Vash the Stampede

I don't know how it's happened, but 12 months have flashed past in the blink of an eye!

Here follows a brief update of our first year in Adelaide.

sonlymewalter

where

Vash the Stampede

Oh good, I can get on with my thread now.

AT LAST.

Wendy

Has it been that long already!! Where did the time go!

Vash the Stampede

So anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the pre-moderation feature...

It's been an interesting year. Plenty of ups and downs, with the ups slightly edging out the downs.

From November 2009-February 2010 I worked as a sales and marketing rep for my friend's insulation company. I also trained as a home sustainability assessor so that I'd have a backup job when the insulation rebate ended.

Unfortunately the home sustainability assessment scheme was shelved almost immediately after the death of the insulation rebate. This meant that not only was I jobless; I was also $600 out of pocket for my HSA training, which was now completely redundant. (THANKS LABOR, I LOVE YOU TOO!)

The government offered me some free training as a sort of consolation prize, so I picked up a Certificate III in Business, which I completed in 5 weeks under an accelerated study programme run by Excel.

To pass the time while I looked for a new job, I worked as a volunteer at a little cafe ("Mustard Seed") which I had helped to set up with a bunch of mates from my local church community. Next time you're in Adelaide and feeling peckish, why not wander down to 393 King William Street and check it out?

Vash the Stampede

July and August were very tough months; money was tight and we were staring down the barrel of a heavily loaded credit card.

I am a small man with chronic arthritis who has spent most of his working life in airconditioned offices lifting nothing heavier than a cheap biro, but for the sake of our mortgage I bit the bullet and took a couple of labouring jobs to get us through the worst.

The first of these jobs was a three week stretch working as an offsider for a friend of mine who has a delivery contract with Radio Rentals. This involved 5:30am starts and a full day of lifting heavy furniture. It was hard yakka, but the pay was good and my mate was a fair boss.

The second was a gruelling 4 weeks working as a stock controller in the Super A-Mart warehouse at Gepps Cross. This involved 6-day weeks on a rotating shift. It was very hard yakka, and the pay was rubbish (minimum wage). I resigned a month later on the advice of my GP, who told me that if I wanted to aggravate my arthritis to critical levels and cause permanent damage to my spine, I was going the right way about it.

Centrelink was very understanding about this, and I was straight back onto Newstart within a week.

sonlymewalter

that's better

Vash the Stampede

It was around this time that I decided it might be a good idea to go back to university and get a degree. I had left uni in 1999 after getting a job with Australia Post, bought a house the following year, and never looked back. But I'd always regretted not completing my studies.

In September I applied to a local university college, attended a brief interview, and received a formal letter of acceptance two days later. My first semester starts in February 2011 and I will be given credit for previous study, which should knock ~6 months off my coursework.

By a happy coincidence, I was offered a part time admin job less than two weeks ago; it's a temporary 3-month contract, finishing in February 2011 (just before uni starts). This has come as a very welcome relief, since it means we won't have to worry about money during Christmas and New Year.

Meanwhile, Mrs Stampede is in the process of completing her teacher's registration, so she'll be able to work as soon as she's ready, and might even pick up some relief teaching in the next couple of years.

Sherlock Holmes

What will you be studying?

Vash the Stampede

A Bachelor of Theology, with a major in Christian history and a minor in theology. It will qualify me to teach at TAFE level, but my long term plan is to get a Master's degree and become a uni lecturer.

Sherlock Holmes

Very interesting. When I was at school (many years ago) it was very go ahead and the agnostics among us were allowed to study comparative religion rather than straight R.E.

I still like Dave Allen's parting shot, "May your god go with you"

I guess we all have one somewhere.

Vash the Stampede

Due to my extended periods of unemployment, we've occasionally struggled with the cost of living - but there are still a few roundabouts to offset the swings.

We are fortunate to have a low mortgage, and can usually cover it with our combined Centrelink payments.

Our council tax is much cheaper than it was in the UK, but our water costs a lot more.

For hot water we have a heap pump (which runs on the off-peak tariff but can be switched to peak power when the weather is cold), but electric heaters chew up the cash like nobody's business. We would have killed for double glazing and gas central heating this year! New roof insulation will be a priority for 2011.

Cooling the house is much cheaper than heating it. Last summer we installed a 6-star energy rated reverse cycle airconditioner in our bedroom, which costs very little to run. I think we would have died without it, and it will definitely save our lives again this summer.

We buy our groceries via [url=www.colesonline.com.au]Coles Online[/url because it's quick, convenient, saves us running around a crowded shopping centre, and prevents impulse buying. Our budget is ~$320 for two weeks' worth of shopping. Occasionally we get some freebies in our delivery, and sometimes we receive non-freebie items we didn't order (the drivers always tell us to keep them, on the grounds that "If it's in your box, it belongs to you").

Vash the Stampede

I was granted exemption from RE when I was a kid (it never interested me), and chose to study comparative religion in Year 11.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state; government schools should only ever teach comparative religion (never RE), while religious private schools should be free to teach their own RE curriculum, provided that they also offer comparative religion.

Vash the Stampede

A couple of months ago, my mother and her husband came round to our place and spent the afternoon creating a vegetable garden to help us become more self-sufficient:







We grow spinach, carrots, parsley, spring onions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I usually forget about until it ends up on my plate. We also have a grapevine at the rear of our garden, which produces luscious dark grapes during summer.

Another practical garden project was the resurrection of the compost patch in the far corner of our property:

Sherlock Holmes

I have done the roof insulation. I have used secondary glazing and did it as we could afford it, one room at a time. We only use our heat pump on off peak and find it does just fine even when very cold.

I also installed central heating. It can be done here! It took some digging though to find a company to supply it.