Go! Move! Shift!

Move along, get along, move along, get along, Go! Move! Shift! (lyrics from above)

Well, I always knew when getting hitched to Maaike that my comfortable happy life was ultimately doomed ;) heh, still, ’tis through discomfort that we grow. Anyway, Maaike is very much keen on travel, I am too, but more of a 1-2 month term than longer. Anyway, negotiations were entered into, though I think I was misled.. it started as “lets go for 3-6 months” (this was agreed to)… then, quickly turned into “but I’ll ask for 9 months” and then “I’ll ask for a year, but I’ll be happy with less”. CPIT agreed to the year, so a year it is. Maaike was able to put her job on hold for a year, I had to quit mine. Sure it is lovely to be off travelling for a year, no doubt about it, and really, who is going to give you any sort of sympathy when you say you’re off travelling for a year, but, I’d be lying if I said I was as open to change as Maaike is!

So, I handed in notice at Resolve, my colleagues made me a most excellent card:

The reason this is so excellent – it’s how I quit (without saving) in my editor of choice – vim. I hope it’d be fair to say that it wasn’t a comment on my coding to suggest that I quit without saving. For the record, I’d be more of a :wq kinda guy, or ZZ, or or or ;)

Anyway, I will miss Resolve, really excellent colleagues, interesting work that I thoroughly enjoyed (Problem-Attic being a highlight, as probably was the GapFiller project), great communication, perks like learning lunch and an excellent coffee machine, learning materials ready to hand…. no, it was a great place to be and I’ll miss the banter.

Also, I sold the van. My friend Michelle made a cake to celebrate/commiserate the event.

It was an interesting thing selling the van. I think most people were surprised that I’d get anything for it other than a couple of tins of baked beans. I had, in my head, that it was still worth heaps, and I was selling at the right time too (high season). I did end up selling it for $2,300, though I would have liked a little more. It was old sure, 1985, but it was still going fine and the engine seemed good. I told it to a German tourist. Interestingly, as soon as I’d sold it (he’d already haggled me down $200 and I’d already dropped the price a lot) he started saying that there was lots wrong with it, leaks etc. Frankly I was quite surprised by this as I’d just used it for driving to Ohau, to Picton (for the QC biking trip) and all around town for the last week dropping things off.. he even went so far as to ask me would I buy it back! So, maybe I did get a good price, hard to know. I’m not sure what we’ll get when we get back to NZ, but I must say, I like having a big box on wheels, at least until the point at which we buy a house and aren’t moving around so much. It did leave a slightly sour taste though, as I did think it was a decent van, and I did want the buyer to have a good time touring around in it. I offered to pay 1/2 of the cost of a repair for specific safety issues that he said the van had. I said only if he took it to my mechanic, and only if he said the work was necessary. I haven’t heard back yet, so I’m assuming that all is well and that he was just having a complain. We shall see.

The time up to leaving flew by, moving everything out of the house (Maaike was still having to work unfortunately, so I was quite busy running around). Getting jabs (boosters, Hep, Rabies…) etc.

We have been lucky to have wonderful friends who have been willing to use & store our stuff for a year, so we didn’t have to shell out for storage. Maaike had the bright idea to make a big list of all our stuff and see what things people would take. Worked out very well – far better than my sceptical self thought it would ;)

And then it was time to leave, first step Argentina, back Jan 2017.