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Life in Sydney
I think it’s finally safe to say…we’ve settled in to daily life in Sydney. We’ve lived here for 7 months now (landed on Oct 17 2014), so you might say “well yeah, of course you’ve settled in”, but here’s what the first 5 months of our time in Sydney looked like: Land in Sydney and move into temp housing After 2 weeks we switch temp housing Pam goes to Korea for a week for work and the day after she comes back… We find a permanent apartment and the day after that… Nick goes back to Ottawa for 3 weeks and the day after he comes back… We move into our permanent…
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Favourite Sydney Walks (so far)
Sydney is a stunningly beautiful place and one of the best ways that Nick and I have found to explore it has been via the many walks Sydney has to offer. We thought we would share some of our favourites! For reference, here’s a list of the ten best coastal walks in Sydney from Concrete Playground, which we use as inspiration. Spit Bridge to Manly Cove This is our definite favourite of the walks we’ve done. It’s a decent workout (10km with some ups and downs), it’s fun (at high tide you might have to swim part of the trail near Forty Baskets beach, or take a pretty significant stairway…we…
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Chinese New Year & Lunar New Year
Happy new year! Nick and I celebrated Chinese/Lunar New Year in style this year in Sydney, which seems to celebrate everything in style! First, there were fireworks to kick off the two weeks of celebrations for the New Year. I went with some friends – Nick missed out on this one as he was stuck at home with a very bad cold. However, the following week he was back to himself and we spent the day wandering around the festival in Darling Park… After riding the merry-go-around (we asked, and the woman selling tickets assured us that we can never be too old!), it was off for dinner at Din Tai…
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A Place To Call Home
One of the first big challenges in any new city is trying to find a place to live. Not only do you have to choose a neighbourhood with little to no knowledge about the available choices, but every city seems to have different “rules” about apartment hunting, rental applications, rent payments, etc. Because we relocated for work, we were able to use the services of a local agent who specialises in helping relocating people with all of the above challenges and more. During one of the first conversations we had with her via Skype while we still lived in California, she asked us to describe the type of place we would…
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First Days in Sydney, part 1 (Beaches & Wildlife)
Well, we’ve now been living in Sydney for a few months – we arrived on Oct 17 and it’s now Jan 10 – and I think it’s about time for a quick photo-heavy post about our first experiences in this amazing city. Instead of going through as a timeline, I’ve grouped under major headers/experiences… BEACHES (of course) One of the first things we did was check out Bondi Beach, which if you did not know is a fairly famous beach just east of Sydney (technically it’s part of Sydney, but the suburb is called Bondi Beach). We arrived fairly early (well, for a Saturday) and had brunch overlooking the beach, which is stunning-…
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Wrights in Oz!
Hello from sunny Sydney!! How fitting that the first line of my previous post is “All good things must come to an end”… Nick and I had no idea while we were on our road trip through SoCal that in just a few short months we would be gone from San Jose and living on the complete other side of the world. We were set to stay in San Jose for at least another three years, and maybe even longer. We had even kicked off the process to apply for permanent residency (green cards)! However, in late summer, I learned of an incredible career opportunity, still with Adobe, but in Sydney,…