Packing and Repacking

The last few weeks were even more of a rush than usual. I wrote this while flying to Sydney after a few weeks at home, and now I finally get around to posting i a few weeks later. There was some laziness in there too though. I've taken a lot of flights so far this year - eight journeys, two of which were 24 hours from London to Sydney. I'll be taking another seven by the middle of May. I've been careful not to rub in the whole tropical-island-to-tropical-island-globetrotter thing. There are a lot of downsides to my current nomadic lifestyle, and it suits me well but I don't think it's for everyone.

Lots of flights means lots of packing and repacking, along with the tough decisions about what new things make it into the already tightly packed 30kg limit. Suffice to day, I am quite over living out of a suitcase. It is not the small amount of stuff that I have (I enjoy that part immensely, particularly the part when you can smugly preach to people about how much stuff they really don't need in their life), but the fact I am always moving it somewhere. So in May, I am going to be based from one location for a full 5 months (yay!) in the Caribbean (double yay!). I'll be at Coral Cay in Montserrat doing marine and terrestrial conservation.

Alongside the repacking there is also the administration. Now, I know that everyone has admin, but mostly you just get it sorted out once and then some sort of automated process takes it from there. Yes, you need to pay your council tax, but then you just set up the direct debit and you don't have to think about it. Instead, I have a constantly changing set of plans to coordinate, in countries that are not my home, with a new career just starting out. I feel that just listing out the admin I've done in the past month will be cathartic. If you don't care, skip to the end because I might go on about something else.

Search for and apply to jobs in NZ and overseas for the summer months

Search for and apply to PhD positions for October

Prepare for and have interviews for the above positions

Organise paid finance work

Set up new company, get accountant, do tax stuff

Set up business bank account**

Fill in the gazillion forms for new job

Get dive medical

Get criminal records check

Get passport documents certified

Sort out places to stay in UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA

Organise Significant Other's visit – travel itinerary etc.

Book flights to all the next places

Sell stuff on Ebay and buy stuff I need for being in the wild

Organise conservation training for self

Accept PhD and do all the new admin for that

**This one alone took ages. Handy hint: HSBC are a hateful bunch of automatons.. apart from the lovely people who I know that inexplicably work there.... Pro Tip: Go to MetroBank instead and your life will be changed. Don't be fooled by the fact their branches look more like Clown School than a serious bank. I can actually rant at length on this topic, and have done so to a lot of unfortunate friends, but essentially I needed two things from a bank; set up my account quickly and have good customer service. They have delivered on both, however the fact that they have a special policy for dogs in their branch which they advertise with a hilarious set of promotion materials (dogs in bank jobs) would also have convinced me to go there.

Here you'll see me and my mum trying to find stuff in my shipping container at home.

She was rightly suspicious of me taking photos with her in. Here they are on the interwebs.

If you're still with me, this all kind of explains why I might not have told you when I'm suddenly in the country you live in, and also don't have any time and/or look like I've been through a hedge even more than usual. I didn't really have time to do my hair in the last 3 weeks.

Hopefully there is light at the end of the administrative tunnel and I can get back to living carefree. Being home and seeing you all was a lovely unexpected whirlwind. I will officially be home again in 6 months so we can pick it up again from there! In the mean time I will be hopefully visiting loads of places in Australia that I didn't make it to before, and I'm planning a cowboy trip in Utah***. Exciting!

*** If anyone wants to come on my cowboy trip for a week in Utah (I'll be flying in and out of VEGAS) then tell me!!! I'm thinking 2 days trail rides, then some drives and adventure type sports. From Vegas to Zion NP to Monument Valley and back again. Maximum I can do is 6 days... but you'd probably have time for Vegas.