Houston, We Have Touchdown

29 January 2016. It was an emotional farewell with family and friends. Watching them bid you farewell while you walk away is pretty heart-wrenching. Their endless waves till you walk out of sight; that was difficult to get over.

Tarmac... blue sky... tarmac...

I have landed in Darwin on a one-way ticket. There is no turning back now. Not for the next six months at least. I had initially thought I was going to be alone for the next 6 days while waiting for my wife to arrive. I had to get things up to speed with the house, get a car, open a bank account etc. The days prior to my departure were filled with anxiety as I had to mentally rehearse how the first day was going to pan out.

But lo and behold, the heavens were kind to me and in the form of an angel appeared my frien
d Manoaj. He had surprised me with an accompanying ticket to Darwin and was going to help me with laying the foundations before Sangeetha arrived. Wow! Pure Bliss...

Upon touchdown, we went through the routine immigration clearance. As I was carrying cash above $10,000 AUD, I had to declare at the customs. Ofcourse I could try my luck without declaring but I figured it wasn't worth the risk. Anyway, the declaration only meant that I had to fill up an additional form that took about 5 min.

We proceeded to pick up the reserved rental car from Budget Car Rentals. Meanwhile, Manoaj helped to make arrangements with my housing agent to collect the keys to our new apartment. He also arranged an appointment to view some cars the following day.

We met Colette (our agent) very briefly. She was quick to run through the terms and left us shortly after. Our first task was to get me connected to the outside world again. This brought us to Casuarina Square where I found myself talking to a rather bubbly staff at Optus. 15 min later,  Walah! I was connected to the world.

We then spent the rest of the evening exploring Casuarina Square and buying stuff that would get us through the first few nights. (Our apartment was unfurnished and was totally bare). We then spent another 30 min chatting with another bubbly lady from Foxtel and I got that settled as well. I did not want to delay too much as I was informed that getting a date with the technician would take between 2 - 3 weeks.

The first day has come to an end and I am seated on a queen-sized inflatable bed while I type this. The only thing I have not done is to open a bank account. The banks close at 5pm and we had only arrived at Casuarina Square at 5.15pm. Now I must wait till Monday before I can open the bank account. Till then, Ill be clutching on to my slingpouch like baby that refuses to be peeled away from its mother.

Ok that's all for the first day. We will be going car hunting tomorrow and I will update how that goes tomorrow.

See ya.