Important update: when life doesn’t go as planned

Hi everyone,

Just an important update before we leave for Bali this Friday. Suddenly our plans are changed a lot, something we really didn’t expect or saw coming. We drastically had to change everything and our future suddenly looks very different. In our previous update we were really sure of our plans, and it would all happen, but at the moment everything is different.

You might have guessed it already: the company we were supposed to get a sponsorship from totally screwed us. As told in our previous update, Bram was as good as hired and if all went well, they would even offer him the sponsorship. Bram has been in touch with them for almost a year and the boss told him he would like to offer him the job, but they didn’t have enough orders at the moment. Now those orders were finally in and so it was obvious that the boss wanted to hire Bram.
Agreements were made, and Bram only had to have a chat with the second boss, to see if he would fit in the team. Afterwards this man would discuss it with the boss. Everything will be allright, they said. The boss even told Bram he would offer him the job if he fits in the team. Manon already lost hope, after being in touch for so long, and we were both a bit reluctant, but if the boss is so sure about his case, and almost promises it, then it makes you feel like it really will happen this time!

Until Bram had the chat with the second boss and the weeks after that passed by, without Bram being able to work. It took a long time before the bosses finally discussed his case. The company was really busy, so you would say that they would hire someone rather sooner than later. Never the less, everything was still unclear and Bram called them almost every single day for 3 weeks in a row to ask if they could tell him more! But every time they had another excuse why they didn’t discussed the case yet, and so they couldn’t provide us an answer. Meanwhile, we really needed to know it by now, because we needed to arrange a lot.

Eventually the boss just had to give Bram an answer, and they had a chat on the phone. This was on Friday, August 18th. They finally discussed if they wanted to hire Bram, and they thought he would fit in the team. So far so good. BUT… then the boss casually told him they had decided that they didn’t need an engineer at the moment, but that they’d rather hire a project manager!! WHAT?! Of course Bram told them that he was interested to work as a project manager, but they wanted someone with a lot of experience. WTF, after all those agreements and promises, while we were waiting for an answer for weeks, they decided that they didn’t need him anymore?! Exactly, they couldn’t offer him a job at the moment. We were shocked, and for a moment we didn’t know what to do. We really did not expect this… Of course we were angry at the company, because all the past time we had been in touch was f*cking wasted.
Cheerful they said: maybe we have some work after you come back from Bali, or in December maybe, because we might get another order in… and that’s exactly how it has been going since December already! Yeah RIGHT, nice try! They won’t fool us anymore!

So what to do next? As uncertain as things were before the job offer, so uncertain it was again! We just felt really fooled, but fortunately we will never feel down for a long time. Immediately after we heard this news we said to each other: well, then we will go to New Zealand!
At that time, we were at least happy that we finally had an answer. And even though the news was a setback, at least we knew what we were up to now! Because living in uncertainty for all those weeks felt a million times worse. So after being quite angry for a while, we felt kind of relieved after this news! We now know for sure that we can’t stay in Australia, so we have an awesome backup plan: New Zealand!

Secretly, all this time we liked this plan a lot more than staying in Perth. It is time to move on and travel a bit again! We were already focusing on NZ before, but when the company told us they needed a mechanical engineer, the best thing to do was to stay in Perth. So we at that point we were focusing on Perth again, and then it changed all over AGAIN! But to be honest, we don’t mind this change at all…

And that’s how it could happen over here. Agreements are not always held, and sometimes they will keep you on a string. It’s not the first company that does it like that to us… so why didn’t we saw it coming this time? Maybe because we had to much faith in them, and because we always like to see the best in people. And besides that, the boss sounded so sure of his case, that you won’t expect that when it’s all about to happen, they just dump you so easily! How can you play with someones feelings like this? We don’t get it. We’re sick of the mentality over here, and therefore we are happy to continue our journey!

But there is no need to continue being angry. We want to look forward. There is a new adventure awaiting! In the end, it just had to be this way. It wasn’t meant for us to stay longer in Australia, so we’ll go further. Such a setback is never fun, so you better forget about it quickly.

So: we are going to New Zealand! Our Australian visa ends on the 8th of November, and we decided to leave on the 5th of November. In the meantime we will first visit Bali this Friday until the 25th of September. Afterwards we will work a bit more at the cleaning job and Bram at the camper rental company. Meanwhile, we want to visit everything that we haven’t visited in the area of Perth yet, and of course we will have to sell our ride.

We will arrive in NZ on a Working Holiday Visa, which has already been approved! The WHV over there is almost the same as in Australia: you can work and travel in NZ for 1 year. It will give us endless opportunities! Ideally, Bram is going to try to find a job as a Mechanical Engineer, but we won’t go trough the same trouble like we did over here, in case it will not work out! In that case we  will just look for an easy job, and that’s fine too. Manon won’t be able to work in childcare anyway, because her Australian assessment won’t be valid over there. And thinking of going trough the whole process of an assessment again… nope, we are not up for that!
We really learned from our Australian adventure, and we won’t make the same mistakes in NZ. It was a nice try, but sadly it did not work out. So in New Zealand, we will really enjoy the country and we’ll make sure it’s going to be a whole lot more relaxed! We will get more freedom, back to the original purpose of this trip!

And after New Zealand? No idea yet. We still want to explore the Aussie west coast and the north part a bit more, so there is a good chance we will come back here, on a Tourist Visa. And after that, we hopefully can really continue our journey through the Pacific and to South America!

For now we are going to enjoy our Bali holiday first and we’ll PROMISE you (and we do keep that promise :P) that there will be some happy updates next!

Let’s find some new adventures!

Love from us!

As much as you want to plan your life, it has a way of surprising you with unexpected things that will make you happier than you originally planned

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