All Systems Go!

The Christmas break arrived before we knew it, in true Grinch fashion we chose to cancel Christmas this year (sorry family for the Christmas present drought!) and instead packed up the house and tried to save money.

Every day we waited in anticipation for the mail to arrive bearing our Canadian PR visas, our poor postie was one step away from reporting us for harassment due to our constant loitering at the post box! We were a little disappointed when Christmas day came and went without the visas, Santa was paying us back for cancelling on him.

This disappointment was not to last long however, as on the 29th of December our Canadian PR visas arrived. This was it, the moment we had been waiting for was here! There was nothing to hold us back! With the Canadian borders open, PR visas in our hands and the house sold, it was time to book flights and our first month’s accommodation in Canada, sweet baby jeebus this is scary!

Due to the impact of Covid the availability of flights from NZ to Canada had been heavily restricted and were expensive, in the end we booked our flights with Air New Zealand flying from Auckland to Vancouver, then to Toronto and finally on to Ottawa.

It was going to make for an extremely long and exhausting journey but on the upside at least we could finally travel and get to visit most of the major airports in Canada, even if we could not physically leave them! The dates were set, we were going to be leaving NZ for good on the 15th of February.

Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.

Booking accommodation was not as straight forward as we had imagined (we never seem to learn); we were looking to stay in Ottawa when we first landed but it is a popular destination to travel to for what is called the ski season on account of all the white stuff called snow which would be covering the ground by the metre when we arrive! (Yep, further confirmation of our moron status).

We wanted somewhere that would be a bargain especially as we would be jobless bums by that point and could not afford to throw savings away on expensive rentals, but we did not want to stay in a bed bug and cockroach infested, mouldy hovel either (we had read the horror stories!). It needed to be close to the city and the amenities especially as we would not have a vehicle for those first few weeks and would be doing all our travelling on foot or by public transport.

Unfortunately, the good deals on holiday rentals were booked leaving very slim pickings! After scouring the internet, we finally settled on an Airbnb in a basement in Nepean located just outside Ottawa city, it was bijou, there was extraordinarily little in the way of natural light, but it had everything that we needed, it was close to the amenities and a fair price so we booked it before anyone else could.

With the flights and lodgings sorted we had a little over a month and a half to get our crap together, we had gone from moving at a snail’s pace to warp speed (Captain Kirk would be proud) and there was still so much to do like finalising details with the shippers and pet relocators, resigning from work and making time to say goodbye to the wonderful friends we had made in NZ.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

I would love to say that we took all of it in our stride as we had done with everything else up until now but if we were to be honest it all started to feel like it was all too real and happening too fast which was baffling. We had waited four years for this moment, surely, we were prepared.

Physically we were, we had packed, arrangements and formalities were made, for goodness’ sake we had organised the crap out of everything but emotionally we were not prepared at all. We were so fixated on leaving NZ that we had failed to acknowledge that it would mean saying goodbye to some amazing friends who had become more like family and leaving was going to be harder than we imagined.

We found that in those final few weeks there were not enough hours in the day to get around to say goodbye to everyone, so many people wanted us to go and see them before we left which is all well and good if you do not have a million and one other things to do as well as a life changing relocation to organise, we decided to prioritise and spend the time with the people who had really mattered to us.  

We had both made the decision to leave our jobs at the end of the first week in February, this would give us time to get some final packing, cleaning, and running around completed before we took the fur babies to Jetpets, and the house movers started on the 10^th of February. Tending our resignation sounds like it should be a liberating experience and whilst it did bring excitement it was also very sobering.

I had been working at Mace Landscape Group in the position of H&S Coordinator for over three years and I have to say easily it has been the best job I have had in NZ. I have loved the challenge, loved the working environment, and loved the people including the directors who were amazing. Handing my resignation letter to my directors made my palms sweat with nerves, if they had been awful bosses, it would have been so much easier to tell them where to stick it, but they were great, and it made it so difficult.

A journey is measured not only in the distance travelled but by the friendships made along the way.

After the initial shock at my resignation the team at Mace were supportive, understanding, and excited about the journey we would be embarking on which was very humbling, particularly as having managed their H&S for over three years I thought they would have been glad to see the back of me.

Most people wind down in their last couple of weeks before leaving work but for me the work increased, there would be no time for checking my Facebook, slacking off early and extended lunch breaks, I had a hand over to complete and a Pre-qualification assessment to finish along with the day to day.

While the office was quiet due to the Covid restrictions and most people working from home my colleagues did take time to pop in daily to say their goodbyes (one at a time, wearing face masks, having gargled, and bathed in sanitiser, and maintaining physical distancing requirements …. I was taking no chances before my flight!).

Before I knew it, I was walking off site at 5pm for the final time (they got their monies worth, no half day for me!) with arms ladened with cards and goodbye gifts, I was really going to miss them.

Martins’ resignation in comparison could not have been more different! After a 22-year career in Policing all Martin had to do was log on to the Police computer system and within three clicks of the mouse he had resigned, there were no nerves or sweaty palms for him! There were also no thanks for his service or supportive words from senior management, apart from receiving the Bill Murray Award for his contribution to the Police Association over the past 14 years.

The Police Associations role is to support Officers maligned by Police management and highlight breaches in policy, process and the Police Charter which made Martin unpopular at times because management do not like to be told when they are in the wrong, but at the end of the day Martin was just another person, another number and when one leaves another will join the ranks to fill the space and so the cycle goes on.

This made it extremely easy for martin to skip out of the door on his final day shouting too-da-loo mutherfudgers!!

With our last working days in NZ under our belt it was time to prepare ourselves for the emotional tsunami that was due to hit at the end of the following week when we said goodbye to our pets and our home for the past nine years.