Home Sweet Home

5 Airports. 48 Hours. 1 missed flight. Never again.

So my itinerary looked a little like this:

Vancouver --> Seattle 6 hour drive including waiting 1.5 hours at the border!!

Seattle --> LA 2.5 hour

LA --> Sydney 14.5 hours

Sydney --> Melb 1 hour

Melb --> Perth 4 hours

I though maybe only having 3 hour sleep the night before will help me fall asleep on the plane, but it did not help at all!! I just can't sleep on planes.

On the way to Sea Tac

LAX

Touch down on Aussie soil

Melbourne Airport where it all begun

Photo I took when I left Melb to LA last year

All my boarding tickets

But alas, I'm at home now back to the normality of life, back to getting use to things. Ie. Walking on the left side of the path - I almost walked into so many people at the airport although that could possibly be attributed to my lack of sleep.

Now that I am bright awake after having slept more than 12 hours, I took some photos around the house.

My fishies

A new addition to our house

WOOHOO. Great to be back =)

I love sunshine

Man, I have not blogged for a while.

Just been out enjoying Vancouver, its a totally different city in Summer, a different type of beauty. I had the pleasure of enjoying my first summer long weekend here. Three whole days of friends, food and fun.

Absolutely gorgeous

You can see a bit of the mountains on the right

Pondering...I dont want summer to be over!

Well, that's all the photos I have =(

I lost my camera memory card thingy so haven't been able to take any photos. I ordered a new one from the States and went down today to pick it up, but I didnt realise the border wait time was like one hour!! So what I thought would be a 1.5 hour trip, turned out to be more than 3 hours...

Sigh.

Back to work now.

Finding a balance

Its Friday night and I am staying home to do work. What? What? That doesn't sound right.

No, it doesn't.

Well, let me share with you what's going on. Last week, my friend said her accountant, Vince, was looking for someone who can assist with him with some accounting work. So I sent off my resume and a few days later, he asks me to call to him. So I did. The conversation started like this:

"Do you like accounting Ling?"

"No, I don't =)" (hehe, I said it with a smile on the phone)

"Why? What don't you like about it?"

"It's boring, I have to account for every 6 minutes of the day, I mean like every 6 minutes and then sometimes I get interrupted then I forget what I'm doing and then it looks like I wasn't doing anything in that time because I didn't record anything on my timesheet and then I don't meet the billable hours and then that makes it look like I was being unproductive and then....." *Rant continues for another half an hour*

"What if I told you accounting doesn't have to be that way?"

That captured my interest. At this point, I actually was curious but had to be upfront about my situation.

"I'm actually going back to Australia in a few weeks and I'm not sure when I'll be back"

So Vince went away to think and called me back the next day.

"You know what? It doesn't make sense at all why I would hire you. You are going back to Australia, you don't know when you will return, in fact you may never return, you are not familiar with Canadian tax laws but for some reason I feel like I have to hire you."

"Well, as much as I hate accounting, I'm willing to give it a shot"

That was last week. Since then I have been super busy meeting with clients, learning Canadian tax law, preparing financial reports etc etc. And for the first time ever, I can't actually stop working. Like I think I enjoy it. Enjoy it until 1:30am in the morning. Now that's a worry.

It's been a steep learning curve and I was basically thrown in the deep end.

"Here, this is your client" *Hands me a file*


"This is their number, its all yours"


From start to finish, I have full control of how I want to do the work, when I want to do the work, and where I want to do the work. Yes, even where I want to do the work. Basically I can work from anywhere in the world, all I need is a computer or laptop.

Working from the beautiful beaches of Perth

To the gorgeous mountains of Whistler...

OK, I probably won't get any work done in Vegas.

It's been awesome learning new things every single day but one thing that Vince mentioned which really spoke to me was his philosophy: Serve your clients first, then success will come and money will follow. The world has it backwards, their mentality is "I want money, and when I have money then I'll be successful then maybe I'll serve the clients." That's where greed comes into play and people start compromising their values, that's why collapses like Enron take place.

Anyway, my view of perception of accounting has done a full 360. Vince doesn't call himself an accountant but a business person with accounting skills. Someone who just wants to help and when people realise they're not getting billed for every six minutes of your time, they want to pay you. I've seen many examples of that from this week alone.

So now my issue is, I am spending wayyyyy too much time working because I love it. Seriously, who doesn't love getting a trial balance to balance?! However, I need to set my boundaries and work within a certain time and outside those hours, no more work! As awesome as it is to have full control over my work, I have to be careful that it doesn't have control over me. I don't want to end up working until I am old and realise half my life is over, all my kids have grown up and moved out and I don't even know who my husband is anymore. OK, fine maybe I'm being a little dramatic here but it all came from this movie called Click:

Wow...my post really went on a tangent huh.

Well, who knows where this work thing will go. Maybe it'll be temporary or maybe it'll be long term. Who knows. All I can do is enjoy the ride and see where it takes me =)

It is time

My time in Canada is almost up...its been almost one year since I've been away from home and I have mixed feelings about going back. I'm feeling super duper excited to see my family and friends in Perth but at the same time, a bit apprehensive about leaving my community here. I've come to the realization that this was bound to happen and with any decision I make, I will leave behind people who have made me become who I am today. I know I started this trip without any expectations or commitments, just to see what would happen, who I would meet, where I would end up. From an outside perspective, it may seem as though nothing in my life has changed but from my perspective, everything in my life has changed.

So yeah, that's where I'm at. Super excited about going back home, catching up with friends, eating delicious home cooked food, hitting up the beaches and just chillaxing. It's always the simple things in life that brings the greatest joy.

Canada Day

I got to celebrate my first Canada Day with a barbecue, like Australia Day!!! Of course it was no where as hot as it normally gets on Australia Day but it was warm enough. YAY for summer!! And homemade burger patties. Makes me happy.

We had like a gazillion patties

Women in the kitchen

Men at the barbie

Tomato station

Onion station

Lettuce Station

Mushroom station

Bread station

DYI burgers

Mine was super awesome

Like seriously

People just chilling on the deck

Now let the games begin..

Miss Superwoman

Getting ready to benchpress someone

Come on..any volunteers??

Here we go

The human sacrifice..lol.

Down she goes

Up she goes

Next up, Annie

Doing squats with Wilson on her back

Up and down..

Yes, we have strong women in the house!

Let's not forget the men...

Too much testosterone

A clear winner

Any reason to celebrate..lol.

Good times..BRING ON SUMMERRRRRR!!!!!

Tell the world I'm coming home

I have finally booked my ticket back to Perth. Or should I say rebook. The return leg of my original ticket was to come back on August 6th but I wanted to stay for this:

A conference on strategic transformation of a nation. Gonna be sooooo awesome and something I definitely want to stay for. However, as much as I wanted to stay, it would cost $250 to change my date to AFTER the conference...not a cheap price to pay considering I still had to book my ticket from Melbourne to Perth too.

But alas, my beautiful friends all contributed to help change my flight. I am so blessed to have such awesome friends who are family to me. I love you guys SO much =)

So now I am leaving on August 15th. My trip looks like this: Seattle --> LA --> Sydney --> Melbourne --> Perth. And I will arrive in Perth on the 18th. Three whole days later!!!! Oh my goodness. I really really really despise long flights and I'm considering taking some drugs to knock me out and when I wake up, I'll be in Perth!

I remember taking a hayfever tablet which was apparently drowsy (I didn't know) and lasted for 24 hours (also didn't know)...this is why you should read the labels clearly! Anyway, I took one and it knocked me out completely and even as I woke up the next day, I was still soooo groggy and went back to sleep for the rest of the day. Seriously!! It was not good. I haven't touched it since but this might be a good reason to whip it out again...hehehe..

This is what I'm talking about..EXTRA strength..fighting allergies by putting you to sleep

First BBQ of the summer

We had our first bbq of the summer last week. Let's be honest, I wouldn't really consider this to be summer...its the equivalent of Autumn in Perth. But hey, I'll still take what I can...any reason to throw a shrimp on the barbie. OK, I don't really talk like that but I have to use that saying at least once ;)

Prepping food in the kitchen

Wings, wings, wings..they are big on wings here

With seasoning and all that good stuff

Look, purple corn chips!!!!

You go girl!! Best salad ever!

Oh so delicious

Secret ingredient...wasabi mayooooo. I wanna bring some back to Perth.

Nacho, nacho man...I wanna be a nacho man..

Getting the barbie started

Baked corn by yours truly

So gooddddddd

And here it iss...

Sitting out on the patio

Pigging out time - think its like 9pm now

We couldn't even finish one tray of nachos..

So the weather hasn't really improved by that much since last week...as much as I miss the sunshine, I am actually getting to it. I remember it was like low 20s and I was thinking, wow...its getting pretty hot. LOL!! Low 20s is like Perth winter. WOW. My ability to withstand heat as decreased dramatically in the few months I have been living here. Love it!