I've been blogging about this trip for nearly 2 months. I'm taking off next Monday,
only 4 days from now. Here's what I've learned about travel preparations in the last two weeks.
1. You cannot possibly start getting rid of you stuff early enough. Even though I managed to sell quite a bit of books, clothes and records I still had loads left when the last week at home began. They just kept coming up from everywhere, boxes in the attic and upper shelves of closets. As it was already too late to auction them or to organize a garage sale, I ended up throwing some stuff away and giving some to charity. I so could have used that money, even if it was just a matter of a little more than a few bucks.
2. Spare loads of time for seeing your family and friends. Between my last day at work and my day of take-off I had nine days which just didn't suffice. As those nine days also included two days scheduled for final packing and moving out of my apartment, I reeked of alcohol when my folks came to pick me and the rest of my stuff up. It was not so cool, but then hey, the previous night might just as well have been the last time I'm going to see my best friend for God knows how long. Or at least one of the last times.
3. Don't you dare think that your work related nightmares are over with your last day of work. I spent the other night paralyzed, sweating and screaming while a bad dream involving a series of articles on swine flu rolled in front of my eyes.
4. Make sure that you've had all of your doctor's and dentist's appointments well in advance. I was rather unhappy when I got a call from my dentist's receptionist saying that my last minute appointment had been canceled as my dentist is bed-ridden because of the ominous swine flu influenza.
5. Packing up your house is a lot harder when you are storing stuff away and not just moving them to another apartment. When switching apartments, in the new one you can always tuck away the same old Christmas presents you've always tucked away but when it's a question of how much stuff you can store in someone else's house, it becomes a matter of deciding what's really valuable. I'm so glad my grandma doesn't speak English.
6. For your last days of work you should have a witty response in store to claims such as "what do you care, you are leaving". "I care, because I have a strong work ethic", is not going to make the cut.
7. Lying to your grandma about the places you are going to go to is more than acceptable. Australia is a lot better than say, Bangladesh.
8. When telling your grandma that you are going to be writing a travel blog, it's a good idea to explain, what is a blog and that for example, members of the parliament, celebrities and other prominent people have blogs. That might help you to change her mind about you having been sacked and leaving because you need to escape some serious law suits.
9. Seeing your apartment empty and ready for the tenants can be emotionally disturbing. Don't look back.
10. An all-inclusive list of things to do would have been nice. At the moment I've got no idea whether I've got everything under control and it's a lot more stressful than work ever.
