Introducing

I would like to introduce everyone to our new friends Marc and Alana. I mentioned them briefly before as the couple who invited us out to dinner, but we ended up having to leave because Kane was sunburn-sick (for those that are blog followers). Since then, we have hung out with them multiple times and they are both very cool. Marc is a Kiwi (New Zealander) who does web design for a company that his parents own. Alana is a native Minneapolis-ian (?) who has lived in NZ for the past three years before coming to Melbourne with Marc almost a year ago. As they are our best (and pretty much only) friends here, I will likely mention them again in the future. So, everyone, meet Marc and Alana, they are very cool.

On a different topic, we're into month three of our stay here, and therefore approaching the final third of our allowable stay on our visa. After three months in the country on a travel visa, you have to leave the country and when/if you come back, you get another three months. This can continue for a year. We were intending on having jobs by now which would have hypothetically sponsored us for work visas that would allow us to stay for up to four years. Those of you who have been in contact with one or both of us know that it has not been as easy as we had thought/hoped.

The easy way to get a job in Australia is to go to a recruiter. These are middle-man firms that match up employees with employers and take a fee from both to do so. It doesn't sound so bad except that it is not uncommon for these businesses to take 15-18% of your negotiated salary for the first 6 months! That is like thousands of dollars! So, we've been trying to do without these people, and figure that this much time with no income is better than giving a bunch of money to them. It's been relaxing at least, if not boring, not to have a job for a while.

So, we've been looking up companies online, getting references from people we meet, etc. Kane called a place Monday to ask about a Mechanical Engineering job that they were advertising on their website. Once they heard that he had done structural work, the woman indicated how they were really hurting for structural engineers, so Kane sent both of our resumes over. Their immigration lawyer called us later that day to ask about our visa situation. So that's promising, but we'll have to see how it works out. I don't know if they are willing to go through the hoops of sponsoring us for a visa, but we'll see.

Next week we will start looking for tickets to New Zealand if we haven't heard from that company- yeay, a forced vacation. Until then, we'll just have to see what happens...