Bucket List

I have added a new page under the banner of shoes called 'Bucket List'.  The first is a Europe travel bucket list and it should be easier to tick items off when I move to London.

The second bucket list is stuff I want to do once I've move to London.  I feel as though my life has been put on hold for a year because of the wedding planning and now I'm getting back to 'life' and doing the things I want to do.

If you have any recommendations that I need to add to either bucket list please comment and let me know :)

You know what is super daunting?

Knowing that you are packing all your worldly possessions into TWO suitcases, especially for a materialistic person like me.

Thankfully I've been going through a huge purging exercise recently and have managed to get rid of more than half of my shoe collection, and made many trips to drop off clothes at Vinnies. I have literally bought TWO things in the last 3 months - a pair of work pants because my sister said my current work pants are so worn they look like jeans, and a Bulgari ring because.... well why the hell not.

Does anyone have any packing tips?  What to take, what not to take, how to pack so that I maximise my suitcase space?

My battle against Births Deaths and Marriages

29 years ago my mother gave birth to her first child. My dad was tasked with registering the child's name. Being the great Chinese man he is, he misspelled his daughter's Chinese middle name (and people wonder why I'm not more Chinese...)

3 months ago I decided it was time to rectify this mistake. I submitted the Change of Name form along with all the required documents. One week later my entire life plan changed and I decided to move to London. This meant I needed a visa, which meant I needed a passport. My passport was due to expire but because of my impending change of name I wasn't able to renew the passport but had to apply for a new one. I couldn't apply for a new passport until my change of name came through.

The very helpful people at Births Deaths and Marriages told me I had to wait the 8 week average turnaround time before being able to enquire about it. But I could pay a fee for it to be expedited. The expedited average turnaround time was also 8 weeks (seriously BDM someone needs to look at that). So I sat and waited patiently. The day after 8 weeks I called again. No one has even looked at it. But someone must have looked at it because my credit card was charged $174 I told her. Yes she admitted, my form had been opened but only to get the credit card number and then my form was closed again.

I escalated the case. One week later still no one had looked at it. Have I mentioned I love BDM?

I decided to pay them a visit. If I'm standing in front of them they HAVE to do something right? Wrong. "please come back on Monday at 8.30am PROMPTLY. do not be late" she said.

So I was NOT late. In fact I was 10 mins early. I was rewarded for being early by sitting and waiting for 40 minutes. Finally my turn. After the male officer said "never trust a woman" and proceeded to check all the information given to me on Friday by said 'woman' he kindly informed me that my application was processed on Saturday and sorry for wasting your time coming down here. I love BDM.

So I have 6 weeks on the clock to get my new passport and a 2-year UK visa. Wish me luck.

Four months

So.  It has been some time.  Four months to be exact.  I don't even really know where to start but the past four months saw me:

• celebrate my 29th birthday (that sure crept up on me... last time I checked I was 26)
• bury my childhood dog after 20 glorious years on this earth (yes this is the same naughty dog that ate rat poison a few years ago)
• spend my 5th and final Valentines Day with the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.  Turns out that wasn't to be......  But on the plus side this means I....
• made the decision to MOVE TO LONDON!!  I am boarding a plane on 5th August and have no return ticket booked
• conduct a major purging exercise to get rid of my worldly possessions in preparation for moving my entire life halfway across the world
• plan a Europe trip to kickstart my move to London and make the most of the northern hemisphere summer

It's been a roller coaster ride and most of the time I've just wanted to get the fuck off.  But life throws at you what it will and you just have to hold on for dear life til things settle down.  And only now have I started to feel like things are settling down.

I need to give credit to all the amazing people in my life who dropped everything to help me out when I needed it and who held me up when all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and stay there for days.  I'm not going to name them all individually as we would be here for days, but from the bottom of my heart

thankyou