The Visa Trifecta

Glad to say that we've completed the Visa Trifecta of Russia, Mongolia and China, picking up our Chinese Visas yesterday.


We posted the Russian and Mongolian visas in - the Russian visa took 9 working days plus 2 days for express postage and the Mongolian visa took 1 working day (!) plus 2 days for express postage.  To get the Chinese visa by post, it was apparently going to take 10 working days (and we only had 10 working days left), so we decided to fill out the forms and book an appointment with their Visa Centre (they've outsourced their visas to a private company), which was quoting 4 working days.  We made an appointment online, rocked up, and were out in 10 minutes - I would highly recommend visiting the Visa Centre if you're in need of a Chinese Visa.  (Pro tip:  Photocopy the photo page of your passport and your Drivers License before you get there, because they need it and the queue for the photocopier is the longest one in the place.)  The best part was seeing that our Australian citizen visas cost half of what it would cost an American citizen to visit - finally, a benefit to being Aussie!

Yesterday was a big day of packing - the second bedroom is empty and clean, the lounge room is mostly empty, the kitchen is half-empty and our bedroom is mostly empty.  We're up to 8 boxes out of the 15 that we were quoted on, and I'm pretty sure we're not going to make 15 - we don't own much stuff now.  On the first day of packing, we filled 5 garbage bag of clothes, 1 garbage bag of shoes and 3 garbage bags of books and gave them to the Smith Family/St Vinnies (Homeless/Disadvantaged collection), so we're definitely living a lot lighter than we were.

Today the plan is to completely finish the packing and get started on the cleaning.  (What a fun way to spend your time off.)

Travel Gaming

Cross-posted from the other blog I contribute to - Unreal Realities.  

Stephen and I are in the process of moving overseas (we’re moving to Toronto, Canada, via the Trans-Mongolian Railway), so in the flurry of packing everything we own into boxes or bags, I haven’t had any time for Middle Earth.  I have, however, been arranging my entertainment for the trip, which I thought y’all might be interested in.

I am a big traveller – I’ve been out of the country every year since I graduated, and I’ve been to some fantastic places and done some brilliant things.  But the thing about travel is, for every great moment there are at least three (probably more) boring ones.  Waiting for planes, trains and buses, travelling on them, hanging around in the hostel or hotel at night – there are plenty of times when the country you’re visiting can’t entertain you.

Meet my Nintendo DS.  We’ve travelled around the world together – he doesn’t get any love while we’re at home, but as soon as it’s time to head off, he’s always spoiled with new games.

This trip, I’m looking for a couple of new games to supplement the Super Mario and Pokemon staples that I always take (Pokemon is hands-down the best time wasting game ever).  Because I only buy new games when I travel, I tend to miss a lot of games, so I take the opportunity to troll the review sites for weeks in advance, hunting for what I’ve missed.  This trip, there are two new games and two fairly old ones that have made my list.  

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4

This was only released a couple of months ago, and is getting rave reviews all over the shop.  The basic premise of the Lego tie-in games (they exist for Batman, Indiana Jones and Star Wars too) is that they build the entire world out of Lego, simplify the story a bit, and throw in some platforming and some puzzles for good measure.  They’re fantastic fun - I’ve played previous Lego games and loved them, and I’m a big fan of Harry Potter, so I’m really looking forward to playing this one.

The Legend of Zelda:  Phantom Hourglass

This one’s a couple of years old – I’ve never actually played a Zelda game, but I was looking for something adventure RPG-esque, so I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

My understanding of Zelda games is that they involve some puzzles, some easy-mode killing of things, and a trip to rescue the Princess.  Ramp tells me that Zelda games involve a lot of travelling, so it might be art imitating life, playing it on the road.  Either way I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Grand Theft Auto:  Chinatown Wars

This one was released last year, and I never picked it up either, but it’s also got some great reviews.  I’ve played other GTA games, and they’re always great fun – stealing cars, completing missions and playing through the story.  Supposedly this version is specialised for and only available on the handhelds (DS, iPhone, PSP), so I’m interested to see what sort of concessions they have to make for the smaller low-res screens and clumsy controls.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

This one looked interesting, but I’m having trouble working out whether it’s aimed at kids or adults.  The review suggested that it was mainly a puzzle-based story game, and I like those, but the graphic style suggests it might be aimed a bit young.  Nevertheless, I think I might pick it up, just for something a bit different.

I’m pretty sure that should be enough to keep me busy not only on the planes, trains and buses, but until we get internet in our new Toronto home as well.  Best of all – the games should be pretty much free!  I’m planning on trading in a bunch of old DS games, plus my Wii and all of its games, so I’m hoping that will cover most of this list.  Here’s hoping!

Are there any other DS gamers out there?  I’d be interested in your recommendations 

Last day of work and a weekend of packing

Friday was our last day of work, and I arrived to find a giant plate of cupcakes on my desk from the wonderful Sarah :)  The day was pretty nice and laid back, and I had time to do a thorough job of cleaning my desk and drawers, dealing with my email, and removing as much of my data from my laptop as possible (I would have just formatted it, but we don't have Administrator rights).  There was even time for a quiet and delicious last-day lunch at the Tilbury Hotel with Sarah and Bec.


And then the countdown was over - no more days of work left, and time to kick into top packing gear.  We've got two packing deadlines at the moment - Monday when the removalists arrive to take away our two boxes and two bike boxes which are going to Toronto, and Friday when the other removalists arrive to take everything else to Bendigo.  


Our real estate agent had somewhat annoyingly organised an open-house for the unit at 10am Saturday morning, which required a bit of work to pull off as the house was full of half-empty boxes.  It's always infuriating having a bunch of strangers invade your house and touch your personal belongings without any rights to stop it (the most annoying part is when people put their keys on the table - stop scratching my table!).  We made it through without yelling at anyone, and we'll be out by next Saturday, so nothing further to worry about there.

We were looking at the two huge boxes that we can take to Toronto and wondering how we were going to fill them (when we booked it, I thought they would be half the size), when we hit on the idea of taking a doona with us.  I had a vague memory from my years as a checkout chick of people buying "space saving" bags that you can vacuum the air out of to make things take up a smaller space, so we headed out to Big W to purchase some.  After using them, I'm a bit dubious - instead of squishy, moldable clothes and doonas that you could squash things up against, we ended up with two giant bricks that had no give in them at all.  Oh well.  The idea had merit!

It was a busy weekend - every minute has been spent packing or visiting people and giving them things - and we decided to go for a walk to the shops to chill out for a bit and enjoy the beautiful day.  This is the best time of year to be in Sydney - the days are warm but not hot, the sun is up early and shines brightly all day and it hardly every rains.  Sydney can really turn it on when it wants to - the harbour is so beautiful.  I think we'll really miss it when we're in Toronto.  


We met our weekend goal - the boxes are all ready to go to Canada.  Now it's time for our Farewell Raid with our World of Warcraft team.  Go Pirates!

Paladin Vicki, Defeater of Stress

I don't deal well with waiting - I like action, getting stuff done, attacking the source of the stress to defeat it, cut off its head and wave it around triumphantly.  Stephen and I have both felt like we've been just marking time for the last couple of months - going to work everyday with everyone knowing we were leaving (quack quack), unable to start packing or really doing anything because it was too early.  Three giant, evil, fire-breathing sources of stress looming, and all we could do was wait.  Argh!  
When we were originally planning the trip, we thought that a two week break between finishing work and leaving the country was more than adequate - I think we'd both imagined ourselves having picnic lunches and playing computer games most of the day, having a nice relaxing break.  


Yesterday, on my second last day of work, I had to draw up a calendar to work out how to fit everything in before we leave.  Two sets of removalists (one moving a few boxes to Toronto, one moving everything else to a storage container in Bendigo), my family on the Sunshine Coast to visit, driving Stephen's car down to Melbourne, organising the remaining holiday visa (China), plus packing everything we own into boxes, cleaning and vacating our unit in Sydney, and the assorted Doctors visits and other joys of overseas travel.  And somewhere in there we need to find time to catch up with friends before we leave.  Plenty of stress there.


Holidays are great fun, but there's always a bit of anticipatory stress there as well.  The Trans-Mongolian trip goes through three countries with very different cultures to ours.  They use different alphabets to write their different languages - no way of attempting to say the words and hoping someone understands you.  Rumour has it that their English is pretty much non-existent.  And their governments are terrifying.  Plenty to stress about there as well.  


Finally, there's the stress about what happens when we get to Toronto - will the visa be ok, what if we don't find jobs, how do we find a place to live, what's it going to be like, are we going to freeze to death.  


Today's our last day of work, and it's finally time for action - time to defeat the first source of stress by getting everything packed, cleaned and organised before it's time to go.  Now where did I put that sword?  

The Stupid Way Around

Initially, our plan was to go straight from Sydney to Toronto.  Somewhere along the line, Stephen picked up the idea of going on the Trans-Mongolian Railway on the way there.  


The Trans-Mongolian route is from St Petersburg in Russia, across most of Russia before heading south to Mongolia and finally ending in Beijing in China.  We didn't really think at the time that the trains would have to go the other way as well.  


Looking at the map of the trip now, it looks a little stupid.  

We're flying from Melbourne over the entire route of the train to St Petersburg, to begin the train journey.  Once we get to Beijing, we can wave to Australia on our way past on the flight to Toronto.  


D'oh.

The Blog

Hello there!  If you've reached this page, you probably know that Stephen and Vicki are embarking on a grand journey to Toronto, Canada (via the Trans-Mongolian Railway), to see what it's like to live in a colder climate for a while (and learn what it's all aboot too).  


I was tossing up whether or not to blog during the trip, but Stephen informed me a couple of days ago that he'd been promising people that we would be blogging.  I'm guessing it was the Royal "We", because Stephen has never written a blog post in his life.  I'll be trying to get him to contribute - some people have mentioned a photo blog, which might be interesting.  We'll see how I go.