Matt and Kat Brown

Yes, only three sleeps to go until we fly out of New Zealand!!!

Matt and I have been busy these last few days packing up and making final preparations. The adventure starts soon and the reality is just starting to kick in. I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again… I’m feeling excited and eager to start the traveling but this is also twinged with sadness at leaving all our family and friends behind in New Zealand.

We leave Auckland Airport on Saturday afternoon and will be traveling from there to Malaysia where we spend two weeks with my Dad and my extended family. It will be great spend time with the family there and to introduce Matt to the family and the sights, sounds and tastes of Malaysia!  From Malaysia we fly to Singapore for a few days of sightseeing, Dubai for one day and London for five days. We finally arrive in Dublin on April 22nd.

With our new digital camera (canon ixus 65) I’m sure we’ll be taking plenty of snapshots along the way. We’ll share all our travel pics with you in the photo gallery so keep an eye out for them here.

I’ve accepted a job with Google and we’re shifting to Dublin!

Back in January, Kat and I decided that it was about time we put thoughts into action, and booked some one-way plane tickets to get ourselves to Europe. Our plan is to spend at least a couple of years (more if I have my way) exploring the other side of the world and generally broadening our horizons.

We leave NZ on the 31st of March flying on Emirates to Singapore. We plan to spend a couple of weeks in Malaysia visiting some of Kat’s extended family (who I’ve never met), followed by 3 nights in Singapore, a night in Dubai, finally ending up in London at Heathrow Airport on the 17th of April.

Soon after we booked the flights I started applying for Jobs in Europe, as the prospect of converting NZD to EUR or GBP to live on is not at all attractive. I was immediately rejected by the first place I applied to (Data Connection) because I didn’t have straight A-grades in high school! (The recruiter said they didn’t even bother to look at my University Degree!). Luckily that wasn’t the only job that I had applied for!

A day or two after hearing back from Data Connection, I received a call from one of the Google recruiters in Dublin, following up on the CV that I’d sent through via their website a week or two earlier. The rest, as they say, is history. I had a couple of phone interviews, followed by a whistle stop trip to Dublin (photos here) for 4 hours of onsite interviews, a week or two of waiting and finally an offer.

I’ve just accepted the offer, and sometime after the 17th of April, I’ll be starting as a Linux/Unix Systems Administrator for Google in Dublin, Ireland! Moving to Dublin to work for Google seems to be somewhat of a trend these days, and I’m looking forward to catching up with all the other Debian people who have recently posted similar news.

The realities of shifting across the world in less than a month are starting to sink in now! We left our apartment this weekend just gone, and we’re staying with my parents for a few weeks while we get all our household stuff into storage and sort out what we’re taking to Dublin with us. It’s a big job packing up a house and it’s scary looking at the amount of stuff we’ve accumulated over just two short years! Luckily we have some exciting opportunities to look forward and keep us motivated!