back less the one night we stayed at the place. Luckily there was a decent hotel across the road so we spent two nights there before we found another villa that was more honest. The last four days were reasonably relaxing which was cool.

Although not doing as much travelling for school this year, I still got to Saigon for a very cool conference on IT in education, Hong Kong for an IB workshop and of course my trip to Bali with the Year 10 Geographers. These were all cool, but it's always hard to be away from Mel, Matilda and Flynn. We managed some family trips too, getting to Bali in October, NZ for Christmas and Penang in March.

Adding to the 'madness' was my decision to start an MEd. programme through Waikato University. The course is offered through the uni's Centre for Global Studies in Education. The people in charge are former Geography teachers and the course, while not Geography focused, definitely has a geographic slant to it, which is what made it attractive to me. It started really well and I got an 'A' for my first assignment. The second half was more challenging in terms of trying to pay enough attention while still managing all the school stuff and spending time with Mel & the kids. I found it quite a struggle over the last few weeks. I got there in the end but I'm not sure about my grade:(

It was so cool to wake up this morning and not have to got to school. Both Flynn and Matilda slept well and it was around 8am when we woke up. Not a massive sleep in, but as anyone with young kids would agree, pretty nice:) We have about seven weeks off now. We'll be hitting Bali in early July to meet up with Mel's mum & dad and her sister's family. Towards the end of July we'll in Saigon for a couple nights before 6 days on the beach near Hoi An. Really looking forward to both trips, as well as just hanging out at home.

Ciao!