As of last week, I’m officially an Australian resident. I woke up last Monday to an email from the Dept. of Immigration informing me that I’d been granted permanent residency.

I had applied last August, and had heard nothing for months as my application sat in the queue. An email in February asked me to go and get a medical checkup and a police certificate from Ireland, so I got that organised last month when I arrived in Vancouver, submitting the police cert last Friday week. Three days later, I got the email so it’s all good now and I can forget about Government paperwork for a loooooong time.

In other news, we got ourselves a shitbox car on Thursday, so we’re now mobile. $850 for a Ford Tempo sedan with 215,000km on the clock and badly faded paint. Still, it goes well and it only has to last us six months or so. Our concierge gave us the wrong number parking spot, so when we came down to get the car on Friday, it was gone. Another resident had come home to find us parked in his spot and we’d been towed. $120 to get the car back too! Hopefully we can get the body corporate to refund us for their error!