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

Wedding shoes

I think the most common wedding question I've been asked is what shoes I'm going to wear and let me tell you it's tough.  It's like a mother choosing her favourite (Louboutin) child.

I definitely did not want to wear white shoes.  I'm just not that traditional.

SO.  I've decided on these babies for the ceremony and photos:

And then more reasonable/less neck-breaking heels for the reception.  I can't decide between a pair of custom strass peeptoes or a classic nude peeptoe:

Opinions?

Maxing out my credit card

Honestly this is a right of passage for most working women, right?

Well it had never happened to me until this week.  How has she managed this, I hear you ask.  Well my monthly limit is $10,000.  YES TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.  In thirty days I spent ten thousand dollars.

At that point I decided I should cut back on unnecessary spending.  Then I had to get my car serviced and a pink slip ($1300).  Then I had to get a new phone.  Priceline has a 40% off sale?  ARGH.

In my defence (I do say that a lot, don't I?) most of the $10K went towards booking our Honeymoon flights and accommodation.  Thankfully most of that is now booked and I don't have to worry much about it and can focus on the wedding.

Speaking of wedding, are people interested in wedding plans and wedding decisions?

Hello 2015

I just realised it's been over a month since I last sat down to write something.

Christmas came and went.  NYE came and went.  I worked throughout.  Then I went to Bali and I came back.  Then straight back to work.  And then purely because the year is now 2015 I'm in mini panic mode about all things wedding and honeymoon.  It suddenly seems a lot closer than when the year was 2014.

Let me catch you up on the last 30 days...

Christmas was same same but different - same Christmas Eve dinner with my fam followed by same Christmas Day with Tom's fam.  However there wasn't the same festive mood that we usually see every year.

NYE was quite low-key for me considering previous years have been spent at Opera Bar or Falls Festival.  Instead I went down to see the 9pm fireworks around the harbour, then headed to a friend's place in Mosman to appreciate sweeping views from the Eastern suburbs to upper north shore.

36 hours later I was on a flight to Bali with my sister for a 10-day holiday.  I'm not going to lie, the recent disappearance of the AirAsia flight did cross my mind a number of times throughout the flight (I took solace in the fact that Sydney to Bali is pretty much above Aussie land most of the way til the very end).

Bali was.... a mixed bag.  When we finally arrived at the hotel at midnight local time (3am Sydney time) I had such a bad migraine that I was borderline vom-ing.  Pretty much didn't sleep that night.  Did some cool stuff like white water rafting and aerial yoga though.

And now I'm back at work, back to wedding and honeymoon planning, and back to house hunting.  I'm a sucker for punishment.  Sucker.