Roberto Live!

No, this isn’t an X-rated post, I’m not in that business (yet). It is, for you less illustrated people, the Roman numeral for 30. Yes, it was my birthday last Saturday, 30 years, how awesome is that? Yesterday walking around the city just started thinking about what I’ve done in the last 10 years and it’s really something to talk about. The little secret has been a combination of planning, self-confidence (or having the biggest ego in the world!), minimum but effective effort (my friends know is true!) and well, I have to accept it, lots of luck. I’ve achieved things in the last minute many times, more than most of the people think.

But above all, I’m seeing how lucky I’ve been for having a so nice and supportive family, and also incredible friends around the world. Really, in 30 years, I’ve been truly lucky for being surrounded with so many smart and extraordinary people.

So the question are, what’s for the next 10 years? Settling down maybe? Doing more incredible trips? Conquering the world? Well I can tell you that there’s a moving plan for the following 18 months and that’s where the things are getting really interesting… and I accept suggestions.

Well 2010 seems like an exciting year and many big plans are going to take shape. The immediate plan is working in Singapore. I’m already getting excited about living and working in there. Still looking for a job over there although I’ve already got a couple of replies which is good. Keep tuned and wish me luck, things are going to start changing very very quick.

All my best wishes to Heidi and Tony my ex-housemates because his little boy, Nick,  arrived to the world (and 4 hours after he was born his picture is already on Internet, that’s speed)! I wish to be in there with them but that’s an unfortunate side-effect of being traveling around the world. Now I need to go back to Australia sooner Congratulations guys!

Bye-bye Australia (at least for now), I’m heading to Dallas, then Houston, the Villahermosa then Singapore for work. It was such a good journey in here, I met incredible people and the future seems exciting. I’ll miss everybody in Australia!! And like the dolphins said: “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”

Because the British bureaucrats will sink the kingdom.

I think I have been officially ripped off by a foreign country. Yeah you guessed correctly, the British didn’t reply to my visa working visa request at the end of September as promised. I sent another fax and they haven’t replied yet. They state that there’s no refunds once an application is placed. They can give no information over the phone. And there no signs of my 600 pounds of course.

On the good news, I started to apply for jobs in Australia and it happens there are some companies interested in sponsorships. Also, I got another skills assessment from ACS, which place my skills as 2231-79  Computer Professional - specialising in Data Warehousing  (fancy, isn’t it?), which in part of the Critical Skills List. Still the application make take 12 months or so. Anyway, I’m trying to be a bit more careful about the jobs and companies I’m applying for. Better not rushing and landing an interesting position.

About Denmark, well they haven’t replied yet although I haven’t chased either. That’s a different case. The government  says that they’re very short of supply of specialised IT workers, however I have found very few jobs on internet. Not sure if Danes prefer to advertise in newspapers, or simply they exclusively do it in Danish. Anyway, I think it’d be a competitive advantage if I know some Danish, useless outside of Denmark but at least I won’t get lost in København

If you check my Flickr, you’ll see more pictures of Canberra. I had to come back last Friday, to request a new passport in the Mexican embassy. To kill some time before my appointment I went to Old Parliament House. Now it’s a museum, quite awesome, I had the chance to sit on the cabinet’s chair and discuss with my fellow tourists ministers the issue of the “boat people” in the 70’s.

The Mexican embassy is a funny place. There are no security guards at all, they made me wait for around an hour. Besides, now it happens that the passports no longer take 1 working day like in Mexico, but 6 to 8 weeks. Oh well, at least I spent a good day in the capital.

A very good friend of mine, who’s currently in England but spent some days in Brazil, sent me a postcard of what is possibly the best sight of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. I want to go to Rio!!

I don’t know where she is, and unless I want to join the underworld business of Carmen, I need visas to work abroad.

Anyway, the promised visa post. Long-story short: commenting about the difficulty to find a sponsor in Australia (and that was the reason to get abroad), a friend commented out about using job agencies. And he was so correct, I wrote to a few agencies and Robert Walters called back, they were interested in my skills and they said that if I find a contract they’ll work out the visa.

Now the question is: should I try to work in Europe anyway? I don’t necessarily need to leave Australia now.