Konichiwaaaa !! I'm back to Steemit after a year of hiatus :D

It has been an eventful year long journey for me from June 2018 up till now ;)

Stuffs that happened to me in summary was:

1. Secured a permanent professional job in Sydney
2. Bought a 2nd hand car (Toyota Yaris)
3. Drove to Sydney from Melbourne
4. Passed my job probation period
5. Had my car plate stolen (LOL !!!)
6. Got married (just ROM stage for now)
7. Bought a uber high spec gaming PC (RTX 2080 and Acer Predator X34P yo !!)
8. Became an SME (subject matter expert) in my team
9. Hit 1 year anniversary on my job just last Tuesday 9th July 2019

So yeah, above is an oversimpification of what i've been through :) I intend to write my blog on Steemit as my diary in a public space. I imagine I would come back and re-read my posts when my hair is all white and recall all these memories.

Soooooooooooooooooo..... without further ado.. lets start from the beginning of June 2018 where I left off

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Above is just some random picture I found in my drive. It is the blue mountains in case you are wondering ;)

So in my previous post, I was complaining about my housemate back in Melbourne about how manipulative he is. About 2 weeks before I start my first job in Aussie (yayyyy!!!) I moved out of the house and drove to Sydney via Hume Freeway. I made a pit stop at Wagga Wagga (god I love this name) and spent a night there. I journeyed out 2 weeks earlier because I could not stand being in the house another moment with that dude (each and every single brain cells in my head screamed to get away from him ASAP). I will explain why I made the right decision later.

So.. the drive to Sydney was awesome !! but too bad I did not stop to take a picture of the surroundings. But I guarantee the view throughout the 7-9 hours journey is as beautiful as this :D

Credit to Elders Real Estate

Made a pit stop in Wagga Wagga which is halfway (4.5 hours) between Melbourne and Sydney and stayed a night in a motel. I couldn't handle 9 hours drive continuously. I recall not much sight seeing area in Wagga Wagga or maybe I was just too dead tired to explore. So I camped in the motel, blast the heater (it was winter) and played Diablo 3 on my laptop. I think it was some season journey and I started a character from scratch.

All the driving made me worried my car is not gonna make it, but alas it got me to my destination just fine :D

When I reach Sydney, I immediately drove to my new rental place. It was a room (big, comfortable, and fully furnished) which were recommended by my friend (my wife's aunt's friend at the time). The house was huge at over 900m2 !! OMG!! I stay with my landlord's family (just her and her son). Their name is Becky and William. Very nice people :)

In the 2 weeks before I start my new job, I explored around Sydney. First stop was the suburb around my new workplace (North Sydney) and then I made my way to Circular Quay where the famous and iconic Sydney Opera House is located :D Not to mention.. the harbour bridge is there as well.

The weather was rather gloomy on that day, but it was awesome :) about 1 hour after this picture was taken, the weather improved and the sun showed up. A word of advice about the sun in Sydney, best to apply sunblock when you are here. The sun ray burns the skin >.< I heard there is an ozone hole nearby and the occurrence of skin cancer in Australia is rather high.

After I'm done with Circular Quay, I head to Manly on the next day. So Manly has a lookout area which overlooks the Tasman Sea. It is about 1 hour journey by public transport if my memory serves me right.

Maybe I will post that in my next diary post :) There are lots of pictures I want to post too, and the above 3 pictures doesn't serve it right. I need to copy the pictures out from my phone. Right now it is unbearably slow to load >.<

Fast forward to 09/07/2019, I start my first new job in Sydney :D as all typical newstarter, I wore my formal office attire clothes to work hahaha. First day was nerve wrecking. Everything was new to me, new people, new environment, first time in a foreign office, and soooo many people introduced themselves to me that I could not remember most of their names >.< the awkward moment when I could not remember my neighbours name hahaha.

I started as a Databse Analyst in a credit bureau company (Equifax, formerly Veda) where my typical job is

• Prepare data quality report on a regular basis.
• Scope for ways to improve the core data asset coverage and quality.
• Address customers complaints when there is a discrepancies in their credit file, investigate, and fix the issue.
• Scope for ways to improve data match rates and implement the solutions.

Technical skills that are heavily used are T-SQL and Tableau. I was rather green in these 2 areas because they are seldom used in my previous job. I felt like I graduated from kindergarten straight to high school in these 2 fields right now. Aside from these 2 skills, I also picked up Python for text formatting along the way.

I observed lots of growth in my skills over the past year, and I am truly very thankful for the managers and recruiter who chose me for this job :D

About 2 - 3 weeks into my job, I contacted my previous roomate in Melbourne (I called him Voldemort in my previous post) because the house lease is almost up, and we need to settle the handover to the landlord and reclaim our 5 weeks bond money.

Sooooooooo..... drama happens here. I not sure what has gotten into him and his manner of speaking totally pissed me off.

Before I left, I helped clean the house, trimmed the grasses in front and backyard, fixed a high positioned cupboard by myself (almost sprained my back while doing so) just so he wouldn't need to do all that when he leaves. Me feeling guilty for leaving the house cleaning entirely to him partly contributed too.

After I'm done with all those, I cannot imagine what else he needed to do besides packing and disposing the rubbish. It is fairly easily done in Australia because the town council would give 2-3 times free large rubbish removal service to every household every year. All you need to do is go online, schedule a pickup service, and dump all the stuffs (bed, bedframe, couch, cupboard etc.) infront the house a day prior to the scheduled date so the remover could pick them up and dispose of them. All the heavy stuffs I helped him move to the garage before I left. What is left is just to shift those stuffs (broken bedframe) about 5 meters from the garage into the front yard.

For some reason the drama queen Voldemort went all emotional on me when I contacted him. He kept insisting we call our previous 3rd tenant (who ran away with 1-2 months rent owing us and dumped his kingsize bed in our house) and get him to move the bedframe 5 meters from the garage into the front yard. At this point, I was like WTF!?!?!

First, he knows the 3rd tenant (Gerard) is all the way in Queensland. Second, we all know he will never ever come back because he owes us 1-2 months rent. And then he goes all emotional and not wanting Gerard to be irresponsible and Voldemort will not move the bedframe for him. At this point I panicked, the house lease end date is almost due and he decides to play this game. So not wanting to play into his game, I gave him 3 choice:

1. I pay him $50 dollars to move the bedframe 5 meters out into the front yard from the garage
2. He moves the bedframe 5 meters out into the front yard from the garage as he should be doing
3. He opens the garage door on Saturday morning, and I will fly back to Melbourne from Sydney, move the bedrame 5 meters out into the front yard, and I go back to Sydney.

He could not give me a clear answer as to which choice he wants, and laments not letting Gerard off that easily. I kept insisting I do not want to play this game and please settle this as the lease end date is drawing closer. All he needed to do was drag the dismantled bedframe 5 meters out into the front yard. As I kept firm and persisting on getting it done, he kept insisting on not letting Gerard off the hook, keep calling his phone until he picks up. In my mind, what will this solve? Gerard is obviously avoiding us, and I cannot believe he wants to play this game at this time. Among the last words I said at the time was to keep emotions out of this and settle the rubbish pickup, to which he replied "you don't care about emotions, I do, go on with your life young man..... I will do what the hokkien people say, Ki Siao. So will be ki siao and clean the house". At this point I go totally WTF and just said "please make up your mind about the 3 choices I gave you, and please stop playing the victim". The conversation ended there and that was the last time I heard of him.

At the time, I felt it was a miracle I could live with this dude for over 3 months.

Just thinking back how negative he was, and all those emotional manipulation he did to me in the 3 months of living together still irks me to this day. I vividly remembered a few days before I moved out, he said this to my face "I wish you never had gotten the job in Sydney". I was like WTF!?!?

Anyway, i'm stopping my rant here. I've been trying to figure out some way to forgive this guy and forget about this incident. Hopefully in the future I read this, I could go like.. what a dumbass I was hahahaha :D

I'm stopping my journal of the day here :) next I will write more in detail about my exploration around Sydney, my work, personal life etc. I noticed I can't do it all in 1 single post :D

ADIOUS until next week on my next diary entry !!